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| Subir Roy: A nation in the making |
| Subir Roy / New Delhi Aug 12, 2009, 00:53 IST |
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This is a story at two levels, as all good stories are — at a personal and an anecdotal on one hand and an official and ‘history in the making’ on the other.
Not four scores and seven but just seven years ago I decided to move books, baggage and family to Bangalore, and what do you think helped me settle down? The quintessential personal network that helps you get along in India. While I went house hunting, I stayed with my cousin Lokkhi (from my grand uncle’s branch of the family) and her husband Rana who had preceded me, not long ago, as part of the roll-out of the modern pan-Indian institution of the private airline.
Once I found a house, an unbelievably helpful neighbour, Mr Lakshmikanthappa, who could have been only providentially put across the street, helped me set up local networks and college friend Abhijit helped with important things like like children’s schooling. He had, of course, settled decades ago, courtesy that also modern but older unifying Indian institution, the all-India services.
Soon came the news that Piku, the bright younger son of another cousin, who had done his stint in the US as part of the body shopping diaspora of Indian software engineers, was relocating in Bangalore at an obscene salary with the Indian back office of a famous global financial institution.
But the wheels of migration don’t pause so easily. No sooner had we managed to rent a place at what was clearly bear market rates, the property market turned bears into bulls and led to a boom for firms supplying builders with assorted materials. More business means more hands — and there was Kalyan-da’s older son Papu also arriving with young son, wife and baggage, looking for a place to stay. So here was this elderly couple, who had perforce to spend half the year in Bangalore as both their sons had relocated there and the rest of the year in Kolkata to be with an aged parent.
Oh yes, I have forgotten to mention that long ago, Lokkhi’s first cousin Rajat (I am a second cousin), long settled in the US, had married a girl from Bangalore whom he had met in the US. They have made a great pair despite the fact that one is a determined vegetarian and the other is an incurable fish eater.
Enough is enough, you would have thought, but no. The other day I had a phone call happily telling me that Lokkhi’s other cousin Ratna and husband, both peripatetic members of another all-India service, had managed a posting in Karnataka! So there they were in Bangalore, with ageing parents, setting up house in congenial Indiranagar just two minutes’ walk from where I had first set myself up years ago. Now, virtually all the three branches of my grand uncle’s clan which hailed from Tollygunge in Kolkata were there in Bangalore!
I was bemused. This was a veritable invasion of Karnataka from Bengal, not via the sea routes that historically took sea-farers from eastern India down south or further east but via the railways that the British had built and the airplanes thereafter. This had better stop, I thought, or they will overstay their welcome. The latest such happening is the slogan raised to save the domain of the Maharashtra manush from outsiders. I had spotted the warning slogan scrawled across walls right when I had come in claiming, albeit in terrible handwriting which gave away their graffiti skill level and professionalism, that Karnataka was for Kanadigas.
The last is the fallout of an earlier historical migration riding the coattails of the British — here comes the official and ‘history in the making’ part of the narrative — that had created the perception of the Tamilian presence in Karnataka getting too big for its own good. Its public manifestation was a move, to set up a statue of Tamil poet saint Thiruvalluvar in the city’s Ulsoor area where many Tamilians live, being stalled for nearly two decades! Consequently, also stalled was a parallel move to set up a statue of Kannada poet Sarvajna in Chennai. Chief ministers had come and gone and the matter remained unresolved, doing no good to the ties between the two groups.
A sad but altogether familiar story of fractious modern India, but look at the latest denouement. Current Karnataka chief minister Yeddyurappa led all the political parties in the state to end the impasse and unveil the statue of Thiruvalluvur and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidihi — he had vowed not to come to Bangalore until the stature was unveiled — came and camped in the city for the official unveiling set for last Sunday. But the local groups would have none of it and, after spurning the overtures of the chief minister to cooperate, went to the High Court in an attempt to stall the unveiling. And what a role the court played. It severely reprimanded the groups and asked them not to play with national unity.
The unveiling passed off peacefully on Sunday — the two chief ministers and other political leaders swore to keep low politics out of matters like paying homage to poet-saints whose message was that all men are brothers. And the statue of Sarvajna in Chennai is now set for unveiling on Thursday. As fine a chapter as any in the history of a nation in the making but as fish-eating groups in Bangalore get together and raise the cup that cheers, I worry loudly for all those who will listen: This Kolkata to Bangalore business had better not be overdone or we will have a problem 50 years down the line!
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