Be Like Them

"Catching the latest movie or gadget and hanging out with friends in cool cafes with an occasional study hour thrown in, pretty much summarises the weekend schedule of high school teenagers"

1. This is not so for Basanagouda Patil, Prabhu Suresh and Aditya Dev Gupta — three students pursuing their International Baccalaureate Diploma at The International School, Bangalore (TISB). They prefer to pack their bags and head for the slums during weekends to teach their less privileged counterparts computer science through the initiative IT4ALL.
2. At present, they cater to about 40 students but want to take the figure to 500. This, they say, will only be possible with help from voluntary teachers and sponsors. 
3. When the trio entered the prestigious TISB, computers was a part of their curriculum. But they soon realised that for students from the slums, IT was a far cry. Deciding to bridge this disparity, they stared IT4ALL. “With the help of the NGO World Vision, we started the project a year ago to make IT and computers accessible to students from the slums. 
4. World Vision set up community centres in the slums of Koramangala, Ramamurthynagar and Yeshwanthpur. These centres were then fitted with computers, some of which were donated by my father and some by his company,” said 16-year-old Patil. The centres have about four to five computers each, but the students could definitely do with a few more. 
5. “We have made appeals to various IT companies to chip in. But obviously, there is some hesitation as they feel that this might not be a credible process. So we are trying to create awareness about this project,” added Patil, a Koramangala resident.
     
   

Learning Language From Mestru

"For them, Kannada is a foreign tongue, but they are mastering it with some difficulty and a lot of determination. And Mestru says it is foreign nationals who are more disciplined when it comes to speaking Kannada Mestru is B V Raghavan, Bangalore’s most well-known Kannada teacher — and he should know best, for he has been teaching Kannada without a break on weekends, since 1973"

    Raghavan has so far taught Kannada to hundreds of Americans, Germans, French, Russian and British who stay in Bangalore. For Lyudov Kulikovich, 31, learning Kannada became necessary as her English, with a Russian accent, was not understood by many English-speaking Bangaloreans.
    “Whenever I asked for directions, the usual reply was, ‘Can you speak in English?’ Nothing can be more embarrassing. Then I decided to learn Kannada and attended classes for three months last year. Though I cannot speak well, I understand conversations in Kannada, which is what I required,” says Kulikovich. She is working in an outsourcing company here and thinks English alone cannot save a foreign national in Bangalore. Especially when they take a trip to the outskirts.
    According to her, it is easy to understand the culture of a place by understanding the regional language spoken. “I watched Kannada movie Mungaru Male, and could understand it within the context because I made efforts to learn the language. I recognize the vegetables by their names in Kannada, which makes buying easy,” she added. “Nange Kannada swalpa swalpa baratthe,” says Kovila C, 28, a Mauritius national living in Bangalore for over seven years now. Learning Kannada was a choice she made. “I love learning languages. I have learnt Tamil and Hindi, which helped me learn Kannada. There are striking similarities among these Dravidian languages, which have their origin in Sanskrit. I travel across Karnataka just out of passion for tourism and my learning of Kannada has helped while conversing with non-English speakers,” says Kovila. Kovila is working for the French Consulate here.

Technology Is Speaking

" Engineering students will learn not just nuts and bolts of their chosen subjects but Kannada as well as the culture and heritage of the state, with a lesson or two on how to don the iconic Mysore peta"

1.   This is part of Visvesvaraya Technological University’s ambitious Rs 2-crore plan to popularize Kannada culture and language among engineering students in the state. Under a state government-sponsored scheme, the varsity will conduct functional Kannada classes for non-state students and lectures in culture for those from the state. 
2. “There are thousands of engineering students from other states in the state. Since they spend at least four years here, we want to help them pick up functional Kannada. The Kannada Kali (Learn Kannada) scheme is under way for first semester students. We’ll roll out programmes on culture and heritage for state students who have passed out of English-medium schools and not well versed with the local language,” VTU vice-chancellor M Maheshappa.
3. Interestingly, the sessions, voluntary in nature, will be open to non-state professors.The university plans to set up a Kannada language laboratory in the university and publish a technical glossary in Kannada. To coincide with the 150th birth celebrations of Sir M Visvesvaraya, the university is preparing a compendium of his works in Kannada for free distribution in schools and colleges.