Two things about the quotation

On Blogs

I always hated blogs…I never understood why it has become such a big thing…why would someone want to read all the personal anecdotes of random persons of this world. why do I have to read how Mr.X spent his day in his class or why Miss.Y, a 10^th grade student think America should withdraw its troops from Iraq..and why would someone ever want to read all the bullshit that im writing here…

if u are looking for an answer, u are in the wrong place…because even I don’t know the answer..but I know why I stopped hating blogs and decided to start writing blogs..Blogs give me a forum to comments on issues I’m both competent and incompetent to comment upon. The bitter incident of my ‘letter to the editor’, which I sent to a national daily while I was in class VII, being rejected by the editor, wouldn’t happen to me with the blogs. Blogs aren’t screened. I can type whatever I want and publish them on the net for the whole world to see. This explains why I write blogs…But one question that still haunts me is this: Why, my friend, are u reading this? Are u my mother by any chance?

About me, my class, my caste, my town, my state, my college and my country…… .

1) About me

I’m a second year law student in National Law School of India University, Bangalore….a mallu (which is the slang word for a malayali), not a pseudo-”I know little Malayalam”- type mallu, but a proper mallu who applies coconut oil in hair and eats ‘puttu’ which again has coconut meat in it. When I write about my state in the later section, I will brief you more on how sine-qua-non (did I tell you I’m a law student [rhetoric] {did I tell u I’m in nls}) a coconut tree is for a malayali and how he has utilised every conceivable part of coconut tree in one way or another (I have heard that they have started using coconut oil as fuel in autos).

I’m not a communist, nor am I from Dubai. I say this because non-mallus have this notion that every mallu is a communist and at least one third of mallus are in Dubai. I agree it is true to some extent. For example, when my classmate who is a Mumbaikar started talking to me in fluent Malayalam, I asked him whether he was a mallu. He said “No, but I was in Dubai till class XII’. Need I say more!!

Now regarding Communism. In Kerala, there is this plant called ‘Communist pachcha’ (meaning communist green) which is used as a medicinal herb by mallus. I had always heard about this plant but had never seen one, and so I thought that this plant would be red in colour and that’s the reason why it is called communist green as red is the colour of communists…When I asked my mother about this plant she took me to the backyard of my house and pointed at a plant and told: “This is communist pachcha”; and it was green in colour!!.Then why is it called communist green. She didn’t have an answer. Then I started seeing this plant everywhere; wherever I go, it was there. And finally I despised seeing this plant, I felt exasperated beyond endurance at its very sight.

But I attained enlightenment on reading Arundhati Roy’s ‘God of small things’ where it is explained why communist pachcha, which is found everywhere in Kerala, is named after communism which is also as prevalent and widespread as this plant. And I placed myself in the position of this great man who gave such an apt name for this plant and found an additional reason which Arundathi Roy failed to factor in. He must have thought ‘What is as common and as irritating as this plant?’ and he found the answer ‘communism’ and he named the plant communist pachcha.

Well, I’m not sorry for the digression; you will see digression all along this blog. The point I want to make is this: though these notions are true to some extent, most of these notions are reflective of the perception biases and the stereotypes we have of people who are different from us. These stereotypes are wrong because we will end up judging people wrongly which will cause considerable hardship. It is just like the phobia that many U.S citizens have; that is, every bearded man with a turban, and who is talking in strange tongue and who has his hands inside his jacket pockets is a Muslim terrorist, or taking it to a degree more, every muslim is a terrorist; One of the strong arguments Republicans expressly give for voting against Barack Obama in the coming U.S presidential elections is that his middle name is ‘Hussein’. (Also recollect what happened to our Malayalam actress Samyukta varma in the plane in U.S).

Why talk about the stereotypes of Americans; we have enough of them ourselves. Bihaari!!; Sardaar!!; Maarwadi!!; paandi!!; all these are not mere terms which we use to refer to a people coming from a particular region; these terms also connotes our biases, our stereotypes about people who are different from us. Again, for many people all north-east is the same. The one state that we know about is Assam; those who prepare for quizzes and all might know the name and capitals of all the seven states. But even they don’t understand the cultural differences among the people of this region called the ‘north east’. If a person of a Khasi tribe comes in front of a south indian, for the latter, he is from north-east period;all the north east is the same.

Again, for a north Indian, the entire south India is the same and vice-versa. There are houselords in South who refuse to rent their house to north Indians despite the latter having all credentials just because of the fact that they are north Indians. If the moral argument for getting rid of perceptive biases and insensitiveness doesn’t convince you enough I will give you a more prudential warning. Dude, the dynamics are changing. As Friedman says in his ‘World is Flat’ we have now entered globalisation version 3.0. If you as an individual want to survive in this era of globalisation 3.0 which is all about individuals competing globally, you need to learn to see others as ‘individuals’ and be more sensitive towards their culture. Otherwise you will lose out. Learn to respect their culture, learn to appreciate differences.

Pardon me if I’m sounding preachy, I dint intend to do it. My motive behind saying all this was only to make a selfish assertion; that I want to wear mundu because I find it more comfortable, that I want to eat my food with my hands, that I want to listen to mal music.Now situations are such that I need to assert these things against all odds. I hope one day I can have my sadya with my hands wearing a lee tee-shirt and mundu and still not be glared at as if I’m doing a grave sin.