Friday, November 13, 2009

A wall that fell, and a wall that should fall


Unified India got divided in 1947,USSR broke into 15 countries, vietnam got divided into north and south, so did korea but 20 years ago a wall fell, which was the only incident which went against the tide. It was the fall of berlin wall. And this fall could happen only because the people on both sides wanted it to fall. They had the will to stay united and undivided by just the politics of economics(capitalism and socialism namely). The Wall was only physical because emotionally they were still united, physical walls are easy to break but the ones inside a human mind are .....???
             Theirs a wall that needs to fall in India as well. No i am not talking about wagah border, we dont love pakistanis any way and neither they have any affection left for us after all the bitterness between the countries. I am talking of the wall that of intolerance and ignorance that has enveloped and divided the whole country........
   Lets go 2 months back. I was meeting a girl whom i knew for sometime, but not well enough. We had joined a common class for embedded systems.......

          "Hey do you know, parul the student coordinator is a big flirt"i said with a wink
           "Uhhhhhhggggg how can she do that"she said
          "yeah, morals right??"i said wondering why she gave such a reaction
           "no, she is so ugly"she said
           "aahhh" i said
           "besides that lady has no class, look at the cheap unbranded clothes she buys"she said
           "hmmmmm"

         I was speechless, because i had never judged people by the money and looks they posses. That lady made me conscious of the brand of clothes i was wearing. I had only seen it in films but i saw it in real for the first time, the rich person thinking and talking lowly of not so rich people. And i realized one thing that day, for some people money does speak. The girl and lady in question stay very nearby to each other obviously in very polar housing societies. And apparently theirs no wall except for the  compound wall which separates them. They are accessible to each other.......

   Lets go little more back in time, april 30 the central election day in mumbai and.........this


     ' Guys this is the deciding day, vote for MNS, the beacon of marathi pride, lets kick out north Indians like  tyagi(me) who have taken up jobs in MNC's like accenture and denied us the employment'

       This was an SMS sent by one of the maharashtrian in my college class  to another who happened to be my close friend. Nonetheless i was shocked after reading this SMS because i could not fathom the logic behind the sms.The person who had sent the SMS would always address me as "mitra" meaning friend in marathi. Anyway the so called 'marathi' group always keeping to themselves was a known fact but what i later came to know was even more amusing, these people actually became members of MNS by paying up 100 bucks in the hope of Raj thakerey securing them a job with his Fist force.

          It is these kind of people who serve as pawns for political parties based on the agenda of hate. I somehow dont understand the logic, MNS doesn't want the people to come to mumbai, but the same people can go to any other damn city in maharashtra? The marathi pride is hurt only when people from outside come to mumbai, but nagpur has more hindi speaking people than marathi's, that doesnt bother Mr. Raj. 52% of people in mumbai live in slums, that again doesn't bother Mr. Raj. The level of intolerance and animosity which has been generated between maharashtrians and non-maharashtrians is unimaginable. The vibes are almost always cold and negetive. But then Mumbai is united, isnt it? No one can see any wall.....

     Lets go some 2-3 years back into flashback. It was my 20th birthday and finally i was no longer a teenager, i decided to throw a party in a newly opened mall, 'Bread talk' was the name of shop selling exotic breads, i approached the counter which has pretty Chinese girl....

      "Hey, how much for the connizza ??"i said
       "25 rupees sir" the girl replied
       "Then serve me 5"
       "Okay right away sir"
      " by the way did anyone tell you, you have a cute voice and eyes" i said( taking a chance, she was not an Indian anyway)
      "No sir, you are the 1st one, thank you" she said
      "ohhhh, by the way which country are you from?? china??"
      "Sir i am an Indian"
     "Ohhh you have taken up Indian citizenship"
     " No i am from meghalaya"
  

     My whole body went numb, a bolt from sky had stuck me. It did not occur to me that there is a part in India called the "North-East". I was totally embarrassed. How easily we call the people from north-east as chinese and japanese. We don't realize that by actually calling them that we are giving them an idea that they don't belong to India. But then we are living in an Undivided and democratic India which has no god damn walls.


   Many of you who are reading this may think Mr. Raj is the only 1 who is a staunch linguistic.Lets go further into flashback, 1997, me along with my family went for a trip to South India, Tamil nadu in particular. In Madurai, we went  into a hotel.....

          "Kitna room ka??"  dad asked
           "Hindi???"the receptionist asked, my dad nodded in reply to which he said
           "Hindi illya"( no hindi), he said
           "How much for the room??" Dad asked in english
        
       In reply the receptionist just pulled out a placard saying no rooms available, and the very next hour we saw a couple checking into the very same hotel. The hostility towards the hindi language and people speaking it, even if he is a tourist is very much evident in Tamil nadu.Even purchasing a coconut water is a hard task And this hostility is existing since the eighties, so Mr Raj you are very new to this hostility, go learn your lessons from Tamil nadu. Theirs no physical wall to stop you.


       The wall in germany was only physical wall and even then it took 44 years to come down.We Indians have developed a wall much stronger( even stronger than ambuja cement) than the germans, the only stronger thing we have. This wall is a mixture of communal elements, linguistic element,regional elements and sometime even moral guardian elements. With such a combination who on earth can dare break this wall??? Unfortunately Larson and toubro Ltd hasn't designed a bulldozer yet which can break walls inside a human mind.


           Is there any one who can make this wall fall???????? 

1 comments:

Shivani Shastri said...

This was downright depressing... :(
We've been having concentrated bitterness with every drop of blood spilled on every border...and the blood has clotted and has made a seemingly unbreakable wall... :(
I'd like to admit tho...I do see some dilution of hatred in my generation...Hope there wont be any discrimination on region,caste or creed...Amen!

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