Agono Iralu
It’s hard being a North-east(ner) in India. As a kid I remember answering exasperating questions, ‘why do you not look ‘Indian’ then?’ ‘Is Nagaland its own country?’ These questions also became a normal coincidence of being ‘the other’. My parents, then, had decided to pursue further studies in Pune so off we all trooped into a train and 2 days later reached the sleepy town/city of Pune where we lived for couple of years while both my parents studied. “No, we’re not Japanese we are also from India.” “Nagaland is not near Japan, it is in India.” Those were the usual barrages we learned to live with too.
Although somewhere down the line we managed to establish our identity (most preferably with a map in-hand) as part of India too somehow that never quite added up to our expectation. I still remember vividly how my father would quarrel and argue for a decent auto fare, or at the vegetable vendor’s. He would shout that he is as ‘Indian’ as the vegetable vendor or the auto rickshaw driver and to be treated otherwise was an insult to his citizenship (if anything else). Somehow I think these small ‘incidents’ grated into my father’s perception of equality or fairness, and, also, how the world saw him. As for me, it took me a long time and an adult’s eye to understand how ‘schizophrenic’ India can really be.
This is what we live with, don’t we? Being ‘the other’.
But my experiences in India have not always been bad. I still have many friends from elementary school who still stay in touch, and they are Indians. I remember at the Seventh-day Adventist college we kids all used to play together- Sri Lankan, Keralan, Kuki, Mizo, Burmese, Kenyan, Uganda, Tamilian, etc. Being the only children (and family) at NCF Pune everyone was an ‘uncle’ or an ‘aunty’ and in turn we were pampered too. I remember having Hindu friends, Muslim friends from school and our neighborhood or Christian friends from UBS (Union Biblical Seminary). These experiences have structured my childhood memory and for someone whose upbringing has been a little bit of everywhere and everything they remind of a magical if not nostalgic childhood.
Fast-forward six years (years I haven’t lived in India) and coming back to India with a) a increased population of North-easterners in the cities, b) rapid modernization and urbanization of India’s cities in the decade or so, plus more and more NRIs, increasing number of Indians travelling abroad etc. Of all the cities in India I chose Delhi. I don’t really know why but it was also part of a challenge to understand India again, which had become very alien to me (Nagaland was a close second, my only connection being ‘Naga’). I volunteered to teach English to slum kids, but more than anything I wanted to interact with them and see how they lived. And my journey of self-discovery (and new discovery) began somewhere in the belly of India. It changed a lot of my views about the world, people, also eroding superficial relations that I thought I had with other Indians who were normally more privileged than this lot. When I came back from Europe for the first time after 5 years I had probably dolled out a 1000 grand to way-farers, beggars and filthy children because I felt bad and pity for them. But here I was sitting with them in a gurudwara waiting for a midday meal and I was not handing out money for pity’s sake. Rather, I was understanding them and their ways.
Walk down the streets in Indra Vihar in north Delhi and you will see some of the most ultra-hip north-easterners. It isn’t only alienation from our roots but a certain defiance (towards Indians) or even dislike to be ourselves, that worries me. There is a girl near our building we though might even be a prostitute. We could be terribly wrong, of course, but her short skirts, heavy make-up or different male escorts sometime suggest (to us or other Indian males) something otherwise. It isn’t that she is doing something wrong because she is a Naga, a North-east. No, I think this is a very wrong interpretation we often make to be more righteous than the other. But, on the other hand, if this is part of our reactions (to discrimination or racial profiling) then I think it will do us more harm than we do to others, or others do to us. My student, a slum dweller, tentatively asked me one day: “Ma’am, do you eat people (human beings)?” I replied cooly, “Why no, Amar, of course not. We only chop off their heads.” We all laughed, but at the same time I have also, on more than one occasion felt the need to ‘keep my guard up’ because the perception that north-east girls are easy is also very misinterpreted. Believe you-me, in a city like Delhi those ‘perceptions’ stay and are not easy to shake off. Yes, there is also a cultural divide (especially with north-India) but these notions that we have also propagated are not entirely their fault either. I am not well-acquainted and become a bit confounded by these upcoming high-tech Nagas (or NEs) who shop at Zara, have blackberry mobile phones, only take flights –not trains, party in week days, don’t attend classes, can play computer games all day but at the drop of a hat can readily talk about discrimination and racial profiling in Indian cities. Aren’t we being a little hypocritical here? And yet because we are the ‘minority’ and STs, we are always right…
My father once brought a dead dog (to be consumed) on our old beaten-up blue scooter in Pune. When interrogated by our building watch-man he said he was a scientist and that he owned a tiger. This dead dog was undoubtedly for the tiger. For about a week after, all the children in the block asked about our ‘Tiger’ and what we were feeding it. Although I don’t particularly like dog-meat, I guess this is a Naga-attribute too (if one may call it that!).
Epiphany on the Rajdhani train
It was my first proper train ride alone in India after about 15 years and I was terrified! What if someone slit my throat and ran off with my luggage somewhere near Patna?! But I said to myself, “what the hell”. There’s always a first and it has been an unfulfilled dream to travel by myself on an Indian train…..and I loved it. I believe it is the ultimate experience of ‘Desi’ in short. The air, the sight of villages, swamps, the rural, yellow-mustard-and-wheat fields and sun-burned children that’s all India. It’s all part of the experience of seeing India –not just malls and city life. Also, I think no one else will see India quite like us north-easterners: both as an outsider as well as an insider.
While I, I am a head-hunter. I am a mountain-dweller. My sinews, my touch and senses know the land that my ancestors have treaded on; the land which is undeniably a part of me too.
This is how I see India, this is how I see myself too. As a part; as an outsider; as an observer, and sometimes as the underdog too. But most importantly, I believe it is about knowing myself first before I know India, or before I know the world beyond. For I am a head-hunter among non-beef eaters.
Darling, what can I offer you…….some weathered dreams perhaps, a frost-bitten hand and heart that Indifference has bent?
