Be the change you want to see !

It’s been 3 months away from home, it’s not a big deal for a lot of  people but for me who stayed at a place for 25 years, it just makes you feel how things have completely changed for you or you have changed ! During this process  I have learnt an important lesson, be the change you want to see!

Today, a Kannada newspaper ‘Vijaya Vani’ carried a half page article on namma KannadaGottilla.com‘s initiative to teach Kannada to a lot of people who wanted to learn. I think this is one great example of a change. I always followed a lot of Kannada news, lot of writers and their speeches, their only question was “how to make Kannada relevant to this generation which majorly works in a non – Kannada environment ?”.  I was angry to find out that 90% of the people in my workplace in Marathahalli never spoke Kannada, I hate the word migrant because the law of the country doesn’t have a clear explanation or rather doesn’t exist. But how do we convince people to learn the language when there isn’t a necessity created for them. It is not the same here in Barcelona, I do not know the number of times I have come home disappointed because of not knowing the language, I could not communicate properly. My landlady’s daughter who is hardly 12 years old says she doesn’t want to learn English because she firmly says she would stay in the same city! This thought came to my mind when how much we put in an effort to teach a language in India and here it’s so easy without it! I remember when I was teaching my friends Kannada in office, it sounded funny to few of them even Kannadigas came and told me, that it was kind of racist attitude to bring it to the office environment. But yes I could sit and rant on FB, Twitter and say this is shit let me get out of here or rather join a group of cultured people to teach Kannada. That’s exactly the way our mind has to be trained (too much of studying machine learning may be 😛 ) A change where it is required should be done and incorporated. We see a lot of people very comfortable with the problems they are in. Problems definitely give us sympathy but for a long time sitting on it blasts everyone off! I have seen the sheer ignorance of most of the people in Karnataka towards the language because it is not helping them earn their livelihood. It is important to change that. A group of cultured people who sit at a place decide what is to be done for the next monthly event at MG Road metro station, designing posters, material, lessons and also handling around 4000 people is never a joke. It was not needed by an individual like Anup to start this one, he could also sit on the big problem ‘Kannada is dying’ or someone like Vasanth Shetty, whose movement speaks on using Kannada everywhere including at big to small enterprises now he has his own bookshop “Munnota” which provides a space for discussions and also has good collection of Kannada books. He is a respected corporate employee, but he never sat with a problem. My father Haldodderi Sudhindra writes Science in Kannada which is useful for a lot of children in Kannada medium schools in rural belt of Karnataka. He goes, speaks to kids from an unheard village and gives them the confidence to go ahead with studying science. He is a busy scientist and a professor plus has a high attention seeking daughter (ME :P) It was so easy for him to rant and say all the rural children should only study arts and are incapable of doing research or say the government is stupid! The solution making process is much more awesome isn’t it ?

Why I had to write this was, a sudden rush of enlightenment has happened to me after coming to an unknown place and prioritising things in life. It’s very important to learn to change for good and learn good things, sitting with a problem is not going to sort out anything the process of making a change is tough but it is a very enlightening process. I am sure Anup, Vasanth or Sudhindra would have lamest questions to answer when it comes to doing the things what they are doing now but they never did stop their work. The mentors here were also questioned in many ways as to how much money would fall into our bank accounts when we do this to or what award does this Kannada teaching lead us to, well I am pretty sure that 14 of us expect little returns in the form of love, acceptance and Kannada learning other than that these stuff doesn’t matter much to us.

Life is a very interesting game with lots of unexplored opportunities. If you still want to sit and rant a problem on FB, c’mon do it! but have you ever taught of being a part of solution ? or finding a solution ? This article in the newspaper was enough understandable to a lot of people who had questions to me on KannadaGottilla, it makes us angry when good intentions are questioned but when patiently correctly written articles come out like this, yes it makes it awesome 🙂 The biggest learning from KannadaGottilla is finding a solution to problems, prioritizing work. I thank this initiative for that learning. I have now been able to confront unnecessary people and comments, answer well and also delete unnecessary people from life. This is so peaceful. A problem-solving process would always and ever make our lives better .

So what is your take on this ? Have you ever solved a problem or you have ranted just like everyone else 😀 ?