Look what Terrorists have achieved...

Indian Premier League has become Non-Resident-Indian Premier League now...

No, this blog isn't about cricket and the concerns from a cricket lovers point of view, but only the pain of an Indian who sees terrorists win.

19 years ago, the Islamic terrorists managed to hound out a helpless and voiceless community from the Kashmir valley, only because they were not of same faith. Kashmiri Pandits have been living in exile for almost two decades now...

And now, they have managed to drive out something Indian call their second-religion out of India. Jaish', HuJI, LeT et all must be celebrating this win...

Kashmiri Pandits only left the valley - went up till Jammu and Delhi. Cricket has been driven out of the sub-continent...

Identity Crisis!!!

This must have happened to every other Kashmiri… As I said, Kashmiri’s can recognize another Kashmiri by facial recognition. A long nose, a specific angular jaw line, a certain cut of the brow or a tone of skin – there is always something that makes a Kashmiri go ‘S/he must be a Kashmiri’ – Pandits or Muslims alike.

And at times, your face is such a give away – that in spite of trying you can’t hide the fact that you are a Kashmiri.

More than a decade ago – I was at a training program in Mussorie. Among my group of friends – who were also attending that same event – was Harsh (from Jaipur) who had just recently become a proud new uncle. His nephew was barely a year old and he wanted to take back home a special gift for the kid. Somehow he had got fixated on a fur coat with a cap which he had seen in a “Kashmir Art and Handicraft” shop on the Mall Road. Well, how can’t you find one such shop in a tourist place? Now a days you will find Kashmiri’s selling even Rajastani, Gujrati or Tibetian art and handicraft, imitation stuff of all kinds at all such tourist destinations or malls. But that’s a different topic.

Alarmed by the fabled tales of how Kashmiri traders dupe unsuspecting tourists by charging them 1000/- for a 100/- buck item, I warned Harsh against buying anything from the Kashmiri shop lest he was ready to get duped. But Harsh couldn’t find anything else as interesting and apt for his nephew – so he was adamant on striking a bargain. In all my naivety, I too became a silent partner to the adventure – agreeing to help him evaluate the right bargain by using my Kashmiri expertise. However, we strongly admonished Harsh from making it known to the dealer that he had a Kashmiri friend along with him to ensure that he was being asked the right price. As per plan, I and another friend decided to enter the shop only once Harsh had selected the piece he wanted to buy and the bargaining was to begin – coming in as customers unrelated to Harsh and give an opinion on the bargain – without revealing the Kashmiri identity.

But as luck would have it – the moment I stepped into the showroom, the patron there had a loud – “Aslaam waleykum!! Pandit ji yapaer kithkaen” to greet me.

10 things about a typical Kashmiri…

1. A Kashmiri will never like or appreciate a Kashmiri cuisine dish served in a restaurant, club or a hotel anywhere – say a Kashmiri Dum Aloo. Guess why? Simple. Because a real Kashmiri would know what a real Dum Aloo is supposed to be – and they never serve you even anything close to that.
   
2. First thing when in a new place, hunt for a reliable and close by source of collard greens, lotus stem vegetables, good quality red chilly powder, dry ginger powder and other such typical Kashmiri cuisine ingredients; find out that they aren’t easy to get there (at times it’s a pretty damn simple thing to guess that it won’t be available in that place, yet its mandatory to try) and then settle for a supply from the native.
3. When in a new place, always try to find other Kashmiri’s in that area, company, organization, city… There won’t be a Kashmiri who hasn’t run a search on his company directory (where it make sense to run a search) for the surnames Kaul, Koul, Raina, Dhar, Razdan, Ganjoo, etc…
4. And when s/he finds another Kashmiri and then wonder to themselves – “Ah! Where all on earth these Kashmiri’s have reached? Is there a corner on earth where I won’t find a Kashmiri”
5. And when finally met – ask the other Kashmiri – “where in Kashmir you originally hail from” – notwithstanding the fact that it’s been over 17 years now that s/he hasn’t visited that place.
6. Always try to tell a non-Kashmiri in certain indirect way that such and such celebrity is of Kashmiri decent – irrespective of relevance to the context. People from Anupam Kher to Kunal Khemmu, Vivek Razdan to Suresh Raina, Jeevan to Jawahar Wattal, Nidhi Razdan to Shirin Bhan, all names have been counted umpteen times. For that matter, its pretty secular here and also unconstrained by time. So Kashmiri decent of Alama Iqbal and Salman Rushdie or Katrina Kaif are no different in the above context. Or that Shahrukh Khan's great grandmother was half Kashmiri...
   
