IBNCD-Indian Born Not so Confused Desi

Shruthi keeps asking me if I am a Maharashtrian whenever she sees me. She came to conclusion that I am a Maharashtrian since my mother tongue is Marathi. Shruthi is my "mooh boli behan" or "koodapirava thangai" (like my younger sister). She was very curious to know where I belonged from. I told her that I am not a Maharashtrian. "Then what are you?" she pressed again. "Do you want to listen to a story?", I asked her. She seemed interested and thus today I explained to her my origins.

Before actually telling you my origins, I have been asked the same question by other people many times. Sometimes, I am sick of explaining it to them. Some don't believe it and some don't understand what I am talking about. I don't blame them for their ignorance.
I can be broadly classified under a Tam Bram (Tamil brahmin), but I am neither an Iyer nor an Iyengar...ok..I can understand your confusion. I think I will tell you the story anyway.

Everyone knows about Maharaja Chatrapathi Shivaji Bhonsle. His half brother Venkoji Rao Bhonsle came to Thanjavur in 1676AD and established an empire without any formal ties with the erstwhile Maratha Empire. Along with him many people, including my ancestors migrated to the south of India. So some people settled in Karnataka, some in Andhra and majority of them in Tamilnadu. On the way my father's great great granddad settled in Karnataka, near Arisikere. Whereas my maternal mother's side are actually from Thanjavur itself. My maternal father's side genealogy can be traced back to Bijapur sultan's regime. It so happens that some great ancestor of this lineage was in the court of Bijapur sultan. I don't remember the actual name of the sultan and the year and neither my ancestor.

Interestingly, my surname is “Yennamalli”. It sounds like Kotthamalli (Coriander) in Tamil. :P This is my ancestral village name that is present in my uncle's initials and my cousins as well. The interesting part is that only recently I came to know that this village is in the border of Andhra pradesh and Karnataka. Great heavens, one more state to add..... :)

More interesting, is that the language spoken by my community is so different from Marathi itself. I honestly can say that I can't comprehend a pure marathi conversation. Infact the language in my opinion hasn't changed or say evolved since 17th century. It is called Tanjore/Tanjavur Marathi. If I meet a person of my same community who is a total stranger to me, we will be speaking to each other in the same tone, accent and use the same identical words. There is no written down grammar for this and also there is no script for writing. It is quite understandable to think that the language has used the regional language grammar in the broader sense. Like Tamil grammar with marathi words.

Where does my confusion starts? Right here, when I have explain the whole story. I am quite not sure where exactly I am placed. We have a separate community, with its own customs and rituals, follow the same tradition. Still, I cant define myself as to which state I belong to. I have found the same Thanjavur marathi speaking people in Delhi, but they don't seem to be perturbed by someone asking the same questions.

In anyway, I am so confident of my origins and quite happy and proud that I am this way. I will tell you why. When some one approaches me saying ”Raghu you are marathi speaking guy, why don't you contribute for our Marathi function?” I will be like “I am a Tamilian. I am not Marathi”.....and vice versa as well....Honestly, I have used this tactic only once or twice but my friends keep making fun of such imaginary situations and predict the way I will react. Born and brought up in Madras/Chennai, personally, I am more of a tamilian than a maharastrian. I love the Tamil language and read lot of tamil books, mostly historical fiction ones.

Finally, after hearing my origin story, Shruthi was kind of more confused and before she could ask one more question, I interrupted her and said “Shruthi, let's leave it at this stage that I am an Indian born not so confused desi..” She laughed at my statement and asked “Not so confused???” “Yeah..I am not confused as to where my roots are”. In the end, she decided that she will not ask my origins again, since she realized by now that asking for it is like opening pandora box of unanswerable questions.

