Wade through the crowded, narrow alleys of the Central Market of Mangalore on a Saturday, or stroll along the sprawling Panamburu Beach on a Sunday, a melange of distinct dialects and languages could swirl through your ears. The locals of the tranquil seaside city in Western Karnataka – rather a town in the guise of a city – can seamlessly shift languages, tones and dialects.
In the swish of a second, an average Mangalorean could switch from Tulu to Kannada, or from Konkani to Beary, apart from adeptly handling Malayalam, Kodava and Hindi. One could get shouted as “Pissant” (Konkani for mad man) and get retorted sharply: “Mooji kaas daye (Third class fellow in Tulu). Of course, most speak English too.
The linguistic diversity fascinates Alwin D’Souza, a professor of English at the St Aloysius College, the most prestigious college in the education belt that spreads from Mangalore to Manipal, a 60 kilometre seaside-to-hillock stretch that captures the duality as well as diversity of the region.
From the shores to the hills, past the plains and areca-farms, mosques and churches, Jain monasteries and Hindu temples, the passage embodies the multiculturalism of the region. “Studying the language and culture of this region is fascinating. Mangalore, and for that matter, the coastal districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi are a melting pot of diverse cultures in terms of multilingualism,” he explains.
It’s the story of most port cities, lashed by several waves of invasion and migration. But they invariably integrate, as generations pass on. D’Souza details: “Though there are narratives regarding the caste and creed-related languages, today, it can be said that people of different denominations have imbued and assimilated the multifarious linguistic identities.They have gone beyond these fixed Linguistic identities.”
In a sense, the city lives like KL Rahul bats. Till 15, he stayed in Mangalore, where his mother taught at the Mangalore University, and father at the NIT in Suratkal, he did PUC in Aloysius, as D’Souza raptly chimes in. The multilingualism reflects in his batting too. He could sing-song with the bat like they speak Tulu. Those silken cover-drives have the musicality of the most-spoken tongue in the region.
He could rattle along like how they speak Konkani, without a pause for breath, like a speeding train along the scenic Konkan route. All you watch is fours and sixes, like all that strikes the ear of a stranger is a whirl of nasalized, drawling “O’s” and teeth-grinding “Ts’.
Often Rahul could switch his diction of batting from smooth to violence. His pull could be as violent as his drives are languid. Watch the set-up, how he suddenly shifts his weight onto the back-foot, the bat transforming to an axe, as he slants his back and fetches the ball from outside the off-stump with a savage whip of the wrist but without an exaggerated swivel of his body. He could be eloquent and expansive like a Yakshagana (a form of dance drama) concert and vigorous as a Bhootaradhane (shamanistic dance) performance.
His batting has deep layers, like any language. Understated is his range of skills. He can open in Tests and stonewall, score a 402-minute 123 in Centurion, he can peel off 110 runs in 51 balls, as he pilloried West Indies in Lauderhill a few years ago. He can nudge and graft as a middle-order batsman in ODIs. Flexibility, then, is a virtue that embodies Mangaloreans.
Not just in language, multiculturalism reflects on the region’s cuisine and folk arts. “Folk art forms like Yakshaganam, Dhaff, Bhootaradhane are eye-catching forms that represent our lives,” says D’Souza. The cuisine, arguably the fieriest of the country, has strong influences of its Dutch and French colonisers, as well as the neighbouring Goa and Kerala, but it preserves an identity of its own, especially in how they mix their spices to get a uniquely tangy flavour. Just like how Rahul bats.
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Apart from providing an unbroken chain of legends and mainstays to the national team, a reason Ramachandra Guha is fond of players from Karnataka, he writes in The States of Indian Cricket, is that, “Whatever language they speak, the cricketers of Karnataka speak with tact and refinement.” He elaborates: “They are all gentlemen. Whether it be Vishy or Chandra of an earlier generation, or Dravid and Kumble now, no cricketer from the state has been known to swear on the field, dispute a decision, or intrigue in the dressing room. In a game riven with discord and corruption, their reputations are close to being lily-white.”
Let those virtues not hide their inner steel. It’s no coincidence that it was Karnataka that ended Bombay’s 15-year Ranji Trophy winning streak in 1974; it is no happenstance that a genial leg-spinner from Mysore, BS Chandrasekhar, architected India’s first Test wins in both England and Australia, or that Rahul Dravid helmed his country’s first ever victory on Pakistan soil. Few captains would have handled the Monkeygate scandal in as dignified a manner as Anil Kumble had. Few celebrity cricketers could be spotted walking on the pavement or dining in a local eatery as those from the State do.
It’s no sleight of destiny that they end up as crisis men; that they take up tasks everyone slinks away from, that they embrace captaincy when no one else wants to. They have the rare gift of being visible yet invisible, at the forefront and in the backdrop. In his days, Dravid was always the makeshift opener in Tests, the stop-gap for any vacant spot in dire need of filling up (batted from 1 to 8 and has scored hundreds from four different slots) , the wicket-keeper (for 73 games, fourth most for his country) and middle-order batsman at the stroke of this century.
A similar non-reluctance to dispense any duty for his teams runs through Rahul too. In ODIs, he has batted at all spots from 1 to 6, has kept wickets, fielded at first slip and prowled at long-on, has captained in the absence of Rohit Sharma, had donned the roles of an opener, anchor, accumulator and finisher. Kasturi Balakrishna Pai, a former district umpire and ground-keeper of Nehru Maidan, the soul and heart of Mangalore cricket, traces this to the city’s back-woodsy image. “You have to grab your chances if you want to succeed from the city. From a young age, I have seen the efforts Rahul had put in to reach this level, and he has grabbed his opportunities,” he says.
The new Rahul persona is more attuned to Bangalore sensibilities, its posh and polish, but watching him unfold the different layers of his batting, it reflects the multilingualism and multiculturalism of Mangalore as much as the cosmopolitanism of Bangalore.
Till 15, KL Rahul stayed in Mangalore, where his mother taught at the Mangalore University, and father at the NIT in Suratkal. (Illustration by Suvajit Dey) 
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