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I was visiting my sister in Indianapolis last week and happened to stop by at one of my friends in Chicago. My friends have been living in the US for the past 16 years and have a son who is two years old. It was almost a year since I met this kid and I couldn’t resist playing with him.
 He started talking to me, and more interestingly in Tamil. Most of the children born in America, right from the day they start attending day-care or schools, converse in English and seldom talk in Tamil. A two-year-old day-care going kid talking to me in Tamil was a fact that amazed me.
He carried a slate pad and asked me to draw him a tractor, a flower and a TV. I patiently drew all that he wanted and finally the trivia came, he suddenly switched gears and asked me to draw ‘Tamizh Malai’. I was puzzled, “how on earth am I going to draw Tamizh Malai”, was my reaction. The whole household started laughing. I asked my friend how he was aware of this program and she switched on the TV and there came ‘Sun TVin Tamizh
Malai’.
Sun TV is no more a distant dream in the US. Almost every other Tamil household has Sun Network’s Sun TV. A few years ago, people used to flock to the theatres when Tamil movies were screened. It was a form of get-together, an emotional event. People went to theatres in the US more to meet other folks than to watch the movie itself.
With the mushroom growth of Indian ethnic grocery stores and Internet video libraries, more and more people have started renting DVDs or VCDs to quench their thirst for Tamil movies. The launch of Sun TV has further opened the avenues for the Tamil audience in the US.
 I am sure that Sun TV is going to play a pivotal role in contributing to the Tamil community in the US. I have seen numerous children who speak only English and try not to communicate in their native language. We can hardly blame these school-going children, all that they see on TV are nothing but English, all their friends in school speak in English. This exposure to nothing other than English has deprived them of the essence of the mother tongue and other native languages.
As every event and entity has a good and a bad side, I am sure there are good and bad sides to these native TV networks. The good effects are that a two-year-old tries to learn the native language and culture involuntarily. He relates to what is spoken at home daily and tries to understand them. These networks bring back memories of our native land, and more than that make us feel at home.
It feels like the 10,000 miles between the US and Chennai have suddenly shrunk. We feel at home whenever we turn on the TV. It really makes us happy when we get the latest and greatest of news from home.
On the other hand, the graphic nature of Sun TV needs some censorship. Violent scenes are not censored, and viewership needs to be taken into consideration while screening some news and programmes. It would be nice to add some programmes to promote cultural aspects of Tamil Nadu and Tamil language from which the world audience could be educated.
I am sure the introduction of such ethnic TV channels is going to be a revolution in the long run. With the shrinking globe and more and more people living abroad, these TV channels are the only way to keep the culture alive.
Narayanan Sundaresan
nsundaresan@DataRecognitionCorp.com
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