See the City, not the sites!

Many of us go to different cities all our lives.

But when we wish to see the city, what do we do??

We get someone native to SHOW us the city or (rarely) hire a "City Darshan" cab or bus.

It is ok to go this way. But something is lacking here.

In my opinion a city is not to be seen or shown.

It is to be experienced. By travelling. By communicating with different 'city'zens.

But how to meet these people? How to meet the city's soul? - Well, no doubt, you have to go to the city. But that won't serve the purpose. Just by going to the city you don’t Meet the city.

(And now I will start dishing out Gyaan about how to do it. Well, it might sound utterly obvious to some, but this is my shot at it. Please do comment if you have anything to convey :) )

One way to do it, and that too with minimum expenditure, is to use the PUBLIC TRANSPORT.

And what better than an omnipresent BUS!!

You get all sorts of people in the Bus. And all of them are in their "city specific basics".

They would talk to you in the city accent and expect you to change yours! It’s in the city buses that you get to SEE how the people are. How they talk. How they carry themselves. How they do the transactions. And nonetheless, you get to have a look at the population distribution of the city.

E.g. In Pune, almost all of them speak in Marathi. You are sure to find a quarter of the bus full of students - schoolboys and girls, college going public. And, interestingly, each of them has a repartee ready if he/she is spoken to!

In Mumbai's local trains (the public transport there), the picture is different. You would see almost everyone going to or returning from his JOB. A typical Mumbaikar in the local is a Man- aged between 25 to 45, fluent in Hindi though not much in Marathi as it is splintered with Hinglish. He mostly wears dark colored pants (strikingly, I didn’t find the jeans popular), and a light colored shirt and a ball point pen in the breast pocket. But the most defining thing is this - Every single man in the train is sweating like hell and he just does not recognize this! I mean, when I am in the local I have to carry an extra hanky. But Mumbaikars just don’t give a damn to all the heat and the humidity!

Also, everyone in the train knows everything in politics, cricket and Bollywood! You talk to any of them about anything and he will literally enlighten you!

In Delhi, you have two distinguished public transport - the omnipresent buses and the Metro.

(An interesting fact - In Delhi, the conductor does not wear a uniform. He is just a teenager boy with ruffled hair and humming a Bollywood song. And the bus actually waits till it is sufficiently full and the conductor boy jumps out and shouts aloud the destination to attract the passengers just like autowallahs at Swargate do!)

And the crowd in both are different. (May be resembling Old Delhi and New Delhi ;-) )

In one, you find a not-so-rich public with no high-end mobile phones. And the moment you get into a metro, you cannot help but notice the difference. It is more 'Cool' and Colorful- people, their clothes, even the stations and the trains! Here you have a public which is (a little more) sophisticated.

But in both the transports, you will find that the commuter public is a mix of Delhites, Punjabi, Bihari, South Indians, Maharashtrians, North-East Indians etc etc. And why won’t it be? After all you are in the NCR!!

Though this is only about three metros I have visited, I think the Way can be safely generalized to any city. (Actually,I never really had an opportunity to travel to other wonderful places!)

So the next time you think of hiring an autoriksha, think of PUBLIC TRANSPORT as an alternative. You save money. You help to tackle climate change(?). And the best part - You get to know where you live!

(For Punekars, the next time you get onto a PMT, try to SEE the crowd inside forgetting that you yourself are a Punekar. I bet you will find it amusing!!)

India or Pakistan ?

I was travelling from Nagpur to Akola in Vidarbha Express.
And as usual I bought a General Class ticket and met TTE to ask for reservation till Akola. ( It is not illegal to ask for such a favour. Afterwards you have to pay the difference i.e. Rs 85 which will fetch you a receipt and a berth)

Well that day, fortunately or unfortunately, TTE denied to allot me a berth and warned me if he found me in Sleeper Class, he will charge me Rs 250.

Left with no option I literally pushed myself into General Class.
And managed to get a seat (I am still proud of it that I made the man on that upper berth displace his luggage!!)

