A Day in the Life
My name is Anand, I am eleven, and my language has more speakers than most countries have people. I am Telugu, one of more than eighty million, from the wide hot land of rice paddies and rocky hills in southern India.
My morning starts with the smell of my mother’s dosa batter sizzling and the sound of her transistor radio playing film songs. Telugu movies are famous across all of India, and every boy at my school can perform the hero’s entrance from the latest one, including me. At the school gate, the chalk rangoli patterns my aunt drew at our doorstep are already dusted by feet and bicycle tires.
Telugu is called the Italian of the East because almost every word ends in a vowel, so the whole language sounds like singing. My grandfather recites old Telugu poetry in the evenings on the veranda, rocking slightly, while the heat lets go of the day.
We are Hindus. Our town’s temple tower, the gopuram, rises above everything, carved with hundreds of painted gods, and on festival days the streets fill with drums and marigolds and sugar. My mother keeps a small shrine shelf in our kitchen with a brass lamp she lights at dusk. There is one Christian family on our street. They are quiet about it. My grandmother says their people changed gods. I have never asked them why.
Fun Facts
- Telugu is the fourth most spoken language in India and among the most spoken on earth, with over 80 million speakers.
- Its vowel-ending words earned it the nickname “the Italian of the East.”
- The Telugu film industry, sometimes called Tollywood, produces some of the world’s biggest movies.
- Rangoli, geometric chalk and rice-flour designs, are drawn fresh at doorsteps each morning.
- Telugu has been one of the fastest-growing languages in the United States, with large communities in California and Texas.
- The complete Bible has existed in Telugu for over 150 years, and the church is real but small, around 3 in 100 people.
How to Pray for the Telugu
Eighty million people means praying in millions: pray for the Telugu church, often drawn from the poorest communities, to be bold, healthy, and respected. Pray for high-caste Telugu families, among whom believers are rarest, to encounter Jesus without fear of losing everything. Pray for the Telugu Bible, long translated, to be read and not just owned. And pray for Telugu families abroad, in California and Texas and New Jersey, who may meet a Christian neighbor before they ever would have at home. That neighbor could be you.
How Kids Can Help
Find Andhra Pradesh and Telangana on a map of India. Count to three in Telugu: okati, rendu, moodu. If a Telugu family lives in your town, learn to greet them with namaskaram. The September 2025 Wonder Letter was written from the perspective of a Telugu child whose family moved from India to California, with a map and vocabulary for your family.
Scripture to Remember
“Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” (Psalm 2:8)
Eighty million is not too many to pray for. It is just the right size for the promise.