East - West - North - South

Marwari by origin... Raised in Calcutta... Graduated in Durgapur... First job in Hyderabad... Switch to Noida... hmmm... that's like connecting with all the primary directions known to Man... West - East - South - North... Patience, patience... I will write something more meaningful :)

I love observing people right from childhood, may be because I was exposed to two diverse cultures both of which have been integral part of my life. As a child, I was raised with typical Rajasthani customs and manners while my neighbourhood would pour sounds of Rabindra Sangeet in my ears. I grew amidst a fine blend of Marwari and Bengali culture which enables me to switch gears seamlessly according to the company I am in. My boyhood surrounding gave me the opportunity to appreciate the differences in the two cultures. I used to notice that two people from diverse backgrounds with simlilar nature (I thought so) have stark differences in their mannerisms and expressions and I thought may be they aren't that similar after all. But the habit of observing persisted.

After my high school, I moved to Durgapur, a town roughly 170 kilometres from Calcutta, for my undergraduate studies. The campus of my college was a fort in itself for it shielded the world inside. Outside was the same old Bengali air I had grown up in sans the fizz of a metropolis. Inside was a little India spanning 190 acres... Gulti, Matthu, Bangu, Maru, Tambi, North-waale, Kannu, Mallu, Nesa... wondering what that gibberish in the middle was? Well, those were names that mapped you to your state of residence. It was a mixed culture I was exposed to which I absolutely loved. I saw the co-existence of colourful differences among my batchmates that almost served as badges. It was a true learning experience for me as I had more to think about people in general and their ways of life in particular. It fuelled my zeal of meeting new people from varied backgrounds.

Seven out of ten software engineers aka techies land up somewhere in South India and I was not exception. It was the summer of 2008 when I moved to the city of Nawabs. I was told that I would be forced to learn Telugu which was good and bad. Good because I would have one more language to add to the list and bad because I didn't think I was good at picking up a new language. God chose to alleviate my fears and I found that local people also spoke the languages I knew (precisely, Hindi or English). The city is a mix of decendents of Nawabs and the native Telugu people. The native people are in general knowledge-hungry but submissive and somewhat introvert by nature whereas the grandsons of Nawabs are as flamboyant as ever even if you find one driving an auto-rickshaw! However, affinity towards super-spicy non-veg food is common between both the people. Boy, they can gobble up loads of them without an ounce of problem. But guys, I am not a foodie and spicy food is definitely not my thing. So, when I decided to move upward north, food was not something I was going to miss.

I had heard people switch a lot in their early years and yours truly again was no exception. I moved from blue card to red card (sorry for the expression, those are the colours of my employee cards :P) and landed up in Noida, essentially a suburb of Delhi but now boasts of being a city. I have always found Punjabi to be a very sweet language and now I was in a place full of Punjabis and Jats. From "entra" and "cheppandi", I had moved to "galt" (mind you, not galat) and "zrurt" (again, not zarurat). Complete shift in terms of surroundings and culture. People in this part of India are far more colourful and they only wanna live life without caring about the shit. Nice attitude, eh?!! Sharp reactions, ready expressions and quick decisions. So, I finally got a flavour of North India. Food again is so very important and people proudly proclaim, "Khaane ke liye jeena hai!" Are you serious, you live to eat? But that's okay. Let's keep food aside for now. What I found again is a difference in mindset from those in East or South; the people here have a different outlook towards life. Hmm, so is it the caste or region that really distinguishes poeple?....

....I thought hard over it. Peripherally yes it does. But I chose to dive deeper into the question, rewinded my impressions of the people I had met and interacted with, recollected my experience so far of getting in touch with the diverse cultures of India. And, I did find truth in the simplicity of words of the protagonist of a recent Bollywood movie which I thought was over-simplification. My mind refuted this long holding notion of mine that people are complex, after all the trudging into the near past and not so near past. There are actually only two kinds of people - good and bad. It's not the reaction that's different but it's the way of reacting. Had the reactions been different altogether, we wouldn't find people of similar nature. The varied ways owes to the situations one has grown up in, the mannerisms one has seen and believes in, the expressions which make sense to him/her... it's like the core is same wherever you go but the layers around the core that keep on accumulating are of different textures and colours depending on the place and environment one grows up in. Let's try to reach to the core and we'll find that people around us are not that complex after all :)