We don't exist.
Sometimes it hits you when people in a newsroom ask you whether you can understand "Kannadiga" - and shrug when you tell them (a) it is not a language (b) you are not from Karnataka. And that, leaving aside all the times your blood boils when people say "Kannad" and "Karnatak". At other times, it hits you when people ask you "what's the capital of Tripura?" At first, I looked incredulously at the person who asked me that question and went "are you playing Paanchvi Pass??" to which he replied, "no, yaar, I really don't know..." And this happened to be someone who was promoted recently.
I realised just how abysmal people's knowledge of these two regions of the country were, when a news anchor I know told me how a Punjabi she knew, living in Bangalore, could speak perfect Tamil. I asked her how he knew perfect Tamil, and she said, "oh, he's been in Bangalore..."
"Do you mean, Kannada?" I asked.
"Yeah, yeah, Kannadiga, whatever the language is," she replied.
Another colleague once said something was in a "Sauth Indian language", and could I please interpret it? Incidentally, it turned out to be Oriya. Yet another instance when my expertise in a "Sauth Indian language" was invoked got me fuming because it was Telugu and the colleague who had requested the translation looked at me, puzzled and said, "same thing, no? Tamil, Telugu..." There was this other time when someone told me a story could not be done because the bite was in Tamil. Since the bite was from Chandrababu Naidu, I asked whether it was Telugu. "Oh, one of those," he replied, brusquely.
The bond that we "Sauth Indians" have with the North Easterners is that we are not really considered part of our country, and the rest of the country has, on top of it all, made up its mind that we're "different" and don't want to be part of it after all. A Malayali, of all people, once explained to another colleague that Tamil Nadu would soon ask for its independence from India. He had grown up in Delhi, but even so...! Another colleague, whose byline yet another colleague ingeniously suggested would be "where crisis meets chaos", once asked me whether we Tamilians wanted Sri Lanka to be part of Tamil Nadu.
I grew up in a spirit of patriotic fervour handed down from the stories my grandmother told me of her father and his friend, the poet Subramaniya Bharathiyar and all the progressive ideas they tried to instil into society, the sacrifices they made in their struggle for freedom and the country they strove to build. And yet, completely ignoring the fact that C Rajagopalachari (whom he quite likely did not know was none other than "Rajaji") was Tamilian, an admittedly rather scatter-brained colleague remarked that South Indians had not fought for the freedom of the country. The fact that the first Indian who defied British law to sail a ship was Tamilian, is, of course, quite unknown outside Tamil Nadu.
It seems quite easy for the rest of the country to forget that the Gorkhas, celebrated as one of the bravest regiments of the army and known throughout India for their valour, are from the North East. They're "more a part of China than a part of India", someone I know once explained, referring to people from the North East.
We teach our children that India is an example of "Unity in Diversity". But when two huge sections of the country, each with their distinct and rich cultures, and their own contribution to the country, are largely ignored, almost abandoned as the dark reaches of a country that is much too large to begin with, where is the celebration of unity in diversity? When four different cultures, each of which views the other askance (not a lot of love lost over the Kaveri waterfight between Kannadigas and Tamilians, is there? And ask a Tamilian mother what she would think of her daughter marrying a Malayali and listen to the scream of horror), are bracketed together in one bolus, and a group of states with their own unique cultures and distinct languages are donated to China, when the city that has rather facetiously termed itself the commercial capital of the country is kicking out South Indians in one decade, and North Indians four decades later, isn't it about time we reexamined the borders in our heads?
Sometimes it hits you when people in a newsroom ask you whether you can understand "Kannadiga" - and shrug when you tell them (a) it is not a language (b) you are not from Karnataka. And that, leaving aside all the times your blood boils when people say "Kannad" and "Karnatak". At other times, it hits you when people ask you "what's the capital of Tripura?" At first, I looked incredulously at the person who asked me that question and went "are you playing Paanchvi Pass??" to which he replied, "no, yaar, I really don't know..." And this happened to be someone who was promoted recently.
I realised just how abysmal people's knowledge of these two regions of the country were, when a news anchor I know told me how a Punjabi she knew, living in Bangalore, could speak perfect Tamil. I asked her how he knew perfect Tamil, and she said, "oh, he's been in Bangalore..."
"Do you mean, Kannada?" I asked.
"Yeah, yeah, Kannadiga, whatever the language is," she replied.
Another colleague once said something was in a "Sauth Indian language", and could I please interpret it? Incidentally, it turned out to be Oriya. Yet another instance when my expertise in a "Sauth Indian language" was invoked got me fuming because it was Telugu and the colleague who had requested the translation looked at me, puzzled and said, "same thing, no? Tamil, Telugu..." There was this other time when someone told me a story could not be done because the bite was in Tamil. Since the bite was from Chandrababu Naidu, I asked whether it was Telugu. "Oh, one of those," he replied, brusquely.
The bond that we "Sauth Indians" have with the North Easterners is that we are not really considered part of our country, and the rest of the country has, on top of it all, made up its mind that we're "different" and don't want to be part of it after all. A Malayali, of all people, once explained to another colleague that Tamil Nadu would soon ask for its independence from India. He had grown up in Delhi, but even so...! Another colleague, whose byline yet another colleague ingeniously suggested would be "where crisis meets chaos", once asked me whether we Tamilians wanted Sri Lanka to be part of Tamil Nadu.
I grew up in a spirit of patriotic fervour handed down from the stories my grandmother told me of her father and his friend, the poet Subramaniya Bharathiyar and all the progressive ideas they tried to instil into society, the sacrifices they made in their struggle for freedom and the country they strove to build. And yet, completely ignoring the fact that C Rajagopalachari (whom he quite likely did not know was none other than "Rajaji") was Tamilian, an admittedly rather scatter-brained colleague remarked that South Indians had not fought for the freedom of the country. The fact that the first Indian who defied British law to sail a ship was Tamilian, is, of course, quite unknown outside Tamil Nadu.
It seems quite easy for the rest of the country to forget that the Gorkhas, celebrated as one of the bravest regiments of the army and known throughout India for their valour, are from the North East. They're "more a part of China than a part of India", someone I know once explained, referring to people from the North East.
We teach our children that India is an example of "Unity in Diversity". But when two huge sections of the country, each with their distinct and rich cultures, and their own contribution to the country, are largely ignored, almost abandoned as the dark reaches of a country that is much too large to begin with, where is the celebration of unity in diversity? When four different cultures, each of which views the other askance (not a lot of love lost over the Kaveri waterfight between Kannadigas and Tamilians, is there? And ask a Tamilian mother what she would think of her daughter marrying a Malayali and listen to the scream of horror), are bracketed together in one bolus, and a group of states with their own unique cultures and distinct languages are donated to China, when the city that has rather facetiously termed itself the commercial capital of the country is kicking out South Indians in one decade, and North Indians four decades later, isn't it about time we reexamined the borders in our heads?
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