Friday, September 13, 2013

Dear Racists, I am not a Madrasi and nor is any South Indian!

Today was an amazing day, until something uncanny happened! We happened to go out for lunch after many Fridays. Since mom and Roger are in Kerala and I am almost done with clogging up my bags with clothes and books, this was small hope in the offing. For it seems, after hopping homes it would be long before I could catch up on this kind of Friday fun. We first went to buy books, two of us who read and the other three went bowling in the meanwhile. I picked a few more short story collections that won't read like cliche. Seemingly this reading ritual will help me improvise on my writing skills, so will it help a few more story ideas to take root in mind. What scripted the destiny of this day was the behavior and mannerisms of my batch mates that left me wide eyed.
After our shopping spree, both of us ladies, decided to book the tickets for the men in the group. While the movie of choice was something I had seen two weeks ago, the experience didn't ring in my head at all except for John Abraham of course. While that reminds me of the fact that I am yet to review that movie "Madras Cafe" and give it a four star rating for sure. I went over to see a beefy John Abraham playing with fire and ice, any number of times can I sit in the depths of darkness of a movie hall, to see that gorgeous Malayali. While I sat through the meaty tales of the movie, I decided to surprise the other people by taking them for a typical South Indian lunch. For not everyday, do these people mostly from the plains of Northern India get to feed on South Indian cuisine. After the movie, I gave them an intimation of my ideas. 



While two of them jumped at the idea, two others frowned and distanced themselves from it.
What left me agape was the ill use of language. One of them said "mujhe nahi khana madrasi khana, tumko jana hai to jao." (Translation: I don't want to have "madrasi" food, if you wish to, please go ahead!)
I wonder how can people living in this part of the planet summon enough audacity to define every South Indian as a madrasi? I mean how does that make sense? Since mom and dad are from Kerala, how can I or for that matter them ever become madrasis. Is every South Indian from Madras and as a facebook friend was saying every north Indian a punjabi? And every person with mongloid features a chinki? 
I fumed and seethed in anger, and left for good. I didn't want to fend for an answer from a group of brainless buffoons. At that time burning myself would have only ruined the professional diplomacy I was expected to deft for some more time.

What is hard to digest is these are the kind of people who march against the foreigners and bad mouth them left, right and centre when an Indian is attacked in the west. When we can't treat our own brethren with respect does that make sense? This headless display of hypocritical stereotyping.

1 comment:

S. Susan Deborah said...

People never learn and brush their so called common sense and general knowledge. Let them wither away in their bloody ignorance.

Joy always,
Susan

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