Window to the Past

Ask me what I want to be and you would have the answer even before you finish the sentence. I want to be a five year old. Yes you heard it right, I want to be a reckless, thoughtless and carefree five year old all my life. Although some of my friends would laugh and say "So typical of Meghna to say that, afterall all three year olds want to grow up!” But seriously wasn’t childhood the best thing that happened to all of us? (Well, almost all and I deeply sympathise with the unfortunate few who were denied it), I remember feeling happy on seeing a heap of sand and running towards it to reach there first and sit right at the top, I remember playing stupid games, I remember having lots of friends to play with all the time but what I don’t remember is where they came from. I never tried to find out whether they were Muslims or Hindus or Kashmiris or Tamilians or Dalits or Brahmans or poor or rich, nothing. The thought didn’t ever occur to me. During my formative years I lived at various places, in fact I have a record of changing my school every two years. In spite of this I never thought we could be called anything else apart from being called Indians. And I am not exaggerating when I say this.
In fact it was not until First grade that I was enlightened with the knowledge of being a Bihari, or so I am called. And this also was told to me only after I told my class teacher that I was a Marathi! Well what exactly happened was that we had a function in school and all of us were supposed to be dressed as brides and grooms from our respective states, the theme was to show the cultural diversity in India or something like that. So our teacher called us all and we were asked about our native place. When it was my turn I was totally zapped and told the teacher I didn’t know where I was from!! I remember her laugh and pinch my cheek gently (She thought I was a really cute dumb kid!). So she asked me where I lived before I came to Bangalore and I promptly and happily told her Aurangabad, Maharashtra (I was happy that I was at least able to answer that) and then she looked at my last name which was Pandey and she took it to be the 'Pande' or 'Des Pande' from Maharashtra and asked me to dress up as a Marathi bride for the show. I was happy to be chosen for a part in the play and went home to tell my mom. I then remember my mom laugh and pinch my cheek (apparently she and the teacher held the same opinion of me, my mom being a little sad about the dumb part though) and that’s when she told me I was a Bihari. I wonder what Raj Thackeray has to say that.
The recent events in Mumbai make me think as to where I belong. I always thought there is no place like India and I knew for sure that no matter where I go, I would never feel out of place throughout the peninsula, be it Ladakh or Guwahati. I always thought that nothing could ever replace the warmth and love that I find in my country, not money and not the standard of living that people talk about, nothing. But I was wrong, I was terribly wrong. Throughout my life I have seen my country fight over religion, over ethnic differences, over languages, over rivers, over caste disparities within religions and now over cities. Where does all this lead to? Do the so called leaders know what they are doing when they continuously come up with new ways of ramifying the society? I do not see a nation grow while its states operate as individual entities in isolation, what is the purpose of being called a nation after all? Anyway even if that’s the case where do people like me go, which state do we call our own? I don’t even know how to find my way back home from the railway station in Bihar, how then do I call it home.

As far as the criticism against Amitabh Bachchan, about not giving back to Mumbai is concerned, well I didn’t complain when Nagma's bhojpuri movies topped the charts and she went around with Sourav Ganguly( a Bengali) instead of Manoj Tiwari, now come'on she should give back to the bhojpuri community by marrying into it only and thus look for prospective grooms only within the community, or when Madhavan migrated down south to do Tamil cinema instead of giving back to Jharkhand, which was outrageous as he did his schooling there while depriving the native Jharkhandi children of their right to education. As per the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Madhavan should have definitely done Bhojpuri cinema and entertained the Biharis, what say Raj? But if Raj Thackeray knows what he is doing and if he thinks all this will solve the problem of unemployment in his state and thus make India more self sufficient then I believe he should be given an opportunity to prove his point. Let him come out with his strategy, the facts and the figures, let him explain how the native Maharashtrians are deprived of their livelihood while the bhaiyas peacefully drive their taxis and how many of these deprived will actually have the resources to buy a taxi when there aren’t any more migrants in the state, or does Raj plan to do some charity here to provide employment to his people? The other issue that was raised in Mumbai to support their claim was that the Bhaiyas are not well behaved....Ahem Ahem.....well I dont think I should even start on that, its one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard and that’s all I'll say about that.
Well I guess the problem is not just in Maharashtra. The recent events in Mumbai do remind us of the incidents that took place in the North East. So much for India talking about globalization, global integration and inter dependence while its leaders talk about internal isolation and disintegration. The people in Andhra also talk about a new state. Looks like throughout our 60 years of independence we spoke so much and for so long about the 'Diversity and Variety in India' that now we always fail to see a common ground. As CNN IBN rightly puts it, “Whose city is it anyway”?