Youth Editorial

Dear Reader,

I loved reading this year's excellent submissions to the Youth Section of the Kannada Koota Magazine. I always find pleasure in reading young people's work. Children and young adults write in many different voices: some bold, some tentative; some silly, some serious. But reading any young person's work, especially a young Indian-American's work, not only reassures me of the endless potential of youth, but also reminds me of my own childhood in a literary household.
My mother and father, as you probably know, encourage Kannadigas the world over to write both poetry and prose. My sister and I were no exception, even when we were very young. In particular, I remember one day fifteen years ago when my mother deprived my sister and me of a day off school by making each of us write a short story. My sister's effort, a thrilling tale of baby-snatching and mysterious baby-sitters, was later published in the school literary magazine. Mine (thankfully) seems to have disappeared in the mists of time.
My parents, being parents, save as much of my writing as they can, and sometimes I see it, years later, and feel proud of my younger self. Then again, sometimes I see it and wince. Like all writers, I often write things that seem great ... at the time. But, when I wince at my previous work, I try to remember that it's not the work that's changed; it's me. We're all growing and learning; a new perspective lets me see new sides (some of them unpleasant) of what I did before. I say to myself, "I could do that better now, if I did it again." And that means that my life between then and now has been worth it.
I hope that, years from now, when the children whose poems and stories and articles you're about to read are entering adulthood, they find some time to look back on their younger selves. They might even read the words in the following pages that they themselves wrote so long ago. And I hope that they will see, with surprise, how much they've grown, and take hope from that, because when we see that we have had reason to hope, that gives us reason to hope again.
Enjoy these voices from tomorrow's past.

Youth Editor
Sumana Harihareswara
(Berkeley, California)