Guest article by Arunkumar Deshmukh
(The Living Encyclopaedia, Arunji, needs no introduction to the readers of SoY or other music related blogs. His first guest article in the series on Multiple Version Songs was on Hindi-Marathi, naturally. When I was struggling to look for someone to write on Hindi-Kannada, Arunji surprised me by doing the favour. Telugu is one of the many languages he is proficient in. So it was only a matter of time that he would write on it. With this, all the four South Indian languages are covered – Venkataramanji and Anuradha Warrier having already done guest articles on Tamil and Malayalam respectively. The series conceptualised by Mr Ashok M Vaishnav has grown way beyond what he may have thought initially. Arunji is known for the depth of his research and capacity for great detail. I thank him, as also Priya Laxmiji, Ambrish Sundaramji and Sudhirji, who have helped him in his endeavour. – AK)
I had the advantage of being born in a multi-language state like Hyderabad. It was a composite state of 8 Telugu speaking districts (which have now become Telangana state), 5 districts of Marathi speakers and 3 districts of Kannadigas. Hyderabad being the Capital city, people from all sectors had settled here. I had many Telugu and Kannada friends. I picked up these two languages easily as a child. Urdu was the medium of instruction till the 5th standard and Marathi was my mother tongue, while Hindi was the language of communication. No wonder I became a multi-language person, with English (and now Gujarati) to boot!