REGIONALISM - A threat

Its 1:33AM sunday early morning, hectic day went by. Usually I get occupied with everything on saturdays. Also this is the day I like in weekend. You know, I would not be having the thought that tomorrow I have to go and sit in office. God! Sunday evenings are so gloomy. Heart starts to get heavy right from 5:00PM in the evening. You know the reason I guess :).
Sitting like a ghost just felt like keying down one blog. An assertion from a person when I was buying some food stuffs in a departmental store just ringing in my ears at this time somehow,"Bangalore is such a sick place to live in and these Idli wadas dont even know how to control the traffic...." This statment hit my ears like a rock on an egg shell in the evening. I just held myself, my emotions and had to just say myself that this bloody fellow does not know the fact that so many dal-rotis like him made bangalore sick and its traiffc a nightmare....Well let me not go in to that defending mode and its not my intention also. It was just a reactivity from myside for that vibe created within myself during that situation.
I have heard number of statements like this in this so called cosmopolitan city - Bangalore. Often we hear news on the same matter and I think in india this regionalism has reached heights.
It took me to think twice before I write this blog since the subject is so sensitive and it takes guts to blend this sort of subject to the key strokes.
Till I came to bangalore I had valued and believed in the slogan "Unity in diveristy". But after coming to bangalore, mingling and seeing different people having absurd values, I have started to rediscover the meaning of this slogan.
Since I was a victim of this sentiment of regionalism early in my career, I just want to share my views, my experience on the lines of this subject.
It was september 2003 when I came out of my shell. I stepped out of my sweet home for the first time in my lifetime for my job. I joined my first job having loads of hopes and dreams about my carrier. The work was totally on development of hardware and software for embedded systems. You know when we are freshers we have some fasicnation about some fields or subjects we read.. Like that I was fascinated by embedded systems like a mindless video game during that time. Probably that fascination made me to join this start up company neglecting other aspects like money, environment etc etc,,
My first company was a decent company founded by an andhrite family with 60 members in R&D and quiet a good number of people in production and in other departments. Purely an indian company which dealt its buisiness only in Rupees with its customers. It had mainly south indian diversity. The composition in the company is like we had one CTO (Hailed from Karnataka), a manager (Hails from state in which the people know only their mother tounge and hate india's national language like poison) and then different teams composed of PLs and engineers. My team consisted more of kannadigas but the PL was from the place as that of my manager. Initial days were good since I got good mentors and things were very exciting to learn. Plus point in start up companies is that you tend to learn a lot and get good exposure to the technologies at the cost of your luxury.
Things were going alright but then I slowly started smelling the regional politics within the company. I was clued by my collegues regarding this earlier also. Since the manager had direct interaction with the teams, he used to influence and impose the things very easily. You dont believe he always insisted the management (Offcourse he made it happen every year) to go for campus interviews to his beloved state, he always used to ensure that the good projects with emerging technologies get assgined to his own people etc etc. List never ends. Such a separatist he was. I still remember, on the first week I used to travel to Banaglore from tumkur. There was a tamil guy who joined the company at the same time as that of me. When we were chatting casually with CTO and manager, they asked about our stay. I said I am travelling and my TN friend told he is staying with his friend. I dont know from which gutter the emotions rush to my manager, he told several times to TN guy to stay in the company guest house and he did not even utter a word about me and my stay. Somehow I was not having that audacity to ask them for a company guest house in one go. Looking at my perplexed face our CTO intervened and asked me to stay. This is one of many incidents I had gone through.
Days passed by and I spent almost an year having good reputation. Irony is that though my PL is hailed from the same state he is totally opposite to this mean minded manager. He used to support us a lot and in fact I learnt lot of technical things from him. At the end of the year he gave a good feedback about me to the management and got me a good hike too. Thats why we can not generalise things. Two persons derived from same origin but hell lot of differences.
By the time I got the reputation and started to deepen the roots in the company, I think my manager had disturbed his sleep. He influenced my PL to divert me at work. He started shifting me from projects to projects within short spans, alloting works like training to production people, helping production people in testing and lot more. I never hold back when injustice been done to anybody in any situation. Several times I exchanged hot words with my manager, regarding my projects and work but nothing helped out. Finally not able to bear that brunt I decided to move out of that company. It took me just ten days to get an interview call and get selected to my next company. The last days in that company are some of the worst days I have ever faced in my life. They were reluctant to give my releiving and exp letter,convincing me to stay back. They did all the tricks to hold me back. I was so rigid and finally got out of that company with all the necesssary documents. I clearly spoke to the management the reason for my quit. I was the victim of this regionalism and one's sentiments.
