(This is a post which includes my experiences in Trichy, where I stayed for around 2 months for my Practice School this summer, in BHEL. I have made an attempt to develop an opinion about certain aspects of this experience, and also tried a different style of writing, I hope it conveys the message)
Our life is a collection of experiences. An experience is our comprehension of a situation. A situation is an unequivocal reality. So our way of comprehending what we see, or our perception governs what we feel about a situation. What we develop out of these perceptions, is a view about the world, our interests, our way of life, our habits, our language, we develop a paradigm.
We don’t stick to one paradigm all our life, neither do we always become aware of our changing paradigms. The case in hand is one distinctive situation. I spent two months this summer in a city called Tiruchchirappalli in Tamil Nadu. I had to go through a two month, rigorous industrial training programme called Practice School I. Truly speaking, this was an experience. This case can be described in one line, as “an experience which mobilized a paradigm shift, not once, not twice, but countless number of times and it went on till the last day”.
This is a situation when you do not have, or you are not able to have, an unchanging opinion about a situation. Your perception is raped by the situation itself. It is as if life is showing you two pictures, both of which you strongly agree to, but they are in their very nature, contradicting! It is like you have a shining red Ferrari in your parking lot with huge maintenance issues. You can’t help cribbing about it to your friend in the back-seat, but love showing it off to those who come for tea.
Earlier Paradigm:
I come from a typical Marathi, middle-class family, from Thane city, a suburb of Mumbai. Having been part of the Bambaiyya culture for all my elapsed years, where hawkers and officers, South Indians and North Indians alike, speak the native Bambaiyya language, I had become almost convinced about the idea that language can never be barrier to communication. Although I had heard about the south, I never could grasp the notion that Hindi, the national language could be alien to any Indian. It was just one paradigm among many (which included ideas of food, travel, and dress-code) that was to be killed, and there were to be born, two completely new, fluctuating perspectives during my stay at Tiruchchirappalli.
The Situation and the Experience
Trichy, Tiruchy or Tiruchchirappalli, call it whatever you wish, strikes you first as a town with an obsession with temples, idli, wada and lungis. But that’s only the surface. The initial part of an extended stay in the city located dead-centre into Tamil Nadu, gives the Hindi speaking babu a feeling of hostility, lonliness and insecurity. Not more than one in twenty people can be found being able to speak more than few broken words in English, whereas Hindi is an alien language. It seems “Tamil Teriyaad” (I don’t know Tamil) is the most embarrassing statement that one can make over here. Moreover, the north Indian babu’s bias for the roti feeds his hatred for the Dravidian land.
Another cynical observation that may be included in the above described, what I would like to call, lower-side paradigm in the oscillation I am talking about is the apparently uncivilized way of life of the people. The poverty, the dirt, the extreme levels of traffic honking, and rash drivers give you a wary feeling. Beggars are at a high in this city, illiteracy is something I may not assert blatantly but it is a certain notion that one develops over time.
Having described the pessimistic hitchhiker’s viewpoint of the Tamil state, we shall move on the point of interest, that is, the shift of paradigm from the lower-side. As I continued my stay in Trichy, within a matter of two weeks, I developed a love-hate relationship with this place. This means, I had times when I was moved by the unfailingly polite and helpful nature of the Trichy folk. And I also had times when I was agitated by their unabashed indifference towards understanding or speaking any language apart from their native.
Consider this. In our hostel, we had a dhobi who had absolutely no clue about any other language apart from the native. He was lean man, not very old in age, considering that he had around 8 year old son, who he had brought along one evening to give away éclairs for it was his birthday. But he had wrinkles on his face. He smiled a big smile whenever he came, for it was the only thing he could do to say greetings to us. We used to smile back and give him our unwashed clothes. He used to take them and then count them in Tamil one-by-one (I learnt to count with him, something that amazingly, he didn’t care about) and the he would put them down and raise his fingers indicating what he counted, and he waited for an “OKAY ANNA”, and then he would smile and leave. When he would come next time, he would give away the clothes, and would show us the palm of his hand, where the total amount to be paid would be written. He came, without relenting, every week, till the end. And the last day when had to leave, he came to say good-bye. He waved his hand with the same old toothy smile and then pointed to his shirt pocket; something that we understood was a tip. My room-mate and I gave him ten rupees each. A total of only twenty rupees he got and he smiled again, something that I still remember very clearly, weeks later. Through him I saw no one else but the same old Indian father slogging off to educate his son, and not a tamil-speaking, arrogant man, as I would have thought, during my turmoil.
