Firstly , I would like to say that any exaggeration which has gone too far are regreted . One remarkable thing I have noted in the comments posted is that almost all of them more or less agree to atleast one of my claims .Now what makes it remarkable is that all the posts are by my dear old South Indians . It makes one think if all of us share the same psycology .Whether our thinking is influenced not only by our peers and freinds and happenings around us but also by the regional background that we share . Surely eating "avakkaya" and "pulihara" cannot influence one's thinking . But the fact remains --we do share a common opinon .
As one of the comments reminds it is individual effort which matters most while building stong relations [especially when we come from different ethinicities] . As I ponder over the reason for our similar thought process here is one more interesting thing that I have noted in my stay in I.S.M ;namely ---South Indian names . If u are a North Indian this blog will surely remind you of the nightmares that our names gave you.
There was a guy named Subba rao . No one knew what was before or after Subba rao . He wrote his JEE and entered I.S.M and all of a sudden Machiraju Venkata Rama Subba Rao was born . Poor old Subba had thought his name was perfectly normal but little did he know that all his north indian batch mates where cursing him for "releasing" that vast name. And us south indians seemed to cruise along with that titanic of a name . You see in my college it is absolutely neccesary to know the names of all your batchmates . So ...you can imagine what trouble Aakash Verma or Harsh Kumar or any other northie went through . But they have something to feel happy about .Subba ,being the nice guy he is didnot "release" his 'real' full name . If he had done so , there would have been serious trouble.
I am helpless guys !!!. It was not me who named me . Rajagoplan Venkata Raghavan had to suffer when his name was being called in all weird ways ,all wrong ways,and not to mention funny ways . This one time i got called 'vekanta' by my lab assistant . Now, that is bad when you have 3 girls sitting and laughing at this weird pronounciation. None of my friends had a merry time with his name during our ragging . Things went bad when one got the other guy's name wrong and half the times the other guy was a south indian ,the reason behind being the villanous senior who wanted to see the northie fumble with the poor southies' name . Man !!!!! What monsters . And at last it was the southie who got blamed for having a long name. Even this matter is settled now since we have come to third year . And we have a good laugh when we remember the 'nomenclature nuisance' .
raghavan
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Saturday, September 02, 2006
WOW !!!!!!! A South-Indian
I have been watching the comedy by Russell Peters lately and I have to say that the guy is damn funny .Some of his jokes can bring waterin one's eyes . For those who don't have much idea Russell is a canadian comedian with an anglo-indian descent .For more info check out <<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Peters >> . Those who had the patience to read the entire thing must have noted the fact that much of his material explores the cultural divides between many different ethnicities . Well , one might wonder how such a track can be funny but .....believe me when I tell u people, it is damn funny.
The guy, really, as wiki says compares people from different ethnic backgrounds and just presents the difference in a unique way . Offcourse there is some exaggeration involved but I think it is acceptable. Some of his comparisions involve jamaicans and indians, americans and indians, english folk, chinese folk ,sri lankan folk ....you know the whole lot. And sometimes the things that he says about us indians turn out to be true to some extent .And the thing to notice is that such simple/small matter often escape one's thought .
Seeing him compare all different kinds of people , my attention turned immediately to my local neighbour hood ,that is ,my college campus. Again for those don't know, i study in Indian School Of mines in Dhanbad,Jharkand {yeah,yeah...erstwhile bihar} and we have people from all over Indian coming and reading here. You have J&K to chennai, and jaipur to kolkatta. And when one puts all the guys in one hostel one can witness one hell of a comedy show ,LIVE . Especially between the south and the north because the south indian {boletho the 4 states} cannot speak hindi properly and the north indians {many} are not good in english . Some of them reply in hindi even when questioned in english . I guess there is some strong anti- english thing going around with those guys . And in 99% of the cases none of the two parties has interacted with each other before landing themselves in this place. And that is where the comedy begins ........
>>OH!!!!!!! You are a south indian !!!!! WOW ,u look like any other normal human being ...i thought ppl down south have some extra physical features . I hope u live on oxygen ....do you ??? Do u know hindi ???
>>ahhh ...no sorry i don't
>> OH !! that's right u must be speaking "that " language at ur place
Each one finds the ways of the other guy pretty weird and doen't understand them even after 4 yrs of b.tech. When I saw the northie eat this dosa with a spoon--- I was shocked .When he ate jalebi and had tea after that I felt something funny in my stomach. And similarly when he saw me mixing rice with my hands ,he was pretty suprised.
One of my senior was asked by his relative if the currency used here is Rupees or not . MAN!!!! Now that is now n-bomb dropped right on his head. Imagine want went through him when that question was thrown at his .