After all this rivalry with that manager, I can not even believe today he has turned up to my marriage just for an invitation sent across to a group keeping him in the loop.
Quite a long story I guess. Enough of flash back, even today here and there I hear and face these kind of situations. I dont even understand today why people hurt sentiments of others.
A person commenting badly about kannada movies, though he would not have seen even a single scene of any kannada movie, a person giving nasty comments about the infrastructure of bangalore without thinking how it grew rapidly, a person commenting badly about one of the festivals of south, 'Ayudha pooja' saying its meaningless festival etc etc.. Lot more to cite but enough to my blog to give my views on these,,
Regarding movies, good or bad is there everywhere right from hollywood to kollywood. Its just the mixture of good and bad. The ratio of good and bad may differ from industry to industry depnding on various factors. It may happen we see something bad at one time and we start thinking, everything will be like this. Without knowing anything in detail commenting on something seems ridiculous to me. We can not generalise the things and ride on it. You know We think in generalities, but we live in details. Mind you, we can not live in generalities. Accept the good forget the bad. Move on!
I feel the development in bangalore is like a bubble bloating up suddenly. Just think you are with your family in a house, suddenly your relatives started migrating to your house. Can you handle this overflow immediately in an effective way, Never ever. It takes time. Samething happened with bangalore I reckon, with rapid development in BPO and IT industries people started migrating from every nook and corner of india suddenly. Definitely with the current bloody politics and corrupt system It would not have possible to cope up with this kind of situation for any state in india.
Every state, every part of India has its own culture and significance in their cultures. Same regarding festivals. Being an athiest the only day my hands feel the touch of incense sticks and kumkum is this Ayudha pooja day. Its the day I show grattitude towards the things I use in my daily life. It may be bike, car, PC, etc etc. It gives me immense satisfcation doing pooja to these pulseless items. You know without these items its tough to carry out our daily activities. Just think of your life without these items just for one day you will feel the importance of these things. So I perceive this festival as meaningful but you may perceive it as meaningless. Its up to you. But its not that I am wrong you are right. Different people pereceived the things in different ways and thats why we have different culture, different religions.
In india there is too much of diverseness, Tamils not liking hindi, Kannadigas not liking tamils, Marati people showing reluctance to north indians...One or the other news hit the newspapers very often.
Sometimes I feel Raj thackreay is right. Not always mind you. Having got the name, fame, money, basically everything they need in their life by staying in mumbai, and after all that if somebody passes on a comment saying that she wants to speak in hindi in Mumbai since she is from UP. Oops! what kind of abusrd values this lady has in her life..Just imagine the situation of people who bestowed their unconditional love for their movies without having a single thought of their origin.
You have your emotions, love or whatever at your home or when you are with your own people. Because that is natural and a person has to have that love and abhimaana (not getting exact english word at this point of time :)). But at the same time we need to have some gratitude towards the place we live in. Nobody expects you to express gratitude but at least don't do illogocal criticism. Be a roman when you are in rome thats the best policy.
The place we take birth, our home, our place, our people are great for us. These are the things which matter the most in our life. If I quote, I quote, "birth matters but death does not matter". We endure the highs and lows where we grow and naturally we develop affection towards that. Nothing wrong in it. But we should not see other things on the darker side. Good and bad are always amalgamated in everything. We should just take the good and forget the bad. But commenting on the bad is not going to help in any way, rather it hurts others. We dont have rights to hurt other sentiments.
My mom used to say, When you comment others by pointing your forefinger, you should mind that the other four fingers point towards us [Tried my best to translate that saying from Kannada to english] . There can be hundred mistakes you can find in others, in their culture, but you would be having thousand flaws in your own culture.
With this blog I am not demanding anybody to give respect towards any language or culture. Its just that we are all one. Lets take the good and neglect the bad and move on. Life is all about that. We dont have the rights to hurt anybody. So LIVE AND LET LIVE.
If I have gone raw anywhere in my blog or If I have hurt anyone or if I have gone more philosophical, I beg your pardon since I have written this blog in a gush of emotions. Your comments, your views are always welcome and If you feel, sign off with your comments.