Reading in your mother-tongue.

They say you realize the value of something only when you it's gone. I realized that it holds good for your mother tongue too!

I am a voracious reader, but my reading was limited only to English. I have read hundreds of books of all varieties - classics to thrillers, from all over the world. Short stories, novels, novellas, essays - they have all gripped me and taken me to different worlds, given me ideas, put thoughts in my head, and made my brain a highly imaginative one.

Even in my childhood, my parents knew only one way to keep me truly engaged. Put a good book in my hand. They were very happy that they were successful in inculcating in me the reading habit. But they had one complaint. That I did not read anything in Kannada. I could read Kannada very well, I spoke it every day at home, and it was after all, my mother tongue. Then why didn't I read anything in Kannada? Once my mother caught me complaining, "Oh there are millions of books all around the world waiting to be read! I wish I knew all languages so that I could read all of them!" She quietly told me, "You know Kannada and haven't read even one Kannada book.. what will you do with knowing other languages? And it is not as if Kannada doesn't have good literature. Do you know that Karnataka has got the highest number of Jnanapith awardees? There is a huge treasure out there waiting to be read in your own language. And you are worrying about other languages".

Even this lecture did not affect me. I happily trotted off to a corner and curled up with yet another English book.

Then I went to study in a different state. In the hostel, there were very few Kannadigas. I got to communicate only in English and Hindi. I never knew how much I had taken Kannada for granted. I desperately wanted to speak in my language to somebody. I regularly called home to speak in Kannada, and caught myself singing Kannada songs, which I did not even know I knew. On a visit home, I cribbed about it. My mom spotted a golden opportunity and slipped a slim book into my bag while I was leaving. I went back to the hostel, and while unpacking, uncovered this little book "Rangannana Kanasina Dinagalu" (The dreamy days of Ranganna) by M.R. Srinivasamurthy. It is a very simple, light and humorous story about an idealistic village school inspector. Something in Kannada! I was drawn to it. Reading the first few pages was painful as I had not read Kannada after I studied for the last Kannada examination in school. But once I got the hang of it, I read full speed. I absolutely devoured the book. A totally new world opened to me. My own world!

One simple sentence in the book did it. "Ranganna entered the restaurant at Chickpet, and had a hot cup of filter coffee and steaming hot idlis with the butter melting on them".
I had read books from all over the world - but nothing had touched me this way.
I had sighed with Alexei Ivanovich, the serf, when he removed his galoshes and entered his house to accept some tea from his wife Marsha, served from the boiling samovar.
I had been privy to the thoughts of Denise Legrand when she sat at her favourite restaurant at the Champs-Elysees and sipped a Chardonnay while waiting for a rendevouz with her beau.

But this was something I totally related to! I actually KNEW Chickpet ( an old locality in Bangalore).. I could smell the filter coffee, and taste the melting butter and idlis! I could feel it with Ranganna! When Ranganna talked about a certain variety of banana, I knew which one he meant. I knew what it looked like and how it tasted. When he wore a piece of clothing, I knew which kind it was. In all the other "foreign" books, I could only imagine and wonder! Of course, these took me to another place and time, and I enjoyed that a lot, being interested in different cultures and customs. But this was a different kind of enjoyment. It was something I could relate to. I felt the same warmth that I felt when reading RK Narayan, but this was warmer - because the turns of phrase, and the idioms and the language, everything was my own! I followed this with a string of other books in Kannada. The more I read, the more I enjoyed it.

Yes, English books still heavily outnumber Kannada ones, but now Kannada also has a respectable place on my bookshelf! All of you out there, if you can read in your mother tongue, but haven't tried reading any literature in it, go do it. It is a different experience altogether!