September 29, 2007 time 10:13 pm. This marks the longest time I’ve stayed in a place since I moved out of my parental residence in 2001. My horoscopes say that I will travel a lot, and I guess they have been proven right. I am heading for my home to Raipur from Delhi, in a southbound train, I have steered ahead of Itarsi a city in central India and expect to make my home by morning. I guess none of the railways in the world would be as culturally and socially vibrant as Indian railways, it is a conglomeration of crores of lives associated with it on a regular and temporary basis. See how many events happen in it, baraats, picnic, expeditions, inter cultural interactions, love, hate, jealousy; all the manifestations of human psyche, and not to forget, those rapes, sexual encounters, dacoities, drugging etc. I have, by the grace of god managed to stay away from the later parts which I considered quite blasphemous and horribly sad.
Let us talk about me now, my coupe as expected is full of the descendent of what history calls “Dravidians”, the other half of India, yes the other half. Whole of India is suffering from this great regionalism, no doubt about that, but none of its variety parallels the intensity of great North-south divide. This divide has taken many ugly turns in past and present, but this isn’t a historian’s blog so we shall not bother ourselves with it. I am trying to jot down the experience I had over the day with them. My first interaction was in a way, which until now, I thought was a trademark of us Bengalis, the anna walked to the coupe which had its sole occupant as me and kind of charged me by saying that seat no 25 and 28 is his property. I barely managed to suppress my smile on this very familiar action and politely said, yes it’s yours and mine is 29. But the man was in mood to attack whatever the purpose may be, and he barked again that he owns seat 25 28(he sounded very much like that white character of bunty and bubbly “I own the TAJ”), to this I smilingly replied “Did I said it was mine” I guess it was my continuing politeness or the smile, the mood changed in no time, and after a initial gorilla like intimidation, the man yielded to the seemingly better human in front. He was followed by some other fellow telgus who didn’t seem to be that charged, on the contrary they were happy to find their lot in majority, and the single alien, that is, me, I seemed to be non existent. Thankfully I managed to grab a novel before leaving, so the major portion of the day was passed either dozing or reading, doing both of which I truly love. The only problem was that by the end of the day I’d a queer dumb like feeling, as if I can’t speak. Though I must say the lot didn’t outrageously neglect me, they offered me various eatables which I had to politely refuse (damn on those who drug people). But on a whole this alien was non-existent. As the evening grew and night came falling the brotherhood of “Dravidia” was joined by two females one young chick who wasn’t very attractive by BSIS (Bureau of south Indian standards) she was quite thin, but yeah smart, other being her mother. Out of curiosity I eavesdropped on their conversation to find out that the young lady was a student of electronic engineering in Bhopal and was already placed in Accenture software. Then the younger guys of the lot started conversing among with other present and believe me not because of the reason you are thinking. These people had genuine interest in each other and nothing to do with the latest additions of the group, the discussion I could guess, was pertaining to the vibrant issue of finding a decent food joint for south Indian food in Delhi (just like we Bengalis ponder over the availability of “maach” or fish in our locality), one of them made fun of north Indian joints trying to imitate them. Then the topic shifted to politics centering on Andhra Pradesh (again an uncanny similarity to bengalis). I by now had firmly believed that I am wearing an invisibility cloak and have become dumb.
But one thing was noteworthy, right from the first interaction I had with them. That they all acted and reacted in a same manner any Indian would have. This raises questions in my mind that does that great divide of culture really exists or it is just a figment of our imaginations. Do we feed the divide or the divide is feeding some of us, is that the people who are different or it is just the language. Many more questions stung me at once and most of them remained unanswered. I prefer to leave that question to you. Enlighten me…
Thanks for your patient reading….
Tinu….
P.S - The pic is an old photograph of me irritating my mallu friend on our journey back to Delhi from IIM-A, I mentioned about it in my first post