This one time, there was sambar made in the mess for lunch ,after days of roti torture. And this guy comes and sits beside me and says {in hindi} "well...u must be feeling happy .....isnt't this want goes on in our house every day "
>> ahh......no
>>> NO !!! what else do u eat ???
>> sometimes roti,puri and other stuff
>> Abhe !!! u make rotis also ...mast yaar
Come on !!!!! how insane can one be .Yeah, he might have little knowledge about south indians but just because I am one does'nt mean I have been eating rice, sambar and rasam all my life since my birth . Like , I don't go around asking guys from rajasthan "hey !! Does your father ride on camels to his work place" or "does the camel come and pick you up from the railway staion" .Nor i would a expect a guy from gujarat to eat 'dhoklas' every day .OK,now that good an example but I hope you get the point.
I want to merely present the situation in the initial days of coming into such multi-ethnic places. The solution one finds to overcome these ethnic boundaries is left to him/her . The basic problem in such cases , I think is lack of information and communication and most of all-- assumption . We seem to simply assume stuff about the other guy .Language as I said seems to a hurdle in this case ,but definitely a crossable one . All that is needed is to go the guy ,shake his hand and start speaking. Now that we are in 3rd year, we are pretty cool about all this "cultural background" thing or I would say we got used to it . As some one pointed out, once one gets busy in building a stong relationship with people these ethnicities don't matter . But initally when we land into such situations we are in for one good hearty comedy show.
The guy, really, as wiki says compares people from different ethnic backgrounds and just presents the difference in a unique way . Offcourse there is some exaggeration involved but I think it is acceptable. Some of his comparisions involve jamaicans and indians, americans and indians, english folk, chinese folk ,sri lankan folk ....you know the whole lot. And sometimes the things that he says about us indians turn out to be true to some extent .And the thing to notice is that such simple/small matter often escape one's thought .
Seeing him compare all different kinds of people , my attention turned immediately to my local neighbour hood ,that is ,my college campus. Again for those don't know, i study in Indian School Of mines in Dhanbad,Jharkand {yeah,yeah...erstwhile bihar} and we have people from all over Indian coming and reading here. You have J&K to chennai, and jaipur to kolkatta. And when one puts all the guys in one hostel one can witness one hell of a comedy show ,LIVE . Especially between the south and the north because the south indian {boletho the 4 states} cannot speak hindi properly and the north indians {many} are not good in english . Some of them reply in hindi even when questioned in english . I guess there is some strong anti- english thing going around with those guys . And in 99% of the cases none of the two parties has interacted with each other before landing themselves in this place. And that is where the comedy begins ........
>>OH!!!!!!! You are a south indian !!!!! WOW ,u look like any other normal human being ...i thought ppl down south have some extra physical features . I hope u live on oxygen ....do you ??? Do u know hindi ???
>>ahhh ...no sorry i don't
>> OH !! that's right u must be speaking "that " language at ur place
Each one finds the ways of the other guy pretty weird and doen't understand them even after 4 yrs of b.tech. When I saw the northie eat this dosa with a spoon--- I was shocked .When he ate jalebi and had tea after that I felt something funny in my stomach. And similarly when he saw me mixing rice with my hands ,he was pretty suprised.
One of my senior was asked by his relative if the currency used here is Rupees or not . MAN!!!! Now that is now n-bomb dropped right on his head. Imagine want went through him when that question was thrown at his .
This one time, there was sambar made in the mess for lunch ,after days of roti torture. And this guy comes and sits beside me and says {in hindi} "well...u must be feeling happy .....isnt't this want goes on in our house every day "
>> ahh......no
>>> NO !!! what else do u eat ???
>> sometimes roti,puri and other stuff
>> Abhe !!! u make rotis also ...mast yaar
Come on !!!!! how insane can one be .Yeah, he might have little knowledge about south indians but just because I am one does'nt mean I have been eating rice, sambar and rasam all my life since my birth . Like , I don't go around asking guys from rajasthan "hey !! Does your father ride on camels to his work place" or "does the camel come and pick you up from the railway staion" .Nor i would a expect a guy from gujarat to eat 'dhoklas' every day .OK,now that good an example but I hope you get the point.
I want to merely present the situation in the initial days of coming into such multi-ethnic places. The solution one finds to overcome these ethnic boundaries is left to him/her . The basic problem in such cases , I think is lack of information and communication and most of all-- assumption . We seem to simply assume stuff about the other guy .Language as I said seems to a hurdle in this case ,but definitely a crossable one . All that is needed is to go the guy ,shake his hand and start speaking. Now that we are in 3rd year, we are pretty cool about all this "cultural background" thing or I would say we got used to it . As some one pointed out, once one gets busy in building a stong relationship with people these ethnicities don't matter . But initally when we land into such situations we are in for one good hearty comedy show.
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