some of my letters from 2002.

I came across these couple of email exchanges I had back in April 2002, thats 12 years ago, I had moved to US in August 9, 2001. So it has some evidence of what sort of opinions I have (had) about the world, India, and USA, in general most of them were formulated within few months of my arrival in US. Not much for me for culture shock. But my approach how to see or share them and more details of what I have gained as insight keep on changing.

Koshala and Kalinga Debate from 2002 April. 

Kalinga Debate.

Some “debate” on Kalinga as a State. April 29 – May 1, 2002

Reproduced ditto, except, space-bar and underline.

Hello P**aa,

I’ve been staying in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA since the last 8/9 months and I am pursuing my PhD. in Physics after doing my M.Sc. in Utkal University. Very soon (in 15 days) I am going to go to Japan for one year (for the time being) to do some experimental work in an international particle physics lab there.

I have the same patriotic feeling as you do about our country in general and our state in particular.

I have so much thing I wish I’d tell you about how my thoughts have changed after I came here that I can not tell you right now because of the time constraint. But I’ll write you back very soon about what I feel what the problem is with India , my changed perceptions about why a country with such large potential is lagging behind.

Probably for the time-being you’d bear with me for begging some more time.

My personal opinion is the name of our state should change to “kalinga“. But you know what we have ground problems. People will immediately ask what is the rationale behind such moves to rechristen the state when we are having such big problems as starvation, unemployment and lack of basic needs.

So I think we should address this problem from a position of strength otherwise it will die out in the laughter of people who don’t understand the value of patriotism and follow ( try to imitate ) others in seeking easy publicity and cheap glamour. I hate those wayward guys who love to have the nonexistent affection of somebody else’s at the cost of hurting his/her own mother belittling the affection of his/her own mother. They wonder in a land of imagination which does not exist and thats the basic problem with part of the youth of India today who look toward the west as if its devoid of all the inconsistencies that exists in India. katha katha ke semane India ra dwahi dianti ” India ra eita kharap india ra seita kharapa “. These are basically escapists and as you call easy publicity seeker and look for external glamour but forget the high degree of dedication thats called for.

But the solution (a feasible one) is quite hard to formulate. We need to discuss all these in the platform of utkalsantans so that first of all the group members are made aware of the problem so that an attitude to tackle these problems would come up in due time.

We have so many concrete problems to deal with (like upliftment of the status of women in the state, basic education for all , eradication of corruption by acting from a position of strength and by spreading awareness and by augmenting the army that would fight for such a cause ) but its not possible to deal with them without having the right kind of mindset soaked with a feeling of patriotism.

Hope we’ll discuss these issues in detail later ( once I finish this semester in a few days ).

regards
Manmohan Dash

in response to the following email from PD.

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The following was in all-caps, a pet-peeve of mine, so I took 10 mins to convert into sentence format, is that function available in gmail? Sentence Format? Also I corrected few typos that are universal in this part of the world, a reason why mostly people argue about English “not desirable”. Massage is one of the most occurring word for message. [I sent her a massage, well but how did you do that?]

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Dear Manmohan ,
Regards and thanks for your quick response.

May I ask you your exact location?

About myself, soon shifting to Bangalore,  and I am a cosmetologist basically.  M.Sc. in Organic Chemistry etc.  Kalinga is such a name which creates instant patriotism in a lay-man.

I hope when the patriotism run into our vein, we will react to any adverse gross negligence.

The worst part in outside Oriya (Odisha) is, they don’t want to help the fellow Oriya and also they do feel ashamed to speak Oriya.

Everywhere the same non-sense attitude, to send the child to the English Medium school, so that they will immerse (meant emerge) as top class executive in future.

I am not at all against the language, but what about our ancient kshtriyas, sadhavas, brahmans, and what language is Veda. We are devoid of basic knowledge the patriotism, I feel it should be compulsory, to learn yudha vidya, for both the gender. Please do send the massage (meant message) and lets try together to convert the name to Kalinga, which itself spells heroism.

Regards and do revert back,

P**D

Koshala Debate.

Some “debate” on Koshala as a State. April 26-28, 2002

Dear P**aa,

sorry for the belated response. In the first place your concern is a very valid and important one. I was just unable to see that it was addressed to the Editor OF DHARITRI and thus I wondered. I have gone through all the debates that are going on about creating (or not creating) a separate state named KOSHALA and thought of responding to some of them. But having very hard time over here with problems from many different fronts I could not. In a few days though I think I’d be able to respond in a well thought manner (does not make sense otherwise) once I am out of my present situation.

The group has mainly evolved through a determination to uplift the present state of Orissa as a backward (have reservations for this word for future discussions) to one of the fore-running states in the country. So the context in which you’ve raised the question is seriously not out of the basic agenda of our group as far as I understand. I myself would prefer the name KALINGA as it would at-least remind the rest part of the country that there exists a part of the country a center-stage of India’s glorious past which is a victim of gross negligence as far as the process of nation building and national mainstream activities are concerned.

I feel that I have not given a full fledged reply to the points you’ve raised and I hope to be able to do so in a few days once I am released from the kind of hard time I am going through.

Hope to hear .

with best regards
Manmohan

in response to the following email from PD.

(why still she talked so much Kalinga in a Koshala debate, read above? 15 mins to pet-peeve-off Caps lock, I realized, I could plug all this into a word and use the sentence format there)

Dear Manmohan, thanks for your response.

The thing is that, we are getting drifted from original agenda. Do go through the Dharitri Online Edition. Your doubt will get clearer. For the sake of easy publicity, some anti-social proud elements shouting a separate state, Koshala. Really we need it? Even if I am also from coastal area, coastal are is not that developed.

You know what will happen after this. The people will start thinking, the just previous Odia as a Koshali, and there will be tremendous cultural, social as well as ritual barriers. Really we need it or we need an integrated Orissa (Odisha) like Kalinga to dream far far and far on the horizon, and to establish its own off spring the Killings (? kings?)  in far east, far north-east and all.

That will never be propagated from all these nonsense debates, we have to work for that being integrated, unified and being honest enough. And this is the sheer fault of the editor, who prompts all these debates for what reason he knows.

I feel really nobody is exactly bothered for the root cause, for the exact natural and Baidic (vedic) education, elimination of the child labor, starvation death, dowry harassment and woman education as well as liberalization. Rather than we are engaged in thinking about partition, east, west, south and north Orissa? So, we the secular and non-ethical (she meant nonpartisan?) UtkalSantans, should work for an unified Kalinga and I am proud being a Kalingi as I love the name as much I love myself. This name particularly spells out the bravery, heroism, dedication and salvation. Lets debate in changing the name, as we are Kalingis not Oriyaaaaaaaa.