The Extrovert City!!

                                      

It is 2:58 am and I am starting to write something. Bangalore, commonly known as "The Garden City of India " or as we call it "Silicon City" . Like anyone who comes to Bangalore from a tier 2 city, I was pretty much excited to explore it.  It was overwhelming what this city has to offer to each of its residents. I feel everyone here is running behind something or the other. Be it money, dream job, love, parties or any other goals you have. Bangalore has it all. The Lush Green parks, the malls, the posh restaurants, the road transport services, the really affordable restaurants (Vidyarthi Bhavan – do go there once), the nearby site seeing places, the humongous tech parks, one of the best research universities in the country, the IT companies. The best thing I like about Bangalore is that anyone from any part of India can come to Bangalore and they would feel at home. Bangalore doesn't differentiate you based on your caste, creed and colour. It accepts you the way you are. To me, this city is one of those which I feel is representative of India. Nevertheless, it doesn't allow you stay stagnant. It drives you towards everything you wanted to achieve and makes it seem possible. It makes you toil for what you want and does give you the rewards.

It does have a hell lot of traffic but you also find really interesting people with whom you can have the most candid conversations. Bangalore offers the best of everything that India has is what I've felt so far and I hope it gets only better from here on. This is what we all have heard of. But yeah there are people here who work the same number of hours on weekdays as we do and volunteer for NGO's on the weekends. The days we just like to sleep and feel lazy at our homes there are people who use that to make this society better. There are people who pursue their hobbies on weekends. While we are complaining about traffic there is "traffic warden organisation" which voluntarily helps police to manage traffic. This city continues to surprise me with everything it has got.

This post is particularly dedicated to one issue I found to be really immature. After coming here I was accused of being a non-Kannadiga because I like to talk to people in different languages. Let me cut to the chase here. The so-called true Kannadigas feel that the enormous diversity of this city is affecting our culture or rather spoiling it in terms of the number of people talking in Kannada being reduced compared to before, which they think is only going to get worse. We hold the people who come from other states responsible for this. But how is that possible? Who is to be blamed? It's us. If you are not speaking Kannada or if there is a reason because of which you have stopped speaking Kannada or even reduced speaking Kannada then it's your fault. Personally, I don't mind using less of Kannada if I have to talk to a lot of people, who do not speak Kannada for whatever reason. I am sure that doesn't make me any less of a Kannadiga. Let's also remember something, everyone who resides in India has been given the right by our constitution to speak any language , practice any religion irrespective of where they stay in India. So when we almost force someone to learn Kannada aren't we going against our constitution? Protecting the Kannada language is our responsibility and not theirs. Just because people in xyz force the people from other states to speak their language doesn't mean we should do the same too. Bangalore has always been impartial to everyone and I hope we don't spoil this balance. When it comes to our language it's our responsibility to preserve it. Let's get some perspective here. What is language? A way of communicating with someone. That is all you need to understand. If you want to communicate with someone then simple logic tells you that you talk to them in a language that you both comfortably know or else the message will not be clear and lead to misunderstanding. Get it right through your head that, just as speaking English doesn't make you British, speaking less of Kannada doesn't make you a non-Kannadiga. Speaking a language and respecting it are two entirely different things. What we should do is try to awaken the respect for Kannada and not just mere usage of the language. If people respect it then I am sure Kannada will never be an  endangered language. On the contrary, if you get people to speak the language then it certainly does not guarantee respect for it. It is not something you display it is something you hold dear to your heart! One more thing, please don't generalise a certain event that happened to you because of some idiot to the community or region or any other parameter that he or she has. I have never come across anyone who disrespected me or my culture in any way and even if I do I am sure I will associate that to the personality and not the place or religion or any other irrelevant factor. There are a lot of pages and people on facebook right now who post stuff that are outrageous. I hope that we don't fall prey to them. Let's promote peace and not develop outrage among people. I hope in these hard times where there is a lot of polarisation we find that one string that holds us all together.

To end it, I wish every city is as hospitable as Bangalore where everyone can live the way they want to without really encroaching into someone else's circle of privacy!