7. Which ever tourist destination they may go – end up comparing how the place is worthless compared to such and such place in Kashmir. Always find a tourist place without mountains and fresh water as worthless…
8. Always try and find out by face recognition other Kashmiris. 9 out of 10 times, a Kashmiri can tell another Kashmiri even in a crowd of 50 – just by facial features, and even say with same accuracy whether it’s a Kashmiri Pandit or a Kashmiri Muslim. I have some rather interesting anecdotes on that. Even just recently, a newly appointed head of sales in my organization jogged down to me after a group event – asking me my full name – just to check if I was really a Kashmiri as he had guessed. I myself had been in the same dilemma earlier, but in spite of my confidence – got misled by a wrong input on his surname.
9. Always secretly believe that they are an intellectually smart race – and often allude it to the food habit of eating rice; and then co-support it with Bengali’s and South Indian’s being equally smart intellectuals because they are rice eaters too.
10. Always talk about Kashmiris in the third person.

Mother Tongue or Teacher Tongue...

Marathi becomes mandatory in all schools in state

This is back...

First it was the 'Kannada' compulsion... now the bug has bitten the Maharashtra politicians... The Karnataka education minister forced closure of over 800 schools in Karnataka because they weren't using Kannada as medium of instruction in their schools. They weren't teaching algebra and trigonometry or chemistry and biology in Kannada... and ignoring the need for the keeping the culture and ethos of the language alive.

Now same realization have dawned upon the neighbouring state - Maharashtra... apparently they are scared that Marathi as a language is under threat - unless they force students to learn it in classrooms.

Mother Tongue politics has been an old ploy for whipping emotions and getting masses swayed. Politicians are at it again now...

But why?

India is a land of hundreds of languages and dialects... and all of them have been in existence for more than a few centuries. No doubt the last language to set foot into India is English... yet, none of the earlier ones died. They have their own history and ethos associated with them... and didn't get die because a stronger global language entered India. Then why this phobia now...

India, whether some like it or not, is the slowly becoming a powerful back office of the world - a position which is strongly impacting in a positive way the economic footing of a wide range of Indian people. The ITES industry alone is projected to create more than 3 million jobs in another 2-3 years... lots of such feel-good projections. The numbers can be off by some factor - but none of these politicians and so-called champions of mother-tongue can deny that the outsourcing industry has been a boon of sorts for India... and relieved a lot of burden off the government. The youth today don't look towards the government for giving them jobs... the industry/corporate sector has lived up much better to that expectation.

But the government is now out to kill it...

The colonial rule of the Britisher's gave India the English education - wherein almost any educated youth is a multi-linguist - knowing at least English, Hindi and his/her mother tongue. The wide spread understanding and skills with English - the local pronunciations and variants not withstanding has given us the edge in the BPO sector for sure. Today, masses in the west are scared of getting "Bangalored" - meaning they could loose their job to an English speaking Malayalee or a Kannadiga youngster still in some Indian city.
Something this young lad could snatch just because his ancestors were subjugated and over-powered by the English speaking whites.

One could call it - divine retribution. Today low cost Asian countries are in a way reverse colonialising these jobs. But instead of building power around this, the short-sighted politicians of India are killing it. Instead of bothering about staying ahead of China, which has embarked on teaching English to its kids on a war-footing to wrest this advantage away from India - our guys are out to hand it on a plate to them.

I don't deny that Indian languages and culture is a valuable asset which needs to be protected, valued and enriched - and the local languages are the key to that.

But learning to speak and read your mother tongue need not be done from a schooling system - let the schooling system focus on imparting marketable skills to the masses.

I saw an interview by this NCP politician - Jeetendra Awhad - a self-styled champion of the 'mandate Marathi' campaign on TV a day ago - and Mr Awhad has a concern that in spite of being a Marathi by birth and born to Marathi speaking parents (himself), his daughter in 8th standard can't speak Marathi. So it’s the fault of the school she goes to...because they taught her to speak English, made her good at Physics, chemistry, biology, History, geography etc - but not Marathi.

My dear Awhad - I would first request you to demand compulsory "Parenting schooling" for parents like you. It should be made a constitutionally mandatory - because I would call your parenting a failure.

I was born in a Kashmiri family, where parents and grand parents spoke in Kashmiri to me - and that’s how I learnt the mother tongue despite the fact that the language was NEVER taught in school.

Mr. Awhad and his ilk need to accept that they are forcing the schooling system to do what the parenting system was meant to done.

So Mr. Awhad needs to get out of the bad parenting habit of talking to their kids in English at home - just because its cool to do so; and impart the mother tongue to them.

After all Mother Tongue - is what one gets from mother - at home, not a teacher in school, else it would have been called "Teacher Tongue"...

Roots...

Thanks to Wikimapia... I can still re-live my childhood for some ephemeral moments...

Here is, where my ancesters lived and where I was born...(and also my wife's ancesters lived closeby (see Ganju's)...)


See in Full here


And Here is where I used to live... between 1982-1990...



See in Full Here