She sighed and pulled out her notebook – the one Mrs. Shanti had made her maintain since 1st PUC. On the cover, in fading ink, it said:

Inside were pages of summaries, grammar rules, alankaras , and answers to poetry questions. But Anjali had copied most of it mechanically during classes. She didn’t feel the poems. She didn’t understand why the teacher cried while explaining Kuvempu’s “Kaliyugadavaradali” .

The final exam arrived. The question paper had an extract from a poem they had studied. Anjali closed her eyes, recalled her notes, and then wrote – not as a machine, but as a young woman finally discovering her mother tongue’s soul.

That night, her younger brother Raghu sneaked into her room. “Akka, what’s this?” he asked, pointing to a neatly written note on “Vachana Sahitya” .

Those words hit Anjali like lightning.

“Then why do you hate Kannada, Akka? It’s so deep,” Raghu said innocently, and left.