The anna who served me idli, occasionally wada, and the superb south Indian coffee in a hotel near the bus stand before going to work, had the initial sluggishness to respond to the broken Hindi-English jumble (broken so that I could convey the more important words and not to confuse him with as such unnecessary prepositions and conjunctions) but he noticed that I came every day, without hesitation. It is human instinct to be closed in your cultural cocoon, but the most basic instinct is the craving for a better livelihood. When he sees that, by caring about what he is getting rather than who he is getting it from, that meaning caring more about the opportunities offered than about the culture itself may be beneficial for him to get a better life, he is inevitably forced to look at the grass on the other side. This is what happened with the anna at breakfast, the dhobi anna, the watchman, and the friends we made in the hostel studying in a local college in Trichy. These people deserve a special mention because by pondering over the interactions I had with them and the stories I heard from them, I could stumble upon the harsh reality that sums up my essay. This was during the last few days of my stay and it also marked the end of the turmoil, with my opinion settling towards a positive side.
The opinion:
An opinion is the consequence of a stabilized paradigm. Rather, an ideal opinion must never rely on thoughts which are whimsical and mood-dependent.
After settling down back at home, contemplating over the happenings over the past two months and logically appreciating the story told by our fellow mates in the hostel (who were the only friends we ever made in Trichy) - about the anti-Hindi policy of the state government, and how the state has ended up restricting opportunities to its citizens by controlled cultural-exchange and cultural-policing- I could come only to one logical conclusion.
Culture is a result of a community’s repetitive behavior. Man is a slave to his own culture. His inertia to often stay back and feel at home often hinders his ability to envision a better life outside his self-built social-shell. Government is an institution that stands for the progress of a community. Now as it is seen in our country’s political divide too, the government can take two ways, either stand to protect its culture under any circumstance, and put integrity to self-proclaimed sociable behavior before the progress of the economic, educational and industrial infrastructure of the state, or, compromise on cultural integrity to achieve fast progress by encouraging cross-cultural interactions and thus promoting cultural-dilution (USA is a perfect example). Our democracy takes a stand somewhere in between these ideologies (or at least the constitution does, if not the current political scene), a state which is deemed ideal in nature. But probably the most unfortunate mistake that ever was committed in history of independent India was the division of states on the basis of ethnicity, a mistake which could possibly not be avoided anyways.
What was observed in Trichy city was a peculiar example of the strong-culture ideology. But what happens when a state with an increasing number of intellectual, progressive individuals is being governed by an old, narrow-minded government’s communal beliefs? There is tension. And this tension has its repercussions. As I saw in Trichy, many of the working class and student population had one long-standing plea- to be allowed enough opportunities for learning and residing outside their hometown. But when a government restricts the state from learning ‘alien’ languages to preserve its community, it is acting in a way that can only demonstrate its insecurity and incompetency. Such policies only make the state cripple, poor, illiterate and ignorant towards foreign opportunities. As such, I am left with nothing but pity over the poor Trichy-anna’s plight.
What I see in my state is the inertia of a long standing economy-strong ideology being hurt by the culture-strong ideology coming precariously to power. However, the Bambaiyya culture is fortunately so deep-rooted in the city people’s lifestyle that any attempt to communalize the state will be taken as a hilarious attempt to save the native interests. No wonder Mumbai is a city of dreams, no wonder I find people from all over the country making a better living (excluding certain recent situations). Because when you have to seek better bread, your home is never a priority, provided you are shown what lies beyond it. As for the policies of the communal party(s) in Mumbai, consider that sometimes a good culture suppresses policies, Mumbai is one such city. Hail the spirit of Mumbai.
