Talk to Me, Not at Me: What Language Can Teach Us
A recent incident stayed with me — a bank employee in Karnataka lost her cool when a customer insisted, she speak the local language. Her resistance led to outrage for few groups, and eventually, she had to apologize and promised to learn Kannada. Watching this unfold made me uncomfortable. Not because she refused to speak the language, but because of how aggressively people demanded it. It’s not the first such incident. Social media has many similar stories, where people are compelled (sometimes bullied) to speak the local tongue. I come from a family that deeply respects our mother tongue — every pronunciation is taken seriously. My mother, though Telugu by heritage, studied in Kannada medium in Karnataka, as my grandfather was a tahsildar there. She married my father, who was born and raised in Anantapur and spoke Telugu fluently. He did his master’s at BHU, where college life probably gave him his Hindi. His first bank posting was in the Northeast. When they got married, my mothe...