Friday 27 May 2011

What the hell are we fighting for?

Of all kinds of writing I do, travelogues are something that I have always enjoyed. I love sharing those small but memorable incidents happened on the journey. I believe they always stay with you, more than the place itself.

One such incident happened while I was on the train from Mumbai to Gorakhpur (my home town). I was traveling with my husband, my sister and sister's husband. There was a couple in our compartment with their two kids. With their language and dialect they pretty much looked North Indians. More than the husband, the wife looked from north because of her sing-song tone. After a while we noticed her speaking in Marathi with her kids. The obvious guess was that she must've picked up the language in all these years she stayed in Mumbai.

After a lot of guessing and assumptions we finally decided to ask her whether she was a Maharashtriyan or a North Indian. Her reply came to us as a surprise. She was a Marathi and had picked up the accent from her husband who was a North Indian. Trust me, her accent, dialect whatever you call it was way better than any UPite or Bihari and the husband had a very Mumbaiya tone.

The whole incident made me think. Does a common man really care about people migrating from one city to other for work? Does aam junta appreciate the mas pooja conducted by Laloo Yadav or beatings of North Indians by MNS? I guess not. This is a country that unites for a Marathi cricketer who plays under a Bihari captain. So I think that the politicians should leave the language and let it be just a tool to communicate.

2 comments:

  1. Brilliantly written article Shirin!!
    I guess if our so called (change maker) politicians could also understand the perspective of the common man the entire world will be a different place to live in!!
    Keep writing & enlightening :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. thanks Akanksha...I hope we'll have a grown up country some day....:)

    ReplyDelete

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