Revelling in the spirit of culture

International Mother Language Day

Uma Challa speaks about the experience on organising a massive scale event towards the celebration of Telugu and more importantly, its successful impact on youth, the offerings of ‘Naa Telugu Pustakalu’ and more

Cultural connect was at its all time high at the celebration of Telugu language as part of the International Mother Language Day on Sunday. Organised at Raahgiri by Naa Telugu Pustakalu and Nivasini publications, the event had a phenomenal turnout with people coming in and making it their own.

Speaking to the Citytab, an excited Uma Challa, one of the organisers at the event says, “I cannot believe this is all happening for Telugu! All I did was to write the message, “What is your mother language?” on the road and things had their own momentum from there, thanks to the people.

“They truly made it their own,” she smiles. Visitors wrote celebratory messages in their mother tongue on the street and doodled their heart out. Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Hindi, French, Nepali, Dzongkha and Arabic were some of the languages displayed at the event.

“We played a game called “Acchangaa Telugu”, where I gave a list of 10 very simple topics like "Amma", "Aavu", "Nenoo, Naa Kutumbam" and asked them to speak 10 sentences without the use of English words,” she explains.

While kids preferred making posters, the adults took to street art in representing their love for their mother tongue. Uma says, “This is indeed one of the best mother language functions in a long time – the people made it their own and revelled in the pride of their language.”

Speaking on participation of youngsters, she said, “I often thought young people might not be open to this idea but, they all got it and took it positively. And, this was the biggest win for us.”

“Usually big wigs of Telugu cannot connect with the pulse of the people and we needed an event such as this to reach the hearts of people and connect to their spirit,” concludes Uma Challa.

“This year, I am doing a series of workshops with the title "Bhaagavata Kausumamu", which is also a musical theatre workshop where we enact scenes and learn poems from Potana Bhagavatam,” says Uma.

In the future, Naa Telugu Pustakaalu will involve in many more interactive workshops and celebrations to spread the gift of Telugu language to children and parents.