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Go Ahead, Make My Day
by garam_kuta Thu Sep 22, 2011 9:09 am
http://www.samachar.com/The-NaarthSauth-War-A-Madrasis-Take-ljwlJMidjcd.html
We've
seen good-natured pleas for the case of the South Indian man by a couple of IIM
grads, a few years apart, followed by a
bitterly-vituperative-and-perhaps-not-quite-sober rant against Delhi men that
took social networking sites by storm a few days ago. As the folks from either
side of the Vindhyas fire salvos at each other, being a Madrasi foreign return
who found relatively more acceptance in Hindi heartland than in her hometown, I
find myself in a rather unique position to analyse the mutual distrust and
dislike.
Part 1: Billi Ek Paaltu Jaanwar Hai
My adherences to social and linguistic traditions began a
while before my arrival on the scene. My grandfather was a twentieth century
coconut, without ever crossing the seas - a member of the Indian Civil Services
in the British Era.My mother and her siblings spent their Post-Independence
childhood in the North and North East, sipping British tea from Chinese
porcelain, and learning to use more pieces of cutlery than the digits on their
hands at dinner.My father, the only son in a family of four children, shocked
pastors at a spartan missionary school by arriving in a procession complete
with elephant and trumpets.As a result, I grew up speaking English at home, in
a state where the Dravidian parties believed my ilk - well, Tam Brahms as we
style ourselves now - were Aryan/German/Sanskrit-speaking aliens who had no
claim to the language of Tamil Nadu.I was schooled in the prestigious Padma
Seshadri Bala Bhavan, whose few Non-Tam-Brahms picked up avaa-ivaa Tamil
and, to the abject horror of their parents, switched to a vegetarian diet of saathumdhu
saadam (uh, mulligatawny rice, if you will) and dudhyonam (curd
rice, duh), and most of whose Tam Brahms - taught to think out of the box -
began to eat animals.
All this time, my awareness of the Naarthie-Madrasi
divide was limited to arguments over whether Woh Saat Din or Andha
Ezhu Naatkal came first, and which had inspired Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.
Thank heavens producers have made it simpler these days - you can't quite argue
whether Ghajini or Ghajini came first, or Singham or
Singham. I suppose you could argue about Gajini and Ghajini,
and Singam and Singham, though. And my younger brother told me a
comparison of the relative merits of Chandramukhi and Bhool Bhulaiyya
ended when a Mohanlal fan said both were equally bad. Well, you get the
picture.
As a student of Tamil, my awareness of Hindi was limited
to the proud vocabulary of the third language student- billi ek paaltu
janwar hai, billi miaow miaow karti hai, Akbar ke darbar mein navratan kaun
kaun thhe?Part 2: 'What language you're talkin', chile?'
Right after, I went to a convent living off its past
glory, where nuns would cross themselves at the sight of kurtas that stopped
above the knee ("These gerls are yegsbosing their jeans pant!"), shy
of the elbow ("These gerls are showing den yinchez of forearm!"), or
T-shirts that grazed the waistband ("Oh my Goat, the Dyevil has his grasp
on this chile!")My perception of language underwent drastic changes too -
the Head of my Department, English Literature, assured me that T S Eliot was
"naat nusussary from yegzam payint of view" and another teacher
pondered over whether Measure for Measure was written by Shakespeare or
Marlowe. And while no one in my class seemed to make sense of the Tamil I
spoke, my Tamil teacher adored me.In college, the divisions were clear.The Naarthie
girls coloured their hair, wore heels, smoked outside college, and flaunted
mobile phones their boyfriends had bought them.
The girls of the Synthetic Salwar Brigade oiled their
hair, wore Hawaii slippers, giggled together outside college, and flaunted
amber flowers that one could smell a floor away.The Anglo-Indians tittered over
the overtures of the "sly conners" and "wanton buggers"
they were dating.The Malayalis transcended all other barriers and spoke
Malayalam.The Tam Brahms, drawn from three schools - mine, Vidya Mandir, and P
S Senior - met up during lunch to speak the Tamil everyone pretended not to
understand, and joined whichever other group happened to be nearest.
