The Mandram Journey Ahead...

When we began exploring the possibility of creating Mandram, my wife was five months pregnant. With two successful Mandram events under our belt, my son Abhay is now 16 months old, and I want to look briefly at our journey so far, and what lies ahead.

It was around November 2017 when I was having painful and honest conversations about being Macaulay's grand children and slowly losing my relationship with my roots. The question was gnawing the insides of my heart. Why am I not able to articulate my deepest thoughts in Tamil? Although I had studied Tamil for many years, like most other Indo Anglians, English became my lingua franca, my only vehicle to think my thoughts.

As I looked around, I realized the gravity of the great English language divide. In a country scarred by colonialism, the pain of being invisible, until one speaks English, and the politics of the English News anchor became uncomfortably evident.

(Statistics about Indo Anglians, Source: Sujith Pai, Buzz Feed Say Hello to Indo Anglians)

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In our journey to discover roots, Maggie and I began doing weekend Tamil literature reading sessions over skype, and during one weekend, the germ of Mandram slowly sprouted. Soon Ravishankar Venkateswaran also joined in and our dreams suddenly felt plausible. We first envisioned it as a forum to share deep, beautiful thoughts and ideas in Tamil. But today, we are dreaming bigger.

Mandram is an initiative to bring back native languages into modern discourse for the 99%

What is Mandram?

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Mandram is a platform to curate innovative ideas, insights and concepts in native languages through inclusive public discourse.

So much for vision.

What have we accomplished so far?

We are extremely proud of our seven successful events conducted in Tamil, Kannada, Hindi languages across Chennai, Coimbatore and Bangalore and Madurai.

Our Mandram Pilot had an eclectic set of speakers, bring together the worlds of Cinema, Archival History, Science Education and Music.

1)Actor Revathy 2)Kamakshi Patti and Dr.Babu, Prominent Social Activists, Chennai 3)Dr. Balaji Sampath, Prominent Educationist 4)Dr. Soumya Sanak, Music Therapist 5)Mr. Sundar, Founder & Archivist, Roja Muthaiah Library

Our first Pilot received good media coverage.

With our second event, "Jigyasa Project", we wanted to punch beyond our weight. It was one-of-kind bi-lingual event, with Scientists from National Center for Biological Sciences and Technologists talking about the significance of their research and work in Tamil and Kannada.

"Jigyasa Project" featured Scientists, Technologists viz.,

1)Dr. Vatsala Thirumalai, Neuroscientist, NCBS 2)Mr. Balaji Kutty, Entrepreneur, Co-founder Free Software Movement, Karnataka 3)Mr. Kollegala Sharma, Author, Scientist, Advocate of spreading science in Kannada 4)Dr. Ravi Muddashetty, Neuroscientist, NCBS 5)Maragathavalli, Co-Founder, Mandram 6) Anil Jagalur, Engineer and Independent Consultant on Intellectual Property and Society

"Jigyasa Project" received phenomenal media coverage in The Economic Times, Scroll Media, The Hindu

So what lies ahead?

As we speak, we are audaciously dreaming even bigger. We are in talks to explore possibilities of doing Mandram in Madurai, Chennai, Coimbatore this year.

We have some amazing speakers in our pipeline who might speak in our upcoming events.

Actor Suhasini ( Society, Women and Cinema) | Biju Bhaskar (Mud Homes for modern era)| TS Subburaman (Science in Tamil) | Dr. L Mahadevan (Ayurveda Teacher par excellence) | Renowned Chartered Accountant Gurumurthy (Eastern view of Economics) | Nagaswamy (Tamil Historian) Kumaravel Founder of Naturals (Entrepreneurship) | Suresh Sambandam (Happiness in Society) | Singer TM Krishna (Art and Society) | Dhanya Rajendran, Journalist News 7 | Pradeep Chakravarthy (Historian)| Vishnu IAS ( Water Management)

How can you join the Mandram movement?

We are looking for partners who believe in our larger purpose, and are willing to collaborate in facilitating our events. Not just in terms of sponsorship, but also in terms of joining hands to bring unique events which celebrate the multi-lingual and multi-cultural diversity of our country.

Are you excited by what we are attempting to do? Do you envision a unique Mandram event happening in your city, in your organization, and in your country?

Let us talk.