Delhi’s Madrasis - Then and Now

In October 2014 I wrote a blog titled Delhi’s Madrasis, based mostly on their life and style during the 1950’s. A reader then suggested that I write a sequel to that as Delhi’s Madrasis - Then and Now. This is an attempt in deference to that suggestion

My living in Delhi ended in 1978 after nearly 28 years as student, employee and family man. Thereafter I have visited that city many times mostly on official business and sometimes fulfilling family commitments. However, I continued to observe the life and living of the Delhi Madrasis only the Tamil speaking group because of my limited exposure to other linguistic groups like Keralites, Andhraites and Kannadigas. However, for many North Indians, it is still Madrasis without any geographical or linguistic distinction and some even think that most “Karelis” (read Keralites) are Christians!.

The Tamil population in Delhi is around 10 lakhs today while it was only some 60000 in 1980. This exponential increase is both on account of increase in the size of the city itself as well as the increase in Tamil immigrants. The city in my days was defined by the areas under New Delhi Municipal Committee and Delhi Metropolitan Corporation and included what is now called as Lutyens Delhi and other Government colonies like Lodhi Colony, R.K. Puram, Moti Bagh , Sarojini Nagar and other non-government settlements like Karol Bagh, Patel Nagar, Lajpat Nagar, Jangpura , Munirkha, Naraina, , Pankha Road . Today Delhi covers the entire National Capital Region and includes far- off satellite townships extending up to Haryana and UP where too the Tamil community has settled in huge campuses like Alaknanda, Vasant Kunj , Rohini, and NOIDA. However still lakhs of them live in slums and JJ colonies

In its composition, the Tamil community in Delhi today is a mix of government servants living mostly in New Delhi and its surrounding areas and employees in corporate sector both in high and lower positions. In government and corporate offices, old Madrasi names like Sambasivan , Vaideeswaran etc. are fewer while other names like Ilango, Manivannan, Kathiravan, etc. are commonplace reflecting a shift to Dravidian names.
To quote Narain Ganesh ( TOI dated 15th Sept 2002) “So what’s an average Delhi Tamilian or DTam like? It is a wide range from the vibhooti-kumkum sporting dhoti clad Karolbagh veterans to hanky topped disco damsel boogying till the wee hours, to suave corporate honchos. Most Tamils, however, fall somewhere in between, adding value to corporates, media groups and the art world”.

In my time, the elders of the Tamil community were hard put to speak Hindi . I remember my uncle having difficulty to count beyond 20 in Hindi and would say” dho upper bees “for 22, while another relation was ingenious enough to ask for “gobar ka roti “for cow-dung cake! Though, in some families the children considered it fashionable to speak in Hindi at home. Today the youngsters speak fluent Hindi, however the accent is Tamilian like saying “Kaffer Market “for Gaffer Market!

I now find more women, particularly younger ones, wearing salwar and kameez than sarees. Other than those working in offices and schools, most women work as domestic help . It was so in my time as well,but the difference now is that they are not confined to working in Tamilian homes only but in other linguistic family homes also. Their ability to speak Hindi has widened the job market for them.

Culturally, the Tamils still live in their cocoons. The plethora of temples in almost every area where they live, is the place of congregation on festival days. . Malai Mandir, the temple devoted to the Tamil Deivam Murugan, is still the major attraction. On days like Thai Poosam etc., the crowd is huge with hundreds of “Kavadis”,like what it is in some famous Murugan temples in Tamilnadu. A notable feature is the number of persons from other regions and communities like Panjabis, Bengalis, and Marwaris coming to Madrasi temples. A cross cultural change indeed.

Other cultural units like the Bhajana Samajs, Music Clubs are still patronised by only a section of the community as during my time. “Rasikar Mandrams “of famous cinema actors like Rajini, Kamal, Vijay celebrate the release of films of their Heros. Murugan at Malai Mandir takes a back seat then.

Hotels and restaurants have have mushroomed, though many of them run by Udupi Kannadigas and Keralites. Likewise, Madrasa Stores selling typically south Indian specialities like appalm, vetrili, pakku, seeakai powder, besides other groceries also have come up in many numbers. Textile Stores selling sarees and veshtis, travel agencies to book train and air tickets are other ventures indicating the shift from employment to trade and commerce.

Integration with other communities through marriage was few and far between in my time. Now, it is not uncommon to find some educated and salaried Tamil boys and girls marrying spouses from other regions. After all who will not like to marry the intelligent, hard working, simple living Tamil groom/bride ?

