1st guy: Eating a dosa??? Do you know kannada?
2nd guy: No I don’t...
1st guy: What the hell? How dare you live in
Bangalore?
2nd guy: what has that do with living in Bangalore?
dishum...dooshom...dishum...dooshom...
end of the scene...
Imagine something of this sort happening to you... (dosa has
been included as an example)
well wait, this is not any typical Bollywood movie hero and
villain fighting each other. This happened a few months back in some food outlet in
Bangalore. Some local guys allegedly thrashed a native from the Northeast India
for daring to eat Kannada food without knowing to speak Kannada. This is just
one of the series of such incidents that keep on cornering the natives from the Northeast. In the above alleged incident a Manipuri guy got beaten. A few days
after; two guys from Nagaland were beaten in Gurgaon by some locals with cricket
bats and hockey sticks. And the irony of the situation is such incidents keep
on doing the rounds in the news for some time with some assurances from the
administration that action will be taken and finally are buried alive. Till date
I have not been able to find out any possible solid reasoning behind such
incidents. Why are our natives targeted? Why are we made to feel like an
outsider? Why anyone is in fact targeted and victimised? Are not we enough
Indians as you? Just because we look alike the Mongoloid race you have the
right to brutally assault us and call us by different names... the people from
Bihar are victimised every now and then in Maharashtra and referred to as an
outsider in his own country; which is just another feather in the cap. Now if Bengalis
begin patenting for example; the roshogolla, or the Ilish (the Hilsha fish) that it is their birth
right to eat fish and you have to know Bengali if you are having fish...Isn’t
that hilarious? It is...
Whenever I read about any such news I literally thank God
for my physical features because by birth am a Bengali from the north eastern
part of India, and I don’t look alike as the people from Manipur, Mizoram,
Nagaland etc. Yes I have that sense of guilt and shame within me for my
thoughts but at the end of the day I just cannot help it. Even I had my share
of some stupidity that reflects from people’s faces whenever they hear about my
native place; Assam. Some are like, does Assam even exist on our map and some
are like does Assam exist on this earth or am I from some other planet. Aah
wait, you cannot even react because you may be insulted publicly for their
ignorance for not knowing the map of India or may be thrashed brutally blah
blah... You have to explain patiently that one of the metros; Kolkata which is
in West Bengal in the eastern part of India has Assam as one of the
neighbouring states of W.B... Then you get an assurance from some uninformed stupid
that you are an Indian. The day won’t be far when we will need passport and
visa to travel even within our country. Why it has been so? Why do we love to hate??? Why
cannot we love to love? Why there is hatred for anyone and everyone? Love is
the one and only feeling that triumphs over all. Learn to love and see the
difference, at the end of the day you will sleep peacefully.
Just for reference:
