I am living in south india for last two years.I still remember my first step in land of idily and vada with everything is full of coconut and kadi patta.There is peculiar smell of state which is imprinted in my mind.And language here spoken is no way related to hindi .So I am still strugling to talk to my servant or shopkeepers. But life here is quite relaxed , 9-5 job , enough time to enjoy with your family , doing reearch.When I wa s in delhi , I struggled a lot to take some time out of my schedule for research work.
But East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet” is a poem we grew up with. When I moved to Vellore from Noida three years back what Rudyard Kipling wrote about came home to me albeit with the directions changed. I substituted North and South for East and West.
Membership of this “community” had its rewards as one could make friends instantly. This was essential as down South the Hindi-speaking crowd is usually shunned. Friendly bursts of exuberance and overt display of hospitality meets with as much a cold eye as a bewildered one. Good natured ribbing about how people down South ate, how frugally they lived and dressed, how conspicuous was the absence of an invitation to come inside upon knocking at a door, how the curt and businesslike “Tell me” ruled over any small talk or how people emerging from a sleek Mercedes wearing worn-out chappals usually got conversation buzzing.
However, compartmentalising one’s social circle did not seem the right option and so I started the quest to learn about the “other side”. There, too, was a grand old circle, equally forbidding. My friends would introduce me with the words “he is from the North”. This I realised could also be taken for being a show-off by many South Indians.
I have come to accept the underbelly, which the North presents to the South as much as I understand the South also presents an underbelly; the traits are, of course, different. North is North and South is South, and it will be some time before they can meet.