Too Late to Lament

The recent decision of the CBSE to completely  delete chapters on federalism, citizenship, nationalism and secularism  from the political science curriculum of class 11 makes me jealous of the class 11 children. Where were  such helping School Regulatory Boards when I was in school saddled with heavy syllabus in almost every subject.?

Take arithmetic: In the chapter on ratio and proportion , we were asked to work out the proportion of water in milk after a dishonest milk seller went on adding equal quantity of water after each sale. Apart from the difficulty in answering, this encouraged  adultratration and dishonesty

In algebra and trignometry, it was all right to learn the formulae by heart and use them in solving questions.What was  the need to derive them from first principles?. Avoidable waste of time .

My problem in English was its grammar, particularly what is known as parsing of sentences. The different kinds of clauses and what word they qualified would have turned even Johnson to take to writing in Latin. It was no different in the case of Hindi where the verb determined the gender ! And in Sanskrit I dropped out in the second week of classes when I was told that the verb depended not just on the  gender but its number, tense etc. Grammar ,as I understood later in life,  is discipline but the best works in any literature pays not much respect to grammar. In poetry learning in all languages we were expected to not just paraphrase but to go beyond to describe what the poet had in mind writing that piece/stanza.

Free -hand drawing of maps as part of Geography and remembering dates and and quoting historians   in answers to questions in History were the other nuisense.

The present day school children are fortunate to have less load to study causing envy in persons like me 

Hinglish as she is spoke

Hinglish as she is spoke

The other day our Home Minister was giving an intrview in a TV Channel on the steps he has initited in Delhi to bring Covid 19 under control. The anchor asked "Can any body go to any hospital in Delhi to get the Crona TEST done?". The Minister said" Yes anybody can TASTE."
Likewise online orders and payments are OWNLINE and  when some
 News readers in TV Channels say a notoarious thief has been  RESTED , dont jump into thinking that he has ben given well desrved rest for all his nocturnal labours but jost only  ARRESTED.
Another pitfall for many is the cofusion between INCIDENTS and INCIDENCES so much so that when the news of INCIDENCES of police highhandedness is read what is meant are INCIDENTS
In Panjab , the first syllable is usually contracted when speaking in any language.  As a result MARUTHI  becomes  MRUTHI ,  KAROL BAGH as ROLBAGH and KAILASH  as KLASH.  A LAWYER  is a LIER. as many would say. It is Coronoa Virus these days and  LOCK DOWN is LOK DOWN , perhaps aptly since people (LOK) are indeed down in spirit

Bulwark of Constitutional Rights

In India, there is a constitutional  provision for affirmative action through  reservation in legislatures, government  jobs and  enrolment in higher educational institutions for  Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes , Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and also the economically backward classes. Though introduced for a limited period initially, this policy has been continued with more and more sections of society brought under reservation

In the recent few years, however, a debate is taking place on the desirability of continued of reservation .  As the demand - supply gap has widened in higher/ professional education  and government  jobs, the protagonists of  reservation  are agitating  for more and more sections of the society. The counter-  view  in the debate is reservation and lowering of  qualification standards  for seats and jobs promotes and perpetuates anti-meritocracy .

Caste/ community based reservation being not enough, there is also  growing demand for reservation in jobs  in some states like Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra  and Karnataka , accounting for about a third of the country’s geographical area,  for “ locals” i.e  those who have been living within the boundaries of these states respectively  for a certain period. This is in total negation of a basic tenet of our Constitution viz no discrimination based on place of birth or domicile. In his insightful article titled “One Nation, One Constitution?”  ( The Times of India Mumbai , 7/9/2019) , Robin David says “ In the end, it all boils down to populism versus Constitution. Will any political leader or party have courage to stand up for the Constitution against this popular move?”

Who then would protect constitutional rights of citizens?  “ If human beings have rights, is there a court which is duty bound to protect them the moment those rights are violated? Is this court the Supreme Court?” asks Dushyant in his Edit Page  article in Mumbai Times dated 6/9/2019

The Third "P" in Elections

With  General Elections  round the corner,  political parties have started the preliminaries like
combining and combating.  New alliances are formed not on ideological identities but on electoral objective of winning.

Voters are expected to indicate their preference intelligently using two "P"s i.e Performance and Promise of the contesting parties.  Such decision may  be difficult this time because of the gap between promise and performance on the part of the present ruling dispensation as alleged by the  the the opponents  and the  absence  of any programme /plan or even not naming  a leader for the  opposing combination of  parties as chided by the ruling party.

So Voters will most likely be guided by the third "P" i.e Prejudice. Once again, caste and  faith  will decide voting.

The world's largest democracy is still to mature

My Qualitative Balance Sheet

As accountant by training and qualification, I am prone to