Mind my language

“K emiti Ocho?” Satyendu Sekhar Nayak greets fellow techies who hail from Odisha when he walks into the office in Technopark in the mornings. All around him the same greeting of ‘hello, how are you?’ ring out in a variety of languages – English, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Hindi, Bengali, German, Japanese, Punjabi, Bhojpuri…Technopark is a melting pot of languages and cultures, the one place in the city where with many people with different identities and linguistic backgrounds co-exist in harmony. “Also, every year I help out in the office of the family temple in Mayyanad during the annual fete, writing pooja receipts in Malayalam, which helps me refresh my command over written language too.” Making space for languages Technopark’s socio-cultural organisations such as Natana and Parthidhwani do occasionally organise events to get techies in touch with their mother tongues. For example, a few days ago, in connection with International Mother Language Day, Prathidhwani organised an event where techies presented cultural programmes, poetry recitals and the like in their mother tongues. Held in November last year, to commemorate the 58th anniversary of Kerala’s formation, the event celebrated the beauty of Malayalam language with poetry recitals, folk music recitals, a presentation on Kerala’s rich history, discussions on open source software in Malayalam, and even an ‘Uthama Malayali’ contest, where techies were judged on the basis of ‘pleasing Malayali attire, good knowledge about Kerala, Malayalam language and proper diction in Malayalam.’ Natana also organised an ‘Aksharasloka sadas’, where techies had a field day reciting verses from the rich treasure of Malayalam literature.