புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துகள்...

Holidays in general help us relish a delayed wake up in the morning, a relaxed cup of coffee and many more that we otherwise can't do, if we were to race against time to get to our office. But unlike normal holidays, if it were some festival day, you normally tend to sacrifice some of your laziness for some enjoyable, memorable moments of these days. Be it catching up with old buddies, favourite movies or ur favourite hobby, the day is sure gonna be special to you, something quite off from your normal, monotonous daily life. No wonder on such days, with today’s technological impact, it's quite common to see ourselves glued on to our mobiles, what with these beautiful masterpieces keep crying too often, as if we have never given attention to them so far.

So this time around, on Tamil New year’s eve, my inbox started flooding as expected with some cute, illustrative Tamil New year SMSes. No wonder, a smile or two peeps out of your face when u read such nice SMSes. Superficially, it would seem that all is well; but then, the harsh reality is that, even on this Tami(zh) New Year Day, we seldom wish our friends using proper tamil(zh) words. Leave alone the messages, even when we speak, we tend to wish in English rather than in Tamizh, even on the eve of Tamizh New Year. So, are we doing justice to our mother tongue? (On a lighter note,) If not for anything, at least we are obliged to our language for giving us a day's break (may be not this year). So, why do our tongues get tied when it comes to speaking good Tamizh and not when u utter in English.

Upon some profound(I guess so) thinking, the answer looks quite simple. Basically, we have been brought up in a manner craving for those money-spinning, white collar jobs, which in most cases compel us to use English wherever we go. This has gradually led to a stage where we not only speak English, but (given a chance) eat English, laugh English and even walk English. It's not that we don't speak our mother tongue. But, we do so only in close quarters and that too in an unacceptably distorted manner. One of the reasons that can be attributed to this would be the lack of opportunity or credit to use our mother tongue elsewhere other than our home. Not sure if that’s gonna happen in the near future (or for that matter in the distant future). So for now, let me put a humble request before u- lets make it a point from now on to speak proper Tamizh, at least during special occasions like these.

P.S: After all those quite disappointing wishes from my friends, finally my grandma called me up and wished,

No words to explain my happiness after hearing those words. In reply, guess what i had said, 'Same to you...'!

(Did I put-forth a request to you????????)