My first visit to Australia

Brisbane River from the University

Well, I know I am posting this a bit late. I visited Australia (for that matter any other country) in 2004. Yes, I know it is quite a long time before. But still, I thought I will share this with you. As soon as it was confirmed that I will be flying to Brisbane, Australia my whole family was very happy, of course. I was very scared in the beginning, but things smoothened out gradually. I am talking about how to handle situations in foreign places. To start with, I don't have much exposure to Australian accent, since most of the time we see Hollywood movies, which have a Yankee accent. To me all accents seemed the same, that's what I used to think. Talking about accents may be racist, but that's another story to tell as well. Maybe in next blog.

The D-day arrived. I was in the airport with my luggage and my family. As I said before that this was my first experience to travel alone to abroad that too on an aeroplane!!! The flight path was from Chennai to Bangkok to Brisbane. After saying goodbye with moist eyes, I took my boarding pass and went to security immediately. Later on, I realized that I could have spent some more time with my family before going into the security as they had tickets that allowed them to stay for an hour or so inside the airport. In anycase, I had to wait for an hour till we boarded the flight.

The guy sitting next to me was a travel agent in Chennai, and guesses it right that it was my first flight outside India. (I was feeling jittery because the last time I took a flight for travel was during my 7th standard..eons ago!!!) We had a small chat and after some time I started enjoying the show they showed on the screen and happy to see pretty Thai airhostesses.

When the flight landed at Bangkok (now the old airport) it was 5AM and I had no clue what to do next. I asked a lot of people for directions and finally dawned on me that my travel agent had booked a hotel room for me in the city and didnt even bother to tell me that one needs a visa to enter inside Bangkok. There I was making a fool of myself. Then I pleaded with the airport staff and she was very considerate enough to transfer my hotel booking to the accomodation inside the terminal itself. The last thing I remember after I locked the room was I fell on the bed and slept for good 5 hours straight.

I had my bath and was very fresh. Now what? Lets see the airport since we couldnt see the city. Atleast I will treat my eyes with the airport pleasures. The first thing that hit my senses was the crude smell of southeast asian food to which I was never exposed. I saw one T-shirt that had a beautiful imprint of an elephant with golden tusks. It was way too expensive. I decide to window shop from then on. Getting hungry I bought some snacks that I verified more than twice that it was vegetarian and went to my room, saw some thai channels and dozed off again.

The connecting flight was at 11:30 PM. Imagine stuck inside the aiport for 18 hrs and nothing else to do other than seeing other blank faces and smelling fish everywhere. Finally I boarded the flight and was happy to see a change in environment. Again I had to curse my travel agent, the reason being he didn't fix my meal preferences and guess what there was no vegetarian available for breakfast. After 8 hours of gruelling travel, sitting next to a plump woman who had difficulties in fitting into an economoy seat, we landed in Brisbane.

The temperature was hot and thats when I remembered that the climate pattern in different. SO it was summer whereas in Delhi it was winter still. The first thing that struck me when we were in the car was the vast expanse of the place. My supervisor had volunteered to pick me up and he was mentioning various things on the way to the university. I started liking Birsbane already.

The Indian guys with whom I was staying temporarily had all gone to the university for their daily work. I was having doem food when I heard a knock on the door and there was a guy standing at the door and when I opened it, he seemed confused and asked if it was the right door number. Guess what he was one of the guys of the apartment and I mistook him for some stranger who has knocked the wrong door. We all had a good laugh when everyone had returned back.

One of the things that I can never forget was me stepping on a snake (a python to be precise) on the way to the supermarket. I was screaming and I ran back to the house and my friend jokingly asked if I saw a snake. I was quite terrified. This happened like a week after I arrived in brisbane.
One day early morning, I was woken up by the noise of someone laughing loudly. I thought some drunk guy is laughing like this, but I couldn't see anyone. Thinking it as a "Bramai" of my mind I ignored it. Later on, I realized that it was the sound of Kookaburra bird and people call it as a the "laugh of Kookaburra"!!! From then on I was on the lookout for a Kookaburra so that I can laugh back at it. Anyway it never happened.

