The Kannada Safari

These days every telecommunication and semiconductor concern marches forward towards Bangalore on its very arrival to India. Towards the end of my under-graduation, it became apparent to me that I needed to be mentally prepared to stay at Bangalore for a considerable time in my life and career. In such circumstances, a weird idea struck me one fine morning. Why not learn the local language? Kannada!

Forget the sweltering heat of Chennai; as for twenty years I had warmed myself in Chennai and Tamil. All along my school education, teachers and books had kept telling me that Tamil alone is the most ancient of all languages and it is the sweetest of all as well. That was followed by a series of essays and stories on the morality, loyalty, bravery and blah blah blah of Tamil rulers and people. Almost no election is fought in Tamil Nadu without a mention of Tamil. That the current CM is an extremely talented Tamil poet and dramatist himself is a different story. This has always been a land where the language is worshipped by the people – quite unlike Orissa, a state where the CM manages to survive without even knowing Oriya!

So much for TN. I had a genuine opportunity at hand to verify the veracity of what my school teachers had imposed on me. The only way to find if one language is superior to another is to know to speak, read and write both languages. Prior to this, I had a misconception that I had utilized the Internet in every possible way. But mastering a language is no mean job and is much more difficult than to study techie aspects. Each of the three languages I know was learnt over a period of several years. A boost came with a cartoon of the “Health Capsules” – it said our lifetime increased with every new language that we learnt! Whether I followed every advice of Health Capsules can be reserved for a different argument. (Especially advices like the one to drink bowel prep liquids for prompt diagnosis of colon cancer ;)) Nevertheless I thrust myself the task of decoding Kannada…

The process began as it had for my mother tongue – letters first. Strangely, the mind began to correlate every letter of the alphabet with some character that I had already seen before in life. It was a nerve-wracking experience, especially when you get to feel that you see only a Greek “omega” everywhere, twisted here and there according to some being’s whims and fancies. I patiently bided time. There was one time when papers around me were littered with Kannada alphabets and members of my family looked down upon me as if I were drawing weird figures! They could have well presumed that I had fallen in love!

Quickly I unlocked the Kannada channels on my television. In hindsight, it could be a great move, as Kannada people block Tamil cable channels almost quite immediately when there is a feud between the states! I began to focus my eyes on the flash news in Kannada news channels. It proved a great exercise – I identified the miniscule differences between alphabets that were looking by and large similar. I also ended up learning new letters that were missed out in the internet – like half-stressing a letter in my own name (Shyam, just as they do in Hindi), having different notations for “ru” sound (like in maat’ru’bhaasha). Of LSRW, Reading and Writing are done!

Awaiting next was a greater challenge (LS) – comprehending what the native speakers spoke and to speak the language myself! Of course, it is an ongoing process and not something to which any form of timeframe could be allotted. Even today new words in Tamil seem to be created by the movies. One catchy word and the entire youth seem to be using it as a part of their everyday lingo! My main intent was to learn day-to-day Kannada – at least to the extent of conversing freely with auto-drivers, bus conductors, vendors and house-owners without the fear of being identified as a Tamizhan! Come on, who wants to comprehend Purandara Dasa at 21?!

My human tendencies reached their acme at this stage of the learning process. I felt almost every word in Kannada similar to the equivalent Tamil or Hindi word. The tense forms and the basic grammar (like the differences between usey, ussey, uska, uskeliye, usko etc in Hindi) were the ones that had the core variations. “I want” read “Enakku vendum” in Tamil and “Nanage Beku” in Kannada: so simple, isn’t it? Some ambiguities arose as well – Yen was “why” in Tamil while Yenu in Kannada translated to “What”!

While I have absolutely zero intentions of transforming this blog to some form of Kannada tutorials, I got to apprise you of other lessons that I learnt apart from the language itself. Given Kannada and Telugu share a script and that almost all of the words in the language bear a semblance with either Hindi or Tamil, isn’t a regional influence on the origin of language becoming starkly apparent?

We talk about patriotism and fidelity to the nation; we talk proudly of belonging to a state and a language; and unmindful of our wants we are identified in the society by our caste and religion. Battles are fought over recognizing the oldest of languages; researches are pursued over identifying, approving and improving the so-called classical languages. Politicians have accorded cult status to languages and religions. But after all, the fundamental truth is blatantly out in the open – everyone is the same.

It is time we forget and forgo boundaries and differences caused due to them. It is time we looked at a sports match between two nations as just one between two sets of talented individuals. Technology is often rebuked for reducing our life expectancy – remember it is the same technology that has brought together people from entirely different walks together and merged them without even the spot of a seam. There never existed differences – every patriotic thought or opinion that we possess today are merely ones that have been forced on us without our own knowledge right in our childhood. We simply carry the burden of wars fought long back; borders drawn ages ago; anthems sung in the past.

In that sense, I realize that I am not anything more than my name. God didn’t create India – how can I be an Indian? God didn’t create Tamil Nadu or Tamil as well! Neither were the religions or castes… Human beings haven’t simply multiplied and spread their progeny. They have infested their next generation with their own ideas. Exceptions that arose to such opinions were way less when compared with the number that faithfully carried it on to the succeeding generation!

That’s the biggest lesson I would take from my Kannada safari – to truly become a world citizen in my mind, heart, soul and spirit.