Our life is a collection of experiences. An experience is our comprehension of a situation. A situation is an unequivocal reality. So our way of comprehending what we see, or our perception governs what we feel about a situation. What we develop out of these perceptions, is a view about the world, our interests, our way of life, our habits, our language, we develop a paradigm.
We don’t stick to one paradigm all our life, neither do we always become aware of our changing paradigms. The case in hand is one distinctive situation. I spent two months this summer in a city called Tiruchchirappalli in Tamil Nadu. I had to go through a two month, rigorous industrial training programme called Practice School I. Truly speaking, this was an experience. This case can be described in one line, as “an experience which mobilized a paradigm shift, not once, not twice, but countless number of times and it went on till the last day”.
This is a situation when you do not have, or you are not able to have, an unchanging opinion about a situation. Your perception is raped by the situation itself. It is as if life is showing you two pictures, both of which you strongly agree to, but they are in their very nature, contradicting! It is like you have a shining red Ferrari in your parking lot with huge maintenance issues. You can’t help cribbing about it to your friend in the back-seat, but love showing it off to those who come for tea.
Earlier Paradigm:
I come from a typical Marathi, middle-class family, from Thane city, a suburb of Mumbai. Having been part of the Bambaiyya culture for all my elapsed years, where hawkers and officers, South Indians and North Indians alike, speak the native Bambaiyya language, I had become almost convinced about the idea that language can never be barrier to communication. Although I had heard about the south, I never could grasp the notion that Hindi, the national language could be alien to any Indian. It was just one paradigm among many (which included ideas of food, travel, and dress-code) that was to be killed, and there were to be born, two completely new, fluctuating perspectives during my stay at Tiruchchirappalli.
The Situation and the Experience
Trichy, Tiruchy or Tiruchchirappalli, call it whatever you wish, strikes you first as a town with an obsession with temples, idli, wada and lungis. But that’s only the surface. The initial part of an extended stay in the city located dead-centre into Tamil Nadu, gives the Hindi speaking babu a feeling of hostility, lonliness and insecurity. Not more than one in twenty people can be found being able to speak more than few broken words in English, whereas Hindi is an alien language. It seems “Tamil Teriyaad” (I don’t know Tamil) is the most embarrassing statement that one can make over here. Moreover, the north Indian babu’s bias for the roti feeds his hatred for the Dravidian land.
Another cynical observation that may be included in the above described, what I would like to call, lower-side paradigm in the oscillation I am talking about is the apparently uncivilized way of life of the people. The poverty, the dirt, the extreme levels of traffic honking, and rash drivers give you a wary feeling. Beggars are at a high in this city, illiteracy is something I may not assert blatantly but it is a certain notion that one develops over time.
Having described the pessimistic hitchhiker’s viewpoint of the Tamil state, we shall move on the point of interest, that is, the shift of paradigm from the lower-side. As I continued my stay in Trichy, within a matter of two weeks, I developed a love-hate relationship with this place. This means, I had times when I was moved by the unfailingly polite and helpful nature of the Trichy folk. And I also had times when I was agitated by their unabashed indifference towards understanding or speaking any language apart from their native.
Consider this. In our hostel, we had a dhobi who had absolutely no clue about any other language apart from the native. He was lean man, not very old in age, considering that he had around 8 year old son, who he had brought along one evening to give away éclairs for it was his birthday. But he had wrinkles on his face. He smiled a big smile whenever he came, for it was the only thing he could do to say greetings to us. We used to smile back and give him our unwashed clothes. He used to take them and then count them in Tamil one-by-one (I learnt to count with him, something that amazingly, he didn’t care about) and the he would put them down and raise his fingers indicating what he counted, and he waited for an “OKAY ANNA”, and then he would smile and leave. When he would come next time, he would give away the clothes, and would show us the palm of his hand, where the total amount to be paid would be written. He came, without relenting, every week, till the end. And the last day when had to leave, he came to say good-bye. He waved his hand with the same old toothy smile and then pointed to his shirt pocket; something that we understood was a tip. My room-mate and I gave him ten rupees each. A total of only twenty rupees he got and he smiled again, something that I still remember very clearly, weeks later. Through him I saw no one else but the same old Indian father slogging off to educate his son, and not a tamil-speaking, arrogant man, as I would have thought, during my turmoil.
