Kannada is dying because of increasing usage of English language is an oft-repeated refrain. Many activists and Kannada lovers are trying to revive the charm of Kannada in various ways. Gaanchali bidi Kannada maathadi, a Facebook community has taken efforts to revive the language in different ways.

Kannada books. Pic: Anisha Nair

A new bookstore cum cafe and activity centre in Koramangala – Atta Galatta aims at encouraging regional language books. Founders Subodh Sankar and wife Lalitha Lakshmi wanted to promote books written in regional languages. Sankar says they expected only middle-aged or older readers to buy regional books, “But once we started operating, we found out that a lot of youngsters were interested in reading Kannada and other regional language books.”

Lalitha adds, “There are a lot of people who want to read Kannada fiction and novels. We are just providing a platform and trying to make the regional languages a trend.”

K Gopalakrishna of Prism bookstore in Jayanagar says, “People like to read a lot of fiction, comics and crime stories in Kannada.” He adds the most popular Kannada books sold, are of authors S L Bhyrappa for fiction books and Ravi Belegere for crime.

These books are mainly fiction read by those aged 16 to 40. Gopalakrishna adds a large part of Kannada books sold are reprints of old books.

Lakshmi and Subodh in their regional language bookstore Atta Galatta. Pic: Anisha Nair

Aarathi Sudhakar, a management student from Jayanagar says, “My mother reads a lot of Kannada fiction. Once, I picked it up and tried reading. I found it so interesting that I completed the whole book in 4 to 5 days.” She has since got hooked to Kannada books and reads regularly.

Kannada books are available at the following shops:

Atta Galatta: #75, 2nd Main, 1st Block, Koramangala. Ph: 30181626

Just Books: Puttenahalli Main Road, VI Phase, JP Nagar. Ph: 60015285

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