Ravings of a Nomadic Mind

Well my parents and every one I’m related to, except for one of my uncle, is Mallu, but I am a fraud Mallu, I mean I was born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. So I’m pretty good with languages, I mean, before I was three I was replying to queries from all my relatives in English or Hindi. They would shoot stuff at me in Malayalam, and I would understand what they were saying and reply back in the languages I was comfortable in. The same went for my neighbors they would shoot stuff at me in marwari and id try and twist my tongue around it and it all came out gibberish. So before I was three I was teaching people new languages and making my own language every second day. I was that good.

Any way my point about languages is this, people change, that’s constant. But the thing is as people and things change tolerance levels narrow, and keep narrowing. Zee Café shows “Mind Your Language”, an old British comedy about immigrants’ learning to speak in English, its pretty hilarious, I used to watch it as a kid and so I enjoy watching it now too. There is an Indian lady, in a sari and a big bun, a Sardar, a Muslim, all with south east Asian accents and mannerisms, them there is a Mao spewing red handbook carrying Chinese girl, two Romeos, one Greek and the other Italian two steaming hot females from Italy and France, the Japanese is serious and extremely polite, and the Russian female looks like she is the warden of a prison. It feeds your stereotyped appetite and it’s funny and hilarious in parts. The Indian impressions are true to home remind me of my aunts and cousins abroad.

But dare if you try and make some thing like that today. You children would learn to spell the words “Law Suit” and “Racism” before they say “dada” or “Mama”. I was watching a Russell Peters DVD, he is a stand up comic of Indian origin from Canada, and he specializes in racist jokes. Well and people pay so that they can sit in the auditorium and he will ask you where are you from and make jokes about you and your country, he doesn’t spare any one Indians, south east Asians, Chinese, whites, everyone is fair target. But try and make the same joke around your office water cooler and you would probably end up taking a sanitization seminar in the best case scenario, or get fired in the worst.

The classic movie Casablanca ends with Bogart’s character telling his friend the police chief “you Know Louie this could be the start of a beautiful friendship”. Put in a line like that in the most chick flickest of chick flick’s today and it would be called gay especially if it’s two men walking into the sunrise. Its not racism I guess, because as far as I am concerned racism is the hatred of one type of people completely and utterly. But is calling a black guy, black, racist? He is black, calling him the politically correct term African American or a brown dude Indian American is stupid, it implies that even though he is American by citizen ship they are not entirely secure in their identity as Americans they want another label to segregate them. We create these politically acceptable labels to describe our selves and end up segregating our selves. The funny part is, we do tend to do stupid stuff we as a community segregate our selves and stereotype ourselves, Indian will talk a particular way, so will Chinese, so will British and so will Americans. The Scots or the Germans are no better nor are the blacks, we try to differentiate ourselves in the way we dress, talk, eat food and even in the way we walk but will leap into flying rages if some one points it out to us. The British create the image of the mindless, beer chugging hooligans, the Germans of humorless, technical stars. The Americans will pretend to be bourbon chugging hot dog eating obese football fans, but dare any one poke fun at them.

The case is similar in India no matter how much we educate each other, the Tamil will loath to speak any other language, even if they know them. Malayalee’s, have the most complicated political intrigues going on even if its managing a simple church group, Bengalis will spew over vowelated English words while discoursing on the finer points of Marx, Lenin and Mao still if some one points that out you would probably be shot at. I am not saying that there is not racism, branding every Bihari a thief is probably bad and or calling every Australian, murderer at that is not good either, but for a moment don’t we think we are dragging it too far, today people take offence at being called “Monkey”, but “Son of a bitch!” or “bastard!” becomes an admiration. We do weave twisted webs and then we cry when we cant step out of them.

Oh my latest attempt at learning a language was at Kannada, my friends used to tell me that listening to any south Indian language was like hearing stones rattling in match box and I, being exposed to Malayalam and Tamil, felt defensive and irritated. But the moment I landed in Karnataka I realized that eating rock candy or rolling dice in a plastic container was a bad idea, the people around me might think I was swearing at them. It is really odd how a language comes across to some one else when they don’t understand the nuances of it. The word for hanging in Malayalam and sleeping in Tamil is the same, so when I heard some one tell me that they were going to sleep in Tamil for the first time I asked why was he compelled to hang himself and where was he going to do that? Good that I did that and got a clarification, my second instinct was to go get the police, boy that would have been an uncomfortable conversation, had I done that. I hope you get what I mean. The world would be a lot better place if people laughed at them selves a little more and stopped taking offense a little less.