Part 3: 'So, you mean you're from Sri Lanka?'Finally, I did that thing all Tam Brahms must do for
a decent education, thanks to the reservation quota of my state - went
abroad.And that was when the Madrasi status I'd been deprived of since an old
man decided to rename my city - setting off a trend that choked on Mumbai,
Kolkata, and Bengaluru before finally throwing up the illogical Paschim Banga -
hit me. I was the only Sauth Indian in a group united by language. Well, one of
two, but the other one was an Army kid who'd grown up all over the country, and
spoke better Hindi than English.My first inkling of this difference was
when my British roommate's parents thought I was British-born since they'd
never met a first-generation Indian who didn't speak Hindi on the phone to her
mom. Later, it struck me that they'd probably not met too many legal
immigrants.Then, I flummoxed a professor, who greeted me with a friendly,
"You're from India! So you speak Hindy at home!""No, I don't
know Hindi.""Ah! You must be Kashmiri, then. So, you speak
Err-do?""No, I speak Tamil."The puzzled man frowned, "so,
you're Sri Lankan then, not Indian?"I would shrug helplessly when I
saw my international friends looking at me quizzically for translations as the
other Indians chattered away. Even more bizarrely, I would turn to my Afghan
friends for interpretation of the Hindi and Urdu everyone else was speaking.
Soon after a girl from Pune praised the Army kid for not being a "typical
Sauth Indian", the anti-Hindi sentiment crept into me for the first time.
Part 4: Of Raghu Thatha and Maya BaganjiAfter returning home, to a town where the Marwari
traders spoke better Tamil than local housewives and Tamils ordered chaat in
broken Hindi, the sting was dulled to an extent.But within a year, I took my
indeterminate accent and foreign degree to the National Capital Region, and
settled in a pocket extending into Uttar Pradesh, the land ruled by Lord Rama,
and later Lord Krishna, and now Mayawati.
I'd forgotten the little Hindi I'd picked up in London -
well, except for a YouTube clip that became a rage during my time there (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcmAEmJv3G8&feature=related).
I could now confidently say 'Yek gaavon my yek kisan raghu thatha', giving me three
topics of conversation - Akbar, cats and farmers.My good natured landlords,
having made valiant attempts to reach out to me, decided to introduce me to a
fellow Sauth Indian family. Sadly for them, the friendship didn't take off, as
both the family and I were bilingual. They spoke Telugu and Hindi; I spoke
English and Tamil.
However, my monolingual landlords continued to offer me
support through sign language, which didn't go off too well either. My request
for a mirror got me a plate, water, a glass tumbler, the address of an
optometrist, and, inexplicably, a bed sheet. Forgetting the word for pickle got
me ripe mangoes, lime juice, curd, rice, dough, flour and an offer of chapattis.The
one good thing about not knowing Hindi in a city where everyone spoke only it,
I decided, was that I wouldn't understand eve-teasers' taunts. That was before
I figured out that Delhi's Road Romeos don't spout vulgar proposals. They
stare. And stare.
In Madras (as I still call it), a guy by your side would
keep them off, even if he was shorter, narrower and weaker than you. Hell, even
if he wore glasses. But in Delhi, you could have a hulking body-builder by your
side, and the starers would thwart his attempts at fierce eye contact by
focusing complacently on you till you disappeared from sight.I was in the land
of fights over girls that end in shootouts, where men don't sprout moustaches
unless they're in the army, where everyone - well, everyone who's not Bengali -
thinks you're depressed if you read a book.Working in a news organisation meant
I had very little time for Mata Hari-ish indulgences. But I did figure out the
following:
a) From a metro where men
would be happy to Dutch on a first date, I'd moved to one where they would
panic that you thought they were poor if you took out your purse, and eliminate
the notion with a night ride around the city in Daddy's
Merc.b) Two beers may get the average South
Indian man to profess his love for you, but the Naarthie man can last up to
five whiskeys, and then insist he did ten.
c) When you say you
did some work in the theatre, Naarthies assume you manned the ticketing desk at
the cinema. When you explain, and bring in NSD (National School of Drama), they
give you a pitying oh-you-must-have-parents-who-are-addicted-to-drugs
look.d) The Aunties are the same across India.
You figure out Aunties you meet for the first time have been spying on you when
they tell you you've become dark, put on weight, got wrinkles, wear the same
clothes too often, and lost hair.e) On both sides
of the Vindhyas, people intend it as a compliment when they say "you look
like a North Indian."