Beside me there was a boy around 14 years old.
Once the train caught pace, I took out Outlook from my bag and started skimming through the index. I think the boy beside me shifted himself to get a comfortable view of the magazine.
He was more curious than me about the pictures of Naxalites, protestors etc etc.
Everytime I turned a page he would look for the pictures on that page.
Many a times he asked me who are those in the pictures.
I was trying to explain him the pictures. I told him that the rich are forcefully buying the poor's land.. I told him who is fighting versus whom in Orissa.. (And that Orissa is just another state in our country like his own Maharashtra).. That the doctors in Govt hospitals take 'rishwat' to treat patients.. That 'that' is the railway station in Mumbai where Aatankwadi's killed people..and so on.


But the real shock came after that.
I was reading an article about the wars India fought against Pakistan and how 1947 and the partition is the wrong lens to look at Pakistan and that the hurt that moves Pakistan is from a wound more recent -1971 .. blah blah blah..
There was a picture of Gen Niazi surrendering after the 1971 war.
As usual he asked what are they doing?
I told him we had defeated Pakistan in 1971. And the picture had been taken when 'they' capitulated.
The boy looked at the picture trying to recall something. He thought something was definitely wrong..

He thought for some more time and decided to give vent to his doubt and asked with the innocence of a child,
"pan apanach tar pakistan ahe na?"
{"BUT WE ARE PAKISTANIs NA???"}

WHAT THE FFFF??

I immediately asked him whether he went to school ..EVER??.
The answer was a meek No. He had left school after 4th std. And then he started to work on a construction site to earn a living.
But most interestingly he was not ashamed or even surprised when I told him which country he belongs to!
For him it was just another thing he did not know which did not matter!!!

What does it mean to be an Indian?

So this is my first post friends..
And I am going to dedicate this post to Mera Bharat Mahaan!!!
And in this post I wish to discuss the core of INDIANNESS !!!

So WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN INDIAN ? OR WHAT IS INDIANNESS?

Call it a psychological concept or a common thread that binds all the billion Indians together or anything you like. But the issue at hand is quite abstruse to grasp.

Right from our childhood we have been taught to identify ourselves. We are taught that we are living things and not non-living things; we are animals and not plants; we are mammals and not ..well.. non-mammals; we are human beings and not chimpanzees.
We are taught to distinguish ourselves and many a times via negativa.

In this respect Indianness is just another identity we all have got right from our birth. For instance, I am from Akola in Maharashtra. When I go to Gujarat I am Maharashtrian. When I go to China, I am an Indian and so on.

BUT Does the concept of indianness end here?
Well, any affirmative answer will be indicative of a superficial thought.

So what else is it?
Before even trying to answer this question it will be of utmost importance to know the origins of the term 'Hindustani'.
Just if don't know- Rivers had names long before land teritories.
From river Sindhu, came Sidh. According to the usages from Greeks and Iranians, came Ind and Hind. Persians used the suffix -stan to refer to a large territories and so the land beyond the Sind or Hind became Hindustan and its inhabitants became Hindus.
Pleasently surprising is the fact that the use of these terms to refer to religious body came much later, after Muslims established themselves in large parts of Hindustan.
According to eminent historian Irfan Habib "the name was not accepted even by the Hindus till the latter half of the fouteenth century being obviously an alien imposition." !!

NOW all these 'Hindustani's have edured many intrusions throughout the history.
(Did you know more than 60% of the history we learn from our textbooks is about wars !??!)
All of which leaving a cultural mark of the intruders' culture. And the Indian civilization assimilated all these into its own culture.

So now we come to the Core. (And as so many brains have tried to define Indianness, I will take my shot)
I think Indianness can be defined from the following concepts, practices or beliefs or it can atleast be distinguished from others valur systems:

• Respect to elders and a web of duties and obligations in family life
• The fact that all of us have a common history i.e. preindependence. I think if British had ruled only the half , say upper half, of India, we would not have formed the nation as it exists today. Only the upper half would have got independence on 15th Jan, 1947 and we would have called THAT India!!
• Our dearness for our Gods and ancient myths
• Joint family structure
• Spicy food
• Our skin colour
• Our festivals and grand rituals
• Unyeilding faith in equity
• Reluctant consent to sex as a necessary activity. The word is still a taboo in many parts of India.
• And finally our ability to endure, absorb (that might be with great tribulations) any change in our psychology, culture, practices and behaviour.

Now THIS is what I think.

But it is worth mentioning that 'It is lot easier to experience Indianness than to define it !'