KiLiKi : The Beginning

by Dr. Madhan Karky

When I was learning Mandarin in University of Queensland, I was fascinated by the way the sound ‘ma’ was changed to make four different words and meanings just by varying the tone. When my teacher told me that my straight line stroke was wrong because I started it from left to right instead of right to left, I was puzzled. I was scared when I looked at a single character that had more than 100 strokes; cried in joy when I first ordered my lunch completely in Mandarin in a Chinese restaurant; felt like a prince when I bargained in Chinese in a street-market in Malaysia. Learning a new language does so much for you. It opens new doors in the real world and also in your mind. It makes this world a smaller place. You erase a tiny pixel from a huge line that divides ‘us’ and ‘them’. KiLiKi is different because there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’. The language does not belong to anyone. It does not have religion, caste, race or country associated with it. In other words, it belongs to everyone. 

Creating KiLiKi language was one of the best experiences in my life. I vividly remember the moment when Director SS Rajamouli asked me to find a foreign language for the Kalakeya tribes or to create a new one. Rewinding a few years back, when I was teaching English and Tamil languages to a few kids, this random idea of creating a new language popped up. I created a few words together with them and named the language CLIQ. The name was easy on the ears sounding like the ‘click of a mouse’ and also, ‘see I like you’. Along with my young students, I created a few sentences, a horrible song and then forgot about the language. When Director Rajamouli asked me to create a new language, I told him about CLIQ and he asked me to come up with some dialogues. That was the moment when ‘KiLiKi’ was born. I renamed the language as KiLiKi to go well with the Kaalakeya tribe that speaks the language. I started building more words and added a few grammar rules. I ensured the rules and words were simple and easy to remember. When I read out the first dialogue to the director, he was thrilled. He called his team and asked me to repeat the dialogue. I can still sense the excitement in that room.

Director decided he is not going to use subtitles in the movie for this language. He asked me to convey the cruelty in the sounds of the syllables. This threw an interesting challenge to me and made me reflect on the association between pleasantness of sounds in a word and the meaning associated with it. I made many changes to the language, created a few root words and started building other words from these root words. I must thank actor Prabhakar for learning to speak the language and bringing out the terror in his voice. He is the first student of KiLiKi language. Actors Prabhas, Rana, Nasser, Sathyaraj and Ramya Krishnan told me that they were shocked when they first heard the new language in the shooting spot as the camera was rolling. The same experience was shared by many around the world. Though the blockbuster movie released in multiple world languages, KiLiKi dialogues remained in KiLiKi in all versions. Many were asking for the source to learn this language. 

At that time, the language had no script. I was using English alphabet to represent KiLiKi sounds and I used to record the dialogues and send voice notes to actors. I had around 750 words and 40 grammar rules then. I was very hesitant to release that version of grammar and words. I also remember creating a song for the Kaalakeya tribes in KiLiKi with Composer MM Keeravani, but that was not used in the movie. Post the movie release, Singer Smita and Composer Achu came up with an idea to create a song in KiLiKi. We created ‘Baaha KiLiKi’ song and released it on Youtube. The song and its cover crossed 100 million views and people still continue to shower their love for the song and the language. 

In the past two years, I set aside some time to continue my work on the KiLiKi language. I started adding most common words in different categories. I felt that English phonetic notation was not enough to represent certain sounds. I designed vowels, consonants and numerals and started teaching my son. He loved the new symbols and I was surprised when he learned the numerals in 2 minutes and even started doing addition with these symbols. I sent a snapshot of the symbols to my friend Udhayan and he came up with a true-type font for the same in a month’s time. His inputs were valuable from the typography perspective. He added two more KiLiKi font families in no time. You need a crazy team to backup such crazy ideas. LIFO Technologies team made this website and apps from scratch, collaborating with my research foundation. I would like to thank them all for their time, effort and talent in making this possible.

The good and bad thing about craziness is that it does not have a limit to it. I thank Nandini for keeping me grounded and forcing me to take the rest I needed while also not disturbing my dream. I remember talking to her in KiLiKi during one of our date nights and making her go mad. I apologised to her in English as KiLiKi does not have the word for ‘sorry’!

Recently when I was in Hyderabad for a meet with Writer Vijeyendra Prasad for a new project, I showed him the new symbols and told him about the idea for the site. He was thrilled and appreciated the effort. He has been a great inspiration to me as a writer and as a person. I presented Producer Shobu Yarlagadda, the idea to form a development center for Kiliki. He was the person who sowed the idea in me to properly document the language and publish it after the movie released. I would like to thank him, Director SS Rajamouli and the entire Baahubali team for making this possible. 

I do not see KiLiKi as just a language. I dream of it of being much more than that. I see this launch as the beginning of something beautiful for the future. Thank you for being part of this crazy dream.

moovaa,
Madhan Karky