Web Log _

Date: 15 November 2005

Today happens to be Kartik Purnima, alternatively called as Raas purnima. At Orissa we do a ritual called "Boit Bandhan" on this day. Calls of "Aaa-Kaa-Maa-Bhoi" fills the air in the early morning near the water-sources like River and Lakes. Here at Parlakhemundi, people from far places come near the "Yeti", i.e. the Mahendra Tanaya River. The call is rather been obscured and has undergone a serious "Apavramsh". Now "En-ca-ma-Goi" has taken the place of "Aaa-Kaa-Maa-Bhoi". Its probably due to the Telugu influence in the surrounding areas and attempts by the telugu community to teluguzation of oriya community. Here I need to certainly point out that whether oriya people really prefer to call them oriya? Probably everybody knows the answer and it is a blatant NO. People migrating from Orissa to neighboring states like Andhra have taken telugu-specific names and extensions and have obscured their origins. I have never seen people from other places doing the exact thing when they come over to Orissa. Here I see most people talking in telugu even if both the parties of conversation are perfect oriya people.

Every year, I spend a considerable time at Cuttack and Bhubaneswar. One is the old capital and the other is the reigning capital. Even here the Oriya pronunciation is quite pathetic. It differs grossly from the classical Oriya pronunciation. The situation is such that in every part of the state the spoken language is something very different from the classical language which we studied. Then where is the real Oriya? in Books? I have seen students and even teachers of small schools making grammatical errors in Oriya. Repeatedly changing syllabi of schools have rendered the oriya education ineffective in correcting the lingua of the spoken word. So where are we heading? Probably our future generations will accept some other language as their prime language like the ones of Hindi, Telugu or even English and Oriya will still be there where it currently belongs; in the pages of the books.

- - - - -