Three years after I moved to Delhi, I finally forced
myself not to leave my slippers outside as a mark of respect for clean floors,
carpets, and elders. I convinced a couple of my Naarthie friends that they were
the ones who spoke English with an 'Indian' accent. I dug into the history of
the Chola, Chera, Pandiya wars when the Naarthies said South Indians never had
to fend off attacks. I figured out that 'Madrasi' was a pleasant reminder of
what I used to be till the whims of a former government made me a 'Chennaiite'
- which, to me, sounds more like a mineral ore than a people. And I learnt to
say 'ek gaon mein ek kisan rahha, rahha, rahhata thha.' Having been mistaken for a Punjabi, Malayali, Arab and Latina,
and having confused people with my Anglicised Tamil, Tamilised Hindi and
Hinglished English, I now feel an affinity to several contrasting cultures at
war with each other. And if parochial forwards have taught me anything, it's
that everyone has ugly prejudices - some being uglier than others. Well, that,
and South Indians tend to write long angry diatribes, while North Indians tend
to respond with long angry comments
i apologize that had to make it dense so that its not too long and
forbidden to post..
We've
seen good-natured pleas for the case of the South Indian man by a couple of IIM
grads, a few years apart, followed by a
bitterly-vituperative-and-perhaps-not-quite-sober rant against Delhi men that
took social networking sites by storm a few days ago. As the folks from either
side of the Vindhyas fire salvos at each other, being a Madrasi foreign return
who found relatively more acceptance in Hindi heartland than in her hometown, I
find myself in a rather unique position to analyse the mutual distrust and
dislike.
Part 1: Billi Ek Paaltu Jaanwar Hai
My adherences to social and linguistic traditions began a
while before my arrival on the scene. My grandfather was a twentieth century
coconut, without ever crossing the seas - a member of the Indian Civil Services
in the British Era.My mother and her siblings spent their Post-Independence
childhood in the North and North East, sipping British tea from Chinese
porcelain, and learning to use more pieces of cutlery than the digits on their
hands at dinner.My father, the only son in a family of four children, shocked
pastors at a spartan missionary school by arriving in a procession complete
with elephant and trumpets.As a result, I grew up speaking English at home, in
a state where the Dravidian parties believed my ilk - well, Tam Brahms as we
style ourselves now - were Aryan/German/Sanskrit-speaking aliens who had no
claim to the language of Tamil Nadu.I was schooled in the prestigious Padma
Seshadri Bala Bhavan, whose few Non-Tam-Brahms picked up avaa-ivaa Tamil
and, to the abject horror of their parents, switched to a vegetarian diet of saathumdhu
saadam (uh, mulligatawny rice, if you will) and dudhyonam (curd
rice, duh), and most of whose Tam Brahms - taught to think out of the box -
began to eat animals.
All this time, my awareness of the Naarthie-Madrasi
divide was limited to arguments over whether Woh Saat Din or Andha
Ezhu Naatkal came first, and which had inspired Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.
Thank heavens producers have made it simpler these days - you can't quite argue
whether Ghajini or Ghajini came first, or Singham or
Singham. I suppose you could argue about Gajini and Ghajini,
and Singam and Singham, though. And my younger brother told me a
comparison of the relative merits of Chandramukhi and Bhool Bhulaiyya
ended when a Mohanlal fan said both were equally bad. Well, you get the
picture.
As a student of Tamil, my awareness of Hindi was limited
to the proud vocabulary of the third language student- billi ek paaltu
janwar hai, billi miaow miaow karti hai, Akbar ke darbar mein navratan kaun
kaun thhe?Part 2: 'What language you're talkin', chile?'
Right after, I went to a convent living off its past
glory, where nuns would cross themselves at the sight of kurtas that stopped
above the knee ("These gerls are yegsbosing their jeans pant!"), shy
of the elbow ("These gerls are showing den yinchez of forearm!"), or
T-shirts that grazed the waistband ("Oh my Goat, the Dyevil has his grasp
on this chile!")My perception of language underwent drastic changes too -
the Head of my Department, English Literature, assured me that T S Eliot was
"naat nusussary from yegzam payint of view" and another teacher
pondered over whether Measure for Measure was written by Shakespeare or
Marlowe. And while no one in my class seemed to make sense of the Tamil I
spoke, my Tamil teacher adored me.In college, the divisions were clear.The Naarthie
girls coloured their hair, wore heels, smoked outside college, and flaunted
mobile phones their boyfriends had bought them.
