Keepers of culture

I have always been rather ashamed of the fact that I cannot read and write in my own mother tongue. Nor can my parents. In fact no one in my generation or in my parents' does.I am still quite an exemplary kid in my community as I can speak my language and speak it very well and regularly at home.
I often wonder how much gets lost when we inherit the culture from the last generation. And I'm afraid we are losing at a progressively increasing rate and often without realizing how much we are missing.

So often I listen to/read Khusro or Meer or Meerabai or Dinkar and come across absolute gems of poetry. And whenever my strong sense of preservation takes over , already I find it difficult to fish out more of the sort. Will my children even know who Amir Khusro was or why Dinkar and Mahadevi Verma were termed stalwarts of 'Chhayavaad'...'coz I don't even when my parents do. Will they never taste the rustic charm of Faneeshwarnath Renu's writing? Will they never be charmed by a 'Jungle Book' or a 'Malgudi Days'? I haven't learnt a single traditional folk song from my mom or aunts or grandmoms that I have grown up hearing in every marriage or other umpteen occasions we celebrate from life to death. And I acutely notice how when we talk of music at marriages , all we think of is Jazzy B's bhangra tracks.

And often when I am literally bothered by such thoughts, almost personifying hope, I hear a Gulzarji or a Kailash Kher reusing an old piece of soulful poetry and making sure the MTV generation stops and listens...An Abida Parveenji bringing alive Bulleshah... An Indian Ocean leading me to google Gorakh Pandey to discover the song that elite crowds tap their foot to in college fests round the country is written by a revolutionary poet from UP... A Debojyoti Mishra effortlessly using Meena Mishra alongside Shubha Mudgal to sing folk 'Sohar' in a mainstream Bollywood movie... An Agnee doing a lovely rendition of Kabeer...

There's still time... I can still learn all those songs from my grandmother... I'll learn how to read from my grandpa while he's around...and my kids will listen to Mehdi Hassanji playing at home before they go out in the world to discover Pink Floyd.