Friday, February 8, 2008

North Vs South or is it....????????????????

They say birds of a feather flock together. I say the feathers may be different but they belong to the same sky; that all the sky is for them to share. They say north should stay in north and south should stay in south. I say north south east and west are the same. In fact they are an amalgamation. Together they are complete and alone they are just fragments; incomplete carcasses of a mammoth culture.
My insinuations are towards growing crisis being faced by hindi speaking population at their very origin. Branded as lawless, brawling, chaotic and barbaric reminders of the marauders who have plagued our lands since time immemorial, they are being singled out and subjugated to humiliation and alienation in the very country where national language is hindi and whose ex prime minister had the pride to deliver a lecture in hindi on the floors of UN general assembly.
My being from the north has got nothing to do with what I write here today. In fact sitting in US, I should be least bothered about whats happening in India. I have never been beyond madhya pradesh(Once to bombay for three days), before coming to US never met any south indian, never dated any south indian girl(the only one i know is aishwarya rai and boy she is hot!! and ironically now married to a north indian living in bombay) and obviously never watchd a south indian movie. Being a pakka north indian from haryana according to some Lt governer of delhi and a certain political wannabe from bombay, i should have popped off a couple of unsuspecting south indians by now, molested at least 10-12 women before/after getting completely wasted, broken all laws regarding parking, loud speakers building construction, money laundering tax evasion, electricity theft, forgery impersonation and last but the least my personal favourite mowing down people under my car.
To their utmost disappointment if they probe in the life of this pukka diliwalla as i pride in calling myself i have done neither. Pride myself in being a law abiding citizen of india for 21 years and a law abiding non resident alien in united states for two years where ironically laws are stricter with lesser loopholes for both north and south indians to wiggle out of.
The reason i am pouring my heart here today is because fighting over names of states, filling up of personal coffers at the cost of stunted growth and red tape were bad enough we now have these irresponsible netas hell bent on irreversibly widening the north south divide.
Banglore is IT capital of india not of andhra pradesh or karnataka where majority of business is carried out in english which is neither hindi nor marathi nor tamil nor telugu. Mumbai is the home of bollywood which churns out the maximum number of movies in hindi language year after year. Haryana produces the maximum amount of wheat in india which is the staple diet from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, the steel from jamshedpur and bhilai is in homes of north and south indians and tea from darjeeling and beauty of himalayas and salt from gujrat and...... the list goes on and on.
Can we live by beating and alienating each other? The above argument amply illustrates that united we stand and divided we fall. So why this chasm? why these fault lines deepening now? The answer lies in petty cultural differences and differences in upbringing people from north and south have. while people from north believe more in showing off what we have and what we dont have,living beyond what means permit and enjoying life to the hilt. From whatever i have observed in graduate students from south india here, i can say that they are generally reserved, brilliant in their minds, not showy and pretentious and very proud of their heritage. These differences are just my opinion and based on my observations. However these petty differences sometimes lead to petty disputes which are now being blown out of proportions and being used for vested interests.
If I look at a micro sample which would my graduate school here, i see a tendency in people belonging to same regions hang out more together. Nothing wrong with that. It is purely a matter of choice more than anything else. But i also find people who have this notion that since people speaking 'their' language are almost equivalent to hindi speaking language, their language should alo be made national language or a certain super star from south should be made bharat ratna and so on. Again nothing wrong with that. Purely their opinion. I dont agree and dont find it to be socially correct to overtly disagree. There are people on the other side too who would use expressions like 'gult', 'southy' , 'illad', 'sambhar -dosa' and stuff like that to brand segregate and label people according to their convenience. Rather than the stupid politicians, there are these small tendencies in us which they aggravate to a point of conflict between individuals born to one land. I for one after coming here have learnt to judge people on merit rather than their mother tongue. Idiots and bigots can belong to both north and south but so do good people. We must learn to see good in human beings regardless of their caste color and creed or else we who weep for our lost sons and daughters abroad will have to weep for ones killed at home by our own hands.

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