I have been living in Bangalore for 6 years now. Though, I am able to manage in Hindi and English; I always wanted to learn Kannada. For most of the ladies in my age group within my community, the language of communication is mostly English and sometimes Hindi. Ours is a vibrant community where a lot of languages are spoken as mother tongues, but the language of conversation amongst us and even among children is English. What that has deprived me of is of picking up Kannada by hearing it all around me. That has not happened. My only communication in Kannada has been with my maid. And, I will credit her with my small vocabulary of Kannada words. Also, since Kannada and Hindi have many Sanskrit words in common, that adds to my vocabulary.
I have been trying very hard to find teachers who could come and teach us Kannada, but that has not materialized till two weeks back. Now, a lady within the layout, offered to teach us Kannada. We are a group of a dozen ladies, with some aunties thrown in — Hindi, Telugu and Tamil speaking, who are trying our hand at learning Kannada.
We have had only 4 classes this far. We are learning the script as well as spoken words. I am really enjoying my classes, and I am eagerly awaiting the day when I would be able to converse fluently in Kannada.
Often, people mistake the inability to learn a language as a lack of desire to do so. Trust me, most of us who stay here genuinely want to learn the language but had no way of doing that. As I explained earlier, we hardly get to hear the language around us. So, I would request all those who sneer at poor souls like us to not discount the genuine desire to learn another language, but attribute it to the lack of opportunity to do so.
Rachna says 
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