Thursday, September 15, 2011

The Great Divide

Dear Open letter writers (this seems to be the season of them, really!),

It is not a South Indian Vs. North Indian thing. I am sick of stereotypes. Really. There is no point in sugar coating this or being venomous about it. We ARE different, all we need to do is be aware of that and live with it.

Though I did have a good laugh over this, I am fairly certain (knowing me and my rage issues), that I would have been hopping mad if anybody had tried describing what a typical South Indian is like and how yevarybody eats curd rice and is covered in coconut oil.
I detest being called a Madrasi, thought I often wonder, not without a little guilt, when I will stop rolling my eyes and saying 'You're SO Delhi'.
I am tired of hearing Rajnikant jokes. I guess I should probably stop making Shah Rukh like blubbery noises in the middle of the movie then.
For every one of the guys who rev up their engine and flex their muscles in Delhi, there is one wonderful south Indian guy who says 'Super figure, machi!'(For the benefit of those unaware of Tamil slang, translated roughly to "What a babe, yaar")
I have minor palpitations when someone tells me I have to go to bed without eating curd rice, who am I really to pass judgement on a rajma fetish?
Everybody has to deal with the fact that I have difficulty speaking Hindi since the two languages most familiar to me-Tamil and English have none of those sounds or gender (How on earth is a train feminine anyway?), just like I will deal with the fact that the people who don't know Tamil or Malayalam can never say 'Mazhai pozhigiradhu' or that some people call a door a gate.
Please never resent the fact that when two south indians meet each other they talk in their native language, just like how I went through two months of barely understanding any conversation since it was all in Hindi. It IS exactly the same.
I admire some of the delhi boys who are more chivalrous than anyone I have ever met and I love Saranath who can talk to me about just about anything under the sun from a beautiful tamil lyric to psychoanalysis and uses words like 'Staccato' in everyday conversation.
I am in awe of the effort that Pups and K take in dressing up before we head out and I totally identify with Thoppi and Priyams when we don't mind going for dinner in a crumpled t-shirt and old jeans.
I love the chapathi and paneer binges in Ashirwad and yearn for the 'Eat dosa till you burst' moments at Dosa King.
That is exactly what I love about all of us. Snegama and me can make fun of a rajnikanth movie and still defend it in indignation when somebody who saw ROBOT made fun of it. Puppy and Joop can call me madrasi but still use 'Aiyo' and 'Da' just as much as all of us. I could say a 'Bas Bahut ho gaya' and mean it and could also hear choruses of 'Polaama?' before we went anywhere.
They now love rasam and I now wear colours other than dark blue, black and brown.
That, I believe, sums up the situation in a nutshell.


From,
A south indian girl who went from the very south to the very Jharkand and now eats Roti with Rasam much to the disgust of her fellow diners