Today was one of the days which I thoroughly enjoyed. Today we celebrated Karnataka Suvarna Utsava (Celebrating 50 years of Karnataka) at our company. I met and interacted with so many people from various other groups within Cisco, got an opportunity to hear T.N. Seetaram speak in person and also to add to all this, got a chance to meet and shake hands with Javagal Srinath.
We had prepared for this day from almost a month. I participated in 2 songs - one, an invocation of Lord Ganesha, a very nice song originally sung by Shakar Mahadevan (for an album and later for the film "Virudh"). I also participated in a group song - the NaadaGeethe of Karnataka - "Jaya Bharata Jananiya Thanujaate". This was the first time after school when I participated directly in a function/occasion like this and I was very satisfied with how I could sing with the group. After hearing the performance of the Cisco band "Omnifuse", my interest in music seems to be deepening. I will shortly be looking around to learn an instrument, probably Guitar or Keyboard.
Coming to Kannada Rajyotsava/Suvarnotsava celebrations, I would like to put together some thoughts of mine. I have never studied Kannada in my life (in school) as I have studied in places outside Karnataka and where we weren't offered Kannada as a subject. My mother and father have taught me Kannada. I am now very comfortable reading. Writing was an issue until the great "Baraha" came along. It's one of the best softwares I have ever come across. I have really written long mails in Kannada using Baraha and it's been very easy to do that.
TNS brought the subject of introducing English as a language from first standard onwards in Government schools of Karnataka. I second his opinion that introducing a language like English can in no way harm the prospects of a great language like Kannada. Instead of raising issues like this, the Kannadigas should infact start using Kannada more as part of their daily lives. That's how the future generation can know about the greatness of the language. As a matter of fact, English is a global language. To be able to interact with people worldwide, people everywhere will need English skills. That in no way should come in the way of conserving the heritage and enhancing the usage of Kannada. Just as we have adopted Hindi to be our national language, we should ensure that people learn Kannada and English.
The real take-away for me from this function is the fact that I met so many people with many diverse interests and still one in celebrating the cause of Kannada and we are talking about a single company in Bangalore, quite small in size compared to the big-wigs of Indian software industry. Just imagine, what would be the talent base if we were to consider the entire software industry in Karnataka. We, as the representatives of the software industry, should strive to inculcate more Kannada into our lives. Our responsibility doesn't end at organizing functions once a year. It should be to make sure that we don't loose out our traditional values and the glorious heritage of Kannada.
Little amount of time, I spent on proof-reading Srivatsa's posters on Kannada Language and Literature have made me much more knowledgeable about the literary scene of Karnataka. Though I am not qualified to be speaking about the great literary works of Kannada writers and poets, I feel that we should all try to make a sincere effort to atleast learn more about all this in a little more detail. Today has been a day which has enthused me into exploring music and Kannada. These two TO-DOs will now find priority in the long list of TO-DOs that I maintain. Hopefully I will make some progress on this.
We had prepared for this day from almost a month. I participated in 2 songs - one, an invocation of Lord Ganesha, a very nice song originally sung by Shakar Mahadevan (for an album and later for the film "Virudh"). I also participated in a group song - the NaadaGeethe of Karnataka - "Jaya Bharata Jananiya Thanujaate". This was the first time after school when I participated directly in a function/occasion like this and I was very satisfied with how I could sing with the group. After hearing the performance of the Cisco band "Omnifuse", my interest in music seems to be deepening. I will shortly be looking around to learn an instrument, probably Guitar or Keyboard.
Coming to Kannada Rajyotsava/Suvarnotsava celebrations, I would like to put together some thoughts of mine. I have never studied Kannada in my life (in school) as I have studied in places outside Karnataka and where we weren't offered Kannada as a subject. My mother and father have taught me Kannada. I am now very comfortable reading. Writing was an issue until the great "Baraha" came along. It's one of the best softwares I have ever come across. I have really written long mails in Kannada using Baraha and it's been very easy to do that.
TNS brought the subject of introducing English as a language from first standard onwards in Government schools of Karnataka. I second his opinion that introducing a language like English can in no way harm the prospects of a great language like Kannada. Instead of raising issues like this, the Kannadigas should infact start using Kannada more as part of their daily lives. That's how the future generation can know about the greatness of the language. As a matter of fact, English is a global language. To be able to interact with people worldwide, people everywhere will need English skills. That in no way should come in the way of conserving the heritage and enhancing the usage of Kannada. Just as we have adopted Hindi to be our national language, we should ensure that people learn Kannada and English.
The real take-away for me from this function is the fact that I met so many people with many diverse interests and still one in celebrating the cause of Kannada and we are talking about a single company in Bangalore, quite small in size compared to the big-wigs of Indian software industry. Just imagine, what would be the talent base if we were to consider the entire software industry in Karnataka. We, as the representatives of the software industry, should strive to inculcate more Kannada into our lives. Our responsibility doesn't end at organizing functions once a year. It should be to make sure that we don't loose out our traditional values and the glorious heritage of Kannada.
Little amount of time, I spent on proof-reading Srivatsa's posters on Kannada Language and Literature have made me much more knowledgeable about the literary scene of Karnataka. Though I am not qualified to be speaking about the great literary works of Kannada writers and poets, I feel that we should all try to make a sincere effort to atleast learn more about all this in a little more detail. Today has been a day which has enthused me into exploring music and Kannada. These two TO-DOs will now find priority in the long list of TO-DOs that I maintain. Hopefully I will make some progress on this.
posted by Kiran at 11:49 PM
1 Comments:
I think the entire idealogy in your blog is pretty good. In fact, you are right when you say Kannada is as important as English. In every sense, it seems to be very logical.
There are some other things that are very important in this respect. We as Kannadigas should start using Kannada in our blogs. I don't maintain one. I wish you too. It is very easy now to write articles in Kannada. There is a nice website called http://quillpad.in/kannada/
which uses something like Baraha and does not need any software installation.
All the best!
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