A Bengaluru native has gone viral on Reddit after admitting to “feeling like an outsider in my own city”. The post noted the growing use of Hindi in workplaces and lamented the loss of local culture and practices. The Reddit user also revealed that they were the only south Indian on his team — with only a handful of people from Bengaluru seemingly still working in the city.
‘I’m the only South Indian in my team’
“I’m a Bangalorean, a Kannadiga, born and raised here, working in Bengaluru, yet I feel like an outsider in my own city. No offence to people from other states.. it’s nice that you’ve made Bengaluru your home too. But somewhere along the way, Bengaluru stopped feeling like home for me,” the Reddit user wrote.
He also noted the steady fall in local colleagues — with several in the comment section also echoing this detail.
“In my office, I’m the only South Indian in my team, and out of the 400 people on my floor, I can barely find another Bangalorean. Conversations around me are only in Hindi.. The culture I grew up with feels like it’s fading away and that leaves me with a strange emptiness. Does anyone else feel this way?” the post asked.
Using Hindi in offices
The comment section also stepped up to support the original poster with users revealing that they now felt alienated in their workplaces. Many flagged the growing use of Hindi in various Bengaluru offices — contending that the current generation was not interested in ‘adapting’ regardless of location.
“I am from Dharwad and my Hindi has become so fluent that in my new company for few months my colleagues thought I was north Indian until they heard me speak in Kannada on my phone,” revealed one comment.
“Totally relate to this! You know what blew my mind is one of my colleagues was quite surprised when I said I’m a native Bangalorean. He asked me: ‘Proper Bangalorean? And I’m like: ‘Yeah, born and raised’. Then he goes on to say: ‘I hardly find native Bangaloreans’. We have officially become the rare species in our own land,” said another.
Several others revealed that they had also been been misidentified as members of other communities due to their fluency with Hindi.
“This is the reason resentment slowly builds up and what we see is stray incidents of people going ballistic about speaking Kannada. Bangalorean here myself who speaks Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam fluently. And I don’t appreciate it when people are conversing with each other in Hindi in a professional work set up. The older Bangalore had folks come and settle from Kerala, Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh and they integrated so well with each other the newer folks don’t make enough efforts and that shows,” fumed one Reddit user.