In a cosmopolitan city like namma ooru, rarely do we find people speaking in the local language. Everybody from cabbies and rickshaw drivers to chaatwalas and juice junctions, everybody communicates in English. So much so that, even resident Kannadigas speak English in their homes, leaving behind their mother tongue — Kannada. Attempting to bring a change in the scene, is a group of youngsters from the city. Lolbagh, the first of its kind, Kannada youth stand up and improv team is here to bring about that much required change.
A play on words with the city’s historic spot Lalbagh, is how the name came to be. “The name fits the bill. Lol for laugh out loud and bagh is garden. So it’s like laughter in a park,” smiles Anup Maiya, the mastermind behind the concept. “Comedians crack jokes in English and Hindi in the city, where Kannada is the local language and we felt it was time to promote our own language and encourage people to communicate in it,” he says about the local comedians like Sudarshan Rangaprasad, Pavan Venugopal, Sneha Suhas, Hampa Kumar and Kartikh Pattar, who have decided to come together to encourage the local language.
The group is targeting urban crowd with their jokes on most of Bengaluru’s residents who happen to be engineers of some sort. “Other than stray dogs and software engineers, every second guy seems to be a comedian today,” laughs Sudarshan Rangaprasad. “And since there are so many of us, why not create a new market in the already niche one to encourage people to speak the local language, since we can’t go around banging our chests and slapping our thighs saying ‘kannadadalli mathadi’ to everyone,” adds the artiste. But since most of the jokes are going to be in Kannada, how are the non-speakers supposed to understand them? “Since we are catering to the urban crowd, there is going to be a mix of Kannada and English, for more people to understand,” he clarifies.
Agreeing with Sudarshan on the matter, Pavan Venugopal opines, “We have grown up speaking in Kannada and now it’s like nobody wants to speak it because they’re too embarrassed to or feel like it’s not cool, which shouldn’t be the case.” But why comedy, we want to know. “It’s not like we are urging people from different states to speak in Kannada. We are just trying to get our own people, the localites to embrace the language and communicate in it again in all sections of society. And since comedy is a tried and tested safe method we decided to experiment with it,” explains the comedian. “So we are coming together for Kannada. It’s time we did something for our language in our mother tongue in our city,” adds the artiste in conclusion.