The most enjoyable part was my colleague at the university took me to sailing and it was fun. We did camping in tents, which I had never done in my life before. Having bonfire and talking and drinking all night long was quite an experience. I used to enjoy the lunch breaks we had near the lake with water hen and big lizards that enjoyed my indian food. :)

This lizard about 2 foot long loved my cooking!!!

This was not my only experience with Australia. Infact, in my second trip in 2006 I visited more places. Will write in detail in next post.

My experience at Wagah border

On my first visit to Amritsar, Punjab in March 2007, I was very thrilled to see the Golden Temple, the very seat of Sikhism. Also, I planned to eat all the punjabi delicacies and the original lassi, topped with butter and do lot of shopping as well. But my excitement went to the peak when I realized that I can visit India-Pakistan border at Wagah and see the ceremonial retreat, which is a half an hour drive from Amritsar. Initially I was a bit tensed since it IS the INTERNATIONAL border of India and Pakistan.

Well, I was preparing myself mentally about these things. We went by a taxi arranged by the Guru Nanak Dev University where I was giving a lecture to the students. One of the students accompanied us and was describing the daily event to me. On the way we saw the Second line of defense and near to the border we saw the first line of defense. I was amazed that there are agricultural fields within the first line of defense and it spans the other side of the border as well. I was told that farmers with special permission still till the land.

We walked for about 500 mtrs to the gate from the parking area. I was getting a bit apprehensive and at the same time I was thinking the importance of the border and the retreat. Instead of taking the straight road to the gates on each border we were taken a detour on the right hand side to the point where there is a milestone which has INDIA written on the side facing our country. Just a foot way is Pakistan. Can you imagine if I want to place a foot on the other side at that place I need a visa? Two Border Security Force jawans with AK-47 mounted on horses were watching every one's move. Exactly on the other side were two Pakistani Rangers on horses and watching us. There was just a steel railing separating us to them in that point. There were Pakistanis as well walking opposite to us on similar path. In fact the impenetrable border looked to me so simple.
The path turned left and we came close to the gates separating the border. That's when I realized that I was standing in "No man's land". Wow....that's what I said to myself. Now that's as close as I can get to see my country's boundary. After finding a suitable place to sit and view the whole retreat, I was told that everyday there is a huge rush to see display of power. I could see the Pakistani galleries clearly and many of the Pakistanis were shouting slogans and beating drums to which the Indians were laughing and booing. Huge speakers were blaring all the patriotic songs and many people started dancing on the very road to those tunes. In fact the best part was to see children dancing merrily. I was not sure if they had understood why they were dancing. Any case, it was quite heartening to see these events. All the time, people (including me) shouted "Bharat Mata ki Jai" "Hindustan Jindabad" "Vande Mataram". We were instructed not to shout any other slogans

Then there was the announcement and six BSF jawans paraded in front of us. This was the event I had been eagerly waiting for so many years. One by one, six of them marched with long steps and showed their chest proudly to the Pakistani side, and so were the Pakistanis to Indian side. It was a very coordinated process that it looked as if they had rehearsed it. The gates were opened so forcefully to show each one's strength. At the sound of the bugle, both the countries flag were hoisted down and folded neatly and brought to the room where it will be kept for the night.

At the end, I started thinking about the display of hostility that is clearly seen on both sides, even though I am told this is toned down recently due to the peace prevailing between the two countries. I couldn't comprehend that it is just an imaginary line that is separating us from them. I saw the local Pakistanis from a distance but they don't look any different from us. They were wearing the same clothes and in fact their drum beats was identical to our Bhangra beats. For different people, Wagah border symbolizes different things. For some, it is the pride for India, for some it is the display of hostility each one of us harbour. For some it is a picnic spot and for some a major tourist attraction. For me, it is the very symbol of our partition. It is the symbol of the ongoing peace between the two countries. For me, it is what we have to remember every moment that the people on the side are also humans made of the same blood.

Well, in the end I ticked off an item from my "List of things I have to see and experience before I die".

My first post

Since this is the first post I am posting, or should I say blogging. Anycase, here starts my wonderful world of blogging.
:)