Aandavaa

Naraynan Venkittu Sir called me on thursday evening and we met for dinner at where-else, Saravana Bhavan.

In the course of the conversation, got reminded that long long ago, i too learnt music for a decade. So thought lemme try my hand[voice].

Please find my maiden audioblog. I donot have a microphone, so sang it on to my mobile phone.[uff. i got a reason to blame for the poor voice.. yuppiee]

find the lyrics here.

Jo and Narayanan sir please forgive :P

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India != Hindi

Though, this post was in my mind for quite some time, after reading Thennavan’s post, I squeezed some time for this.

Gandhiji defined freedom as ‘When a young lady with lot of jewels is safe on the streets late in the night, that is when we have attained complete freedom’.

For me, it is ‘When a Native Hindi speaking person, accepts a non-Hindi native speaker as no-less an Indian than him/her, given the fact that, the non-Hindi person does not know Hindi, and does not want to learn Hindi, that is when we have attained freedom.”

Corollary is, “I do not know Hindi, and I do not want to learn Hindi. In such a case, if a guy from North India, does not come to me and give lectures about lack of my respect to the Indian Union, or lack of patriotism, that is when I have attained freedom.”

India is a country with Unity and Diversity and not Uniformity. Imposition of Hindi, is the root cause for the fading away of the rest of Indian cultures.

One language in the country is given a higher preference than the rest of the languages, and the speakers of that language have an undue advantage than the rest.

All countries with the above situation have broken into Civil wars, Sri Lanka, Unified Pakistan.

In India, this does not happen because, there is no One-on-One, that is Hindi is not pitted against any single language. It is pitted against a group of languages and cultures. This leads to group effect.

A Bengali feels that, we are not the only one at the disadvantage; we have Tamil, Kannadigas, and Telugu speakers. And vice-versa. Thus the impossition of Hindi has gone unchallenged, which would not have been the case if there are only two languages in the Countyy, Hind and XYZ.

The Department of Official Languages site says that, if I need to communicate with the federal government of My country, then I can not do it in My mother tongue, but will have to learn the language of some other part of the country or some other part of the world.

To be precise, for me, on the language front, the only difference between before and after Aug 15. 1947, is that I have been given an option of being a slave of. Now, I can choose my master, either English or Hindi.

I am proud of belonging to India, the sense of Indian is tied deeply in me. I consider myself with no less or no more Indianness than any body from any other part of the Union.
At the same time, I do not approve of Hindi being imposed on me. India IS NOT EQUAL to Hindi. Learning and accepting Hindi is not a pre-requisite for being a true Indian.

Hindi is as alien to me as Arabic or Spanish, and if at all I learn Hindi it should be 100% only out of choice.
Putting it the other way, Hindi is as alien to me as my mother tongue is to a native Hindi speaker.

More to come on this.. over the weekend....

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Safety concers back home

""Bangalore may be growing in IT, but the amout of insecurity is growing faster in all the metros. The criminal political nexus can shake your life top to bottom anytime.[might be for the ancesteral house you own in prime location or whatever..]
This is a huuuugggeee factor in moving out of the 'developed' world to India.""

The above is a part of the comment, i recently left on Thennavan's post.

And this is what i read today in the papers.

It is of high probability that, our kith and kin could have been in place of Prathiba. I put myself in the shoes of her immediate family and it took a long time to get within me. My heartfelt condolences to them.

With the exponentially widening Rural-Urban Rich-Poor gap, unless explicit measures are made to protect every individual, all of us are vulnerable in the increasing aggressive societies of Indian cities.

They have not remained the same as they were 5 or 10 years ago, when most of the NRI left.

That too, after having lived a life with considerable security, in the West, the truth will be very bitter back home with the mafia operating right from the heart of bureacracy, to the realators, down to the cab drivers/domestic helps, every one of us is vulnerable.

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Mylapore Tank

Where is Mylapur Tank!
It is to the west of MountRoad between the Railway tracks and the MountRoad, to be precise, i am referring to the places called T.Nagar, Kodambakkam, Nandanam and call them Mylapur Tank!

Am I Nuts?? No...

This is what i am talking about. Chennai as in early 1900s.

.
Courtesy: Ian Poyntz and Rootsweb.

You would definitely have found out the reason why chennai has been flooded so much in these rains.

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Bay Area Bloggers meet

The week was hectic as it was during the last month, and i had not checked my yahoo mails for 3 days(! full 72 hours).
And on the saturday morning[rather afternoon], pleasantly surprised to find the plans for a BayArea bloggers meet and counted me in.

Had to set an alarm this morning to wake up early [11 am], and jogged the coupla miles to SaravanaBhavan.[seems, this is turning out to be a Bay Area ChennaiDosa, in patronising Bloggers Meets :) ].

It was 2 hours of fun as we discussed everything from tech stuff, to happenings in blog world, to each of our lengths of names ;)

On the whole it was an excellent opportunity to identify with the blogging community.

Please find Sundar's version and photos here.

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