The anna who served me idli, occasionally wada, and the superb south Indian coffee in a hotel near the bus stand before going to work, had the initial sluggishness to respond to the broken Hindi-English jumble (broken so that I could convey the more important words and not to confuse him with as such unnecessary prepositions and conjunctions) but he noticed that I came every day, without hesitation. It is human instinct to be closed in your cultural cocoon, but the most basic instinct is the craving for a better livelihood. When he sees that, by caring about what he is getting rather than who he is getting it from, that meaning caring more about the opportunities offered than about the culture itself may be beneficial for him to get a better life, he is inevitably forced to look at the grass on the other side. This is what happened with the anna at breakfast, the dhobi anna, the watchman, and the friends we made in the hostel studying in a local college in Trichy. These people deserve a special mention because by pondering over the interactions I had with them and the stories I heard from them, I could stumble upon the harsh reality that sums up my essay. This was during the last few days of my stay and it also marked the end of the turmoil, with my opinion settling towards a positive side.
The opinion:
An opinion is the consequence of a stabilized paradigm. Rather, an ideal opinion must never rely on thoughts which are whimsical and mood-dependent.
After settling down back at home, contemplating over the happenings over the past two months and logically appreciating the story told by our fellow mates in the hostel (who were the only friends we ever made in Trichy) - about the anti-Hindi policy of the state government, and how the state has ended up restricting opportunities to its citizens by controlled cultural-exchange and cultural-policing- I could come only to one logical conclusion.
Culture is a result of a community’s repetitive behavior. Man is a slave to his own culture. His inertia to often stay back and feel at home often hinders his ability to envision a better life outside his self-built social-shell. Government is an institution that stands for the progress of a community. Now as it is seen in our country’s political divide too, the government can take two ways, either stand to protect its culture under any circumstance, and put integrity to self-proclaimed sociable behavior before the progress of the economic, educational and industrial infrastructure of the state, or, compromise on cultural integrity to achieve fast progress by encouraging cross-cultural interactions and thus promoting cultural-dilution (USA is a perfect example). Our democracy takes a stand somewhere in between these ideologies (or at least the constitution does, if not the current political scene), a state which is deemed ideal in nature. But probably the most unfortunate mistake that ever was committed in history of independent India was the division of states on the basis of ethnicity, a mistake which could possibly not be avoided anyways.
What was observed in Trichy city was a peculiar example of the strong-culture ideology. But what happens when a state with an increasing number of intellectual, progressive individuals is being governed by an old, narrow-minded government’s communal beliefs? There is tension. And this tension has its repercussions. As I saw in Trichy, many of the working class and student population had one long-standing plea- to be allowed enough opportunities for learning and residing outside their hometown. But when a government restricts the state from learning ‘alien’ languages to preserve its community, it is acting in a way that can only demonstrate its insecurity and incompetency. Such policies only make the state cripple, poor, illiterate and ignorant towards foreign opportunities. As such, I am left with nothing but pity over the poor Trichy-anna’s plight.
What I see in my state is the inertia of a long standing economy-strong ideology being hurt by the culture-strong ideology coming precariously to power. However, the Bambaiyya culture is fortunately so deep-rooted in the city people’s lifestyle that any attempt to communalize the state will be taken as a hilarious attempt to save the native interests. No wonder Mumbai is a city of dreams, no wonder I find people from all over the country making a better living (excluding certain recent situations). Because when you have to seek better bread, your home is never a priority, provided you are shown what lies beyond it. As for the policies of the communal party(s) in Mumbai, consider that sometimes a good culture suppresses policies, Mumbai is one such city. Hail the spirit of Mumbai.