The girls of the Synthetic Salwar Brigade oiled their
hair, wore Hawaii slippers, giggled together outside college, and flaunted
amber flowers that one could smell a floor away.The Anglo-Indians tittered over
the overtures of the "sly conners" and "wanton buggers"
they were dating.The Malayalis transcended all other barriers and spoke
Malayalam.The Tam Brahms, drawn from three schools - mine, Vidya Mandir, and P
S Senior - met up during lunch to speak the Tamil everyone pretended not to
understand, and joined whichever other group happened to be nearest.
Part 3: 'So, you mean you're from Sri Lanka?'Finally, I did that thing all Tam Brahms must do for
a decent education, thanks to the reservation quota of my state - went
abroad.And that was when the Madrasi status I'd been deprived of since an old
man decided to rename my city - setting off a trend that choked on Mumbai,
Kolkata, and Bengaluru before finally throwing up the illogical Paschim Banga -
hit me. I was the only Sauth Indian in a group united by language. Well, one of
two, but the other one was an Army kid who'd grown up all over the country, and
spoke better Hindi than English.My first inkling of this difference was
when my British roommate's parents thought I was British-born since they'd
never met a first-generation Indian who didn't speak Hindi on the phone to her
mom. Later, it struck me that they'd probably not met too many legal
immigrants.Then, I flummoxed a professor, who greeted me with a friendly,
"You're from India! So you speak Hindy at home!""No, I don't
know Hindi.""Ah! You must be Kashmiri, then. So, you speak
Err-do?""No, I speak Tamil."The puzzled man frowned, "so,
you're Sri Lankan then, not Indian?"I would shrug helplessly when I
saw my international friends looking at me quizzically for translations as the
other Indians chattered away. Even more bizarrely, I would turn to my Afghan
friends for interpretation of the Hindi and Urdu everyone else was speaking.
Soon after a girl from Pune praised the Army kid for not being a "typical
Sauth Indian", the anti-Hindi sentiment crept into me for the first time.
Part 4: Of Raghu Thatha and Maya BaganjiAfter returning home, to a town where the Marwari
traders spoke better Tamil than local housewives and Tamils ordered chaat in
broken Hindi, the sting was dulled to an extent.But within a year, I took my
indeterminate accent and foreign degree to the National Capital Region, and
settled in a pocket extending into Uttar Pradesh, the land ruled by Lord Rama,
and later Lord Krishna, and now Mayawati.
I'd forgotten the little Hindi I'd picked up in London -
well, except for a YouTube clip that became a rage during my time there (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcmAEmJv3G8&feature=related).
I could now confidently say 'Yek gaavon my yek kisan raghu thatha', giving me three
topics of conversation - Akbar, cats and farmers.My good natured landlords,
having made valiant attempts to reach out to me, decided to introduce me to a
fellow Sauth Indian family. Sadly for them, the friendship didn't take off, as
both the family and I were bilingual. They spoke Telugu and Hindi; I spoke
English and Tamil.
However, my monolingual landlords continued to offer me
support through sign language, which didn't go off too well either. My request
for a mirror got me a plate, water, a glass tumbler, the address of an
optometrist, and, inexplicably, a bed sheet. Forgetting the word for pickle got
me ripe mangoes, lime juice, curd, rice, dough, flour and an offer of chapattis.The
one good thing about not knowing Hindi in a city where everyone spoke only it,
I decided, was that I wouldn't understand eve-teasers' taunts. That was before
I figured out that Delhi's Road Romeos don't spout vulgar proposals. They
stare. And stare.
In Madras (as I still call it), a guy by your side would
keep them off, even if he was shorter, narrower and weaker than you. Hell, even
if he wore glasses. But in Delhi, you could have a hulking body-builder by your
side, and the starers would thwart his attempts at fierce eye contact by
focusing complacently on you till you disappeared from sight.I was in the land
of fights over girls that end in shootouts, where men don't sprout moustaches
unless they're in the army, where everyone - well, everyone who's not Bengali -
thinks you're depressed if you read a book.Working in a news organisation meant
I had very little time for Mata Hari-ish indulgences. But I did figure out the
following:
a) From a metro where men
would be happy to Dutch on a first date, I'd moved to one where they would
panic that you thought they were poor if you took out your purse, and eliminate
the notion with a night ride around the city in Daddy's
Merc.b) Two beers may get the average South
Indian man to profess his love for you, but the Naarthie man can last up to
five whiskeys, and then insist he did ten.
c) When you say you
did some work in the theatre, Naarthies assume you manned the ticketing desk at
the cinema. When you explain, and bring in NSD (National School of Drama), they
give you a pitying oh-you-must-have-parents-who-are-addicted-to-drugs
look.d) The Aunties are the same across India.
