Who am I?
The identity crisis that I'm pondering over these days.
With these recent road rages related to the different language... And people's behavior towards non-State people is just so perplexing.
In our own country we fight among ourselves, First, in the name is religion - Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Chritian; Second, in the name is state/language - ODiya, KannaDika, Telugu, TamiL, Maharashtrian etc.
Then inside state we would fight in the name of castes - Brahmin, KaraN, GouDa, SC, ST etc.
Inside each caste we would fight in the name of sub-castes - SoLakhanDiya GouDa, Gopa GouDa, Nanda GouDa etc.
In the root level we would fight in the name of gender.
Why do people adapt Hindi or English language to communicate?
In my childhood days, there were barely any English medium school. And it was a luxury to study in English medium school.
People wanted to dream high and reach out to the outer world which was propering faster because of the common laguages being spoken between countries. So, most would get their kids admission in English medium school.
My siblings studied in English medium. I studied in Odia medium, state government school.
I wrote, spoke and learnt everything in Odia till my 10th. I used to be terrified of English language and would feel feverish during the exams due the the fear of it. 11th was as if a lightning stroke on me. Everything was in English. It took me 11th grade completely to get adjusted with English and I was way behind my fellow students who were from English medium. 12th grade was finally a bit easy for by then my written English had improved.
Then Engineering was way better. However, my spoken English was still broken. And when the time for interviews came I was panicking. I have to speak the answers not write. It was a challenge. And I love challenges. So, yes, I had to work hard to be able to speak without fear. Practice, practice and practice... That's what I did. Finally clicked through the interviews and got my campus selection.
Fortunately and luckily we had a 3 months of Software Engieer Trainings, where we learnt various programming skills as well as communication skills. The trainers gave us tasks like News paper reading like an anchor, presentation skills, dining skills, listening to English radio channels, watching English movies without subtitles and rewind and repeat unless we understand the Americam accent.
I worked hard to be able to speak with customers, clients, colleagues from different countries. And yet, now I and the new generation kids are urged to learn all different state languages.
It's not like our days when we were surrounded by people from our own language. I never bothered to learn English, thinking I would be staying here in my state, why do I need to learn English. For me, life was Odisha, world was Odisha. Everything else didn't matter. However, as I grew and moved across few countries and many states in India, I realised that the common language that many respond to easily is Hindi and English. We were girls from Odisha, Karnataka, Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat, Banaras, Hyderabad staying together in a house, sharing our food, our songs, our movies, our cosmetics and were happy conversing in English and Hindi. Our goal was to be successful in our profession and raise the name of our family, our caste, our gender. We didn't think about state. We thought of our family name first, then the castes we belonged to. Being women we wanted to prove that we too are beauty with brains. And next thing that came to mind was keeping the pride of our nation when we were out of our country.
I haven't met so far any IT professional who cribs about prople not knowing their language. People who deal with foreigners, have been to other countries too, have seen the different cultures - try to inculcate their culture in their kids, they show by example, they do themselves first and not just command others to do. They are the ones who have seen the world and know the value of knowing the other languages well too.
The ones who have not even been outside their own state keep their minds closed, conservative and orthdox.
Once, everyone (from other states) learns the other state language, these same people would find some other reason to complain, fight and harrass others like gender may be or not being born in their state.
May be one day the animals would also start speaking and start harrassing us humans for not being animals.
As humans what we should do is save the kids from having these Identity Crisis, for they learn English language so that they can communicate with all the different state people that they live with. How many languages will they learn? Already the education pressure is huge, much more than what we studied in our times. And becoming experts in multiple languages is just overloading them and is taking away their fun childhood.
Keeping them interested to learn all the different languages is definitely a challenge, but telling them, "You are living in our state, using our resources, breathing our air, eating our food but not showing interest to learn our language" is not going to create any interest or love in them to learn the language. They would just revolt and want to finish study fast and do higher studies and get out of the country, to a place they can live freely, away from these politics.
With what's happening in our country, we better not complain in other countries that they are showing racism towards Indians. You are showing racism in your own country, then you have no right to complain about it when others do it to you, to your relatives or to your kids. Open up your minds and find different approach to create love in the kids heart to learn all different languages. All these languages have a beauty, a poetic form, a musical way in their vocabularies. Use that to create interest, may be create RAP songs in your own language and make it popular, so kids want to learn to understand. Take example from BrodhaV - I love his all different songs inculcating the different South Indian languages, it's memorable because of his beautiful lyrics and music.
Love is what can bring things closer to one's heart.
Hatred would just repell all your efforts.
Well, to address "Who am I?", I want peace of mind, so, "I am a human" is my answer. And I love (and learn) all different languages of the entire world and their unique cultures.
With Love
~ Smile
