MOTHER LANGUAGE CRISIS

Believe me or not, the best time to plot a blog is right after the completion of a significant examination. Currently I am having that part in my favor. First 2-3 days after an exam is a fertile soil for curiosity & I love it immensely. Being driven by one of my post-exam curiosities, I was checking the number of Odia movies having non-Odia titles & it was surprising to see that number rising tremendously in an exponential manner over the years. I found some funny names like ‘something something’, ‘Love Master’, ‘Mu ashiq mu awara’, ‘I love you’, ‘Metric fail’, ‘Good boy’ etc. The list is as rich as Alastair Cook’s recent form against Indian cricket team. So the question arises why the film producers are not assigning pure Odia titles to their movies? Don’t we love our own language?? I believe there is no simple answer to this question & reason is surely multi-factorial & this bitter situation doesn't remain restricted to Odia film industry, in fact it has victimized almost all of us in different aspects of life.

Following the psychiatric defense mechanism ‘Rationalization’, few of the readers will argue that their love for English is because of the fact that it is a global language & being fluent in English means half of the job is well done. They are true to some extent but I am really allergic to use of languages other than the mother language during the normal conversations. I have seen odia people talking to each other in Hindi (of course the quality of their Hindi was below the quality of Rakhi Sawant’s acting) in plenty of occasions. For the 1^st time when I went to a College in my home city Bhubaneswar for my 11^th & 12^th, I found few of my batchmates conversing in Hindi. Initially I thought they must be non-Odias. But during the 1^st roll-call I found their surnames to be the SAHOOs, DASHs, JENAs, PRADHANs, MOHAPATRAs etc!!  At that point of time, finding the reason was out of the scope of my grey matter. Now I realize it is a very common situation among Indians. 7 months back in JFK airport in New York, I heard 3 people from Andhra Pradesh talking among themselves in English which was ridiculously bad in standard (The TOEFL would have given negative marks to them in speaking section of their exam). The habit of giving facebook updates in Hindi, typing SMS in Hindi are becoming an integral part of our DNA. Without Hindi/English (Unnecessary use) we are feeling like castrated Casanovas! In my opinion, the 1^st language while using a device like laptop or phone should be either the mother language or English & not other ones. [I know some of you are silently shouting WTF (?) towards me]

If we fix your gaze at some of the most developed civilizations, we will realize the fact that those civilizations who have given priority to their mother language have always been ahead of their counterparts. The best example for this scenario is all the European countries. You can’t survive for a longer period in countries like Germany, Spain, Turkey, and Italy if you don’t know their respective languages. Their love for their mother language doesn’t make them ‘Narrow minded’; rather they are the most favorite destination for talents across the globe now-a-days. I am not saying that if we start talking in pure Odia, out state will shine like Munich or Madrid, but it would at least reinforce our status as Odia. Strength of a civilization is always directly proportional to the passion for the mother language.  So it is time to ask our inner core whether we are giving enough respect to our mother language or not. I am sure that we can definitely prevent the progression of Odia language to coma stage because we the educated mass are the biggest culprit for abusing our own mother language. If you think talking among yourselves in English/Hindi drastically enhances your social prestige, you must search the word 'PSEUDO' from a standard dictionary.

[There is no conflict of interest on this blog & this is not intended to hurt anyone's emotion; rather it is an honest expression of my own emotion. I don't want to apologize even if it has hurt anyone because I think I haven't written anything wrong]