You figure out Aunties you meet for the first time have been spying on you when
they tell you you've become dark, put on weight, got wrinkles, wear the same
clothes too often, and lost hair.e) On both sides
of the Vindhyas, people intend it as a compliment when they say "you look
like a North Indian."
Three years after I moved to Delhi, I finally forced
myself not to leave my slippers outside as a mark of respect for clean floors,
carpets, and elders. I convinced a couple of my Naarthie friends that they were
the ones who spoke English with an 'Indian' accent. I dug into the history of
the Chola, Chera, Pandiya wars when the Naarthies said South Indians never had
to fend off attacks. I figured out that 'Madrasi' was a pleasant reminder of
what I used to be till the whims of a former government made me a 'Chennaiite'
- which, to me, sounds more like a mineral ore than a people. And I learnt to
say 'ek gaon mein ek kisan rahha, rahha, rahhata thha.' Having been mistaken for a Punjabi, Malayali, Arab and Latina,
and having confused people with my Anglicised Tamil, Tamilised Hindi and
Hinglished English, I now feel an affinity to several contrasting cultures at
war with each other. And if parochial forwards have taught me anything, it's
that everyone has ugly prejudices - some being uglier than others. Well, that,
and South Indians tend to write long angry diatribes, while North Indians tend
to respond with long angry comments
i apologize that had to make it dense so that its not too long and
forbidden to post..
garam_kuta- Posts : 3768
Join date : 2011-05-18
Re: Go Ahead, Make My Day
by Guest Thu Sep 22, 2011 10:59 am
nandini krishnan wrote:We've
seen good-natured pleas for the case of the South Indian man by a couple of IIM
grads, a few years apart, followed by a
bitterly-vituperative-and-perhaps-not-quite-sober rant against Delhi men that
took social networking sites by storm a few days ago.
what rant against delhi men is she referring to? the one bittu referred to a few days ago? and where is the "case for the south indian man by a few iim grads.?"
her blog made me LOL in places.
Guest- Guest
Re: Go Ahead, Make My Day
by Guest Thu Sep 22, 2011 11:23 am
nandini krishnan wrote:Right after, I went to a convent living off its past glory, where nuns would cross themselves at the sight of kurtas that stopped above the knee ("These gerls are yegsbosing their jeans pant!"), shy of the elbow ("These gerls are showing den yinchez of forearm!"), or T-shirts that grazed the waistband ("Oh my Goat, the Dyevil has his grasp on this chile!")
My perception of language underwent drastic changes too - the Head of my Department, English Literature, assured me that T S Eliot was "naat nusussary from yegzam payint of view"
that is a mallu accent isn't it? the nuns were malayali, isn't it?
The girls of the Synthetic Salwar Brigade oiled their hair, wore Hawaii slippers, giggled together outside college, and flaunted amber flowers that one could smell a floor away.
what does "synthetic salwar brigade" connote to?
Guest- Guest
Re: Go Ahead, Make My Day
by garam_kuta Fri Sep 23, 2011 3:33 pm
Huzefa Kapasi wrote:nandini krishnan wrote:We've
seen good-natured pleas for the case of the South Indian man by a couple of IIM
grads, a few years apart, followed by a
bitterly-vituperative-and-perhaps-not-quite-sober rant against Delhi men that
took social networking sites by storm a few days ago.
what rant against delhi men is she referring to? the one bittu referred to a few days ago? and where is the "case for the south indian man by a few iim grads.?"
that's correct, bhaiya. will try to get back on your next post at some point. thanks.
her blog made me LOL in places.
garam_kuta- Posts : 3768
Join date : 2011-05-18
Re: Go Ahead, Make My Day
by Propagandhi711 Fri Sep 23, 2011 3:40 pm
why are tambramiyers so verbosans?
Propagandhi711- Posts : 6941
Join date : 2011-04-29
Guest- Guest
Re: Go Ahead, Make My Day
by Propagandhi711 Fri Sep 23, 2011 3:51 pm
I registered yeah..but waiting for my wingman to text me so we can head to the casino
Propagandhi711- Posts : 6941
Join date : 2011-04-29
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