The smile broadens, the eyebrow twitches, the
pink lips unfurl themselves to reveal the sparkling teeth which heaps lustre in plentiful measures on an already fair complexioned face which
glistens in the sunshine. An approving nod further complements her overall
demeanour and the camaraderie between her and her fellow conversant, a young
gentleman clean shaven and equally fair complexioned, is at its best. However
the latter senses that an uneasy calm is about to descend in the air. His face
slowly turns a shade pale and his heart rate is accelerating suddenly like the
tampered meter of an old fashioned Indian Taxi. His overall disposition is that
of a man who is tied to a ticking time bomb. He had been expecting this all
along, since the moment he had introduced himself to this beautiful girl. The
dreaded question which inexplicably never fails to throw up in many a similar
tete-a-tete has arrived. And Voila it pops up! “So where are you from?” and according to the young man, the
bonhomie is suddenly jeopardized and this young lady has once more set hell’s
foundations quivering.
To such a question, experience has taught
me to answer in different ways. Had the question been asked by an old septuagenarian
gentleman with 3 broad parallel stripes of white ash pasted over his forehead,
seated over a cup of Mylapore Filter Coffee, I would have without hesitation
answered with flowing pride that “I am from Chennai” and had I been in a mood
to chew the fat, probably would have gone the extra mile to clarify that though
my parents hail from Tirunelveli and Thanjavur in South Tamilnadu respectively,
my birth and entire upbringing has happened in the city of Chennai or Madras lying
in the deep south of South India’s Coromandel Coastline. But unfortunately as
fate would have it, for perhaps the 139th time in the past 1 year
this question had been directed to me by a member of the Aryan race - a North Indian!
Now when I say North Indian generally he/she could be a
professor/classmate/batchmate/colleague/project mentor in the company where I
did my summer internship bang in the middle of my MBA. The flowchart in my mind with respect to the
immediate course of action to be followed would now work in the form of an
If/else Loop in a Java Program, the knowledge of which had perhaps been the
only meaningful contribution my former employer (or rather was it?), one of the
top software outsourcing firms in India, had imparted to me in my 3 year stint
prior to MBA and it goes like this.
Disclaimer: All techies and computer geeks if offended please refrain
from hurling stones and pardon me for any syntactical errors in the following
piece of code. Despite 3 years of working on it I have miserably failed to
perfect the art of coding but frankly I am quite unashamed to admit that I am abysmally
pathetic at it. That’s possibly the primary perhaps the only reason why I am doing
an MBA!
var x = questionaskedfrom?
if((x==batchmate IN MBA || x==classmate in
MBA|| x==acquaintance from MBA || x==Professor) && (x==North Indian))
{
Answer the bloody question truthfully. No other
go and deal with your fate L
}
else if (x==project mentor || x==summer
intern from another college || x==someone who does not know you are doing MBA
from IIFT Delhi)
{
Try answering the question skillfully as “I
am from IIFT Delhi” and hope no further questions are asked
}
else
{
Answer with true Tamilian pride that you
are from Chennai
}
Now the catch lies in the fact that had the
question fallen in the ‘Else if’ block, the next question proceeding from my
compatriot’s lips would invariably be corrected and duly presented in its new
form as “I mean BASICALLY where are you from?”
and now it goes back to the first ‘If’ Block and I have no option but to
deal with it. On such occasions I am almost tempted to lie that I hail from
some part of the vast Hindi Heartland or to be on the safer side that I
originate from the hustle and bustle of the Mumbai metropolitan lest my Hindi
speaking skills be put to test almost immediately, and thus put all doubts to
rest once and for all, more from an accent perspective rather than a
grammatical one. But my better self pokes me and so rightly to say “Nikhil you
gotta be more strong! Take pride in your roots and answer the question
truthfully.” I hesitantly answer that I hail from Chennai totally aware that I
am yet again going to open up a Pandora’s Box with questions shooting out from
it on all sides! And cutting a long story short this precisely is my response
to the girl’s query.
The reception of the news that her
conversant is a ‘Madrasi’ is one of complete astonishment, but this again is
completely as expected by the blueprint, for it has been the same reaction on
atleast 90% of the previous 138 times. She stands bewildered and after
regaining composure from her initial shock lets loose the first bullet from
Pandora’s gun as I shall now slightly modify the ancient phrase gifted by Greek
Mythology.
“But your name is Nikhil Bharadwaj right???
“
“Yes” I answer keeping it as crisp as
humanly possible all along increasingly aware that my blood pressure has now shot
upto a level that might arouse the professional interests of any qualified
medical practitioner. I am in a position to squeeze every penny’s worth out of
a working sphygmomanometer.
The answer further compounds her shock, but
she fires the next round of ammunition.
“But Bharadwaj is a North Indian name. How
come you hail from Chennai?” she quips with a puzzled look. It looks as if,
atleast to me that, she is plainly stunned that anybody hailing from anywhere
South of the Vindhyas could possibly be blessed with Bharadwaj as a surname.
Before I can retaliate she suddenly
brightens up and says “Ah Maybe you are a North Indian and your forefathers
settled in Chennai several decades back”. She does not exactly shriek ‘Eureka!’
but the look on her dial is not unlike the look Archimedes might have sported as
he jubilantly sprang from the bathtub on the day he discovered the Principle of
Fluid Buoyancy.
I, quite to her disappointment have to
intervene and give her the bad news again.
“Bharadwaj is the name of a Gotra. People
all over the country have many common surnames and Bharadwaj is one of them. ”
‘‘So you speak Tamil at home?’’
I reluctantly but forcibly hammer the final
nail in her coffin of queries and reply that yes indeed Tamil is my mother
tongue and not Hindi, I emphasize. Before she can utter again, I now being the
subject matter expert, further endeavour to throw more light on the topic and
say “For example Sharma is also a common surname. In fact Rohit Sharma the
Indian cricketer is a Telugu”.
The answer seems to dispel most of her
doubts and she begins to wonder if this is a plausible explanation to all her
questions.
Pondering over it, finally she concedes
defeat and says "You know you look very much like a North Indian. I had a
feeling that you possibly come from Delhi or Chandigarh."
Till today whenever someone says something
on those lines, I have not been able to venture any reply let alone a witty one,
but instead manage only a feeble smile.
And then we either move onto the process of
exploring other pleasantries to be exchanged or if there is a lack of time, we simply
smile at each other and end it up with a "Chalo. See you then."
I walk away wondering how I can handle
meeting number 140 in a better way.
But having been quite blown away by her breathtaking
beauty, a part of me wants to meet her soon again and start chatting away in
Hindi, partly because I hope to befriend her but more importantly to show her
that there is something more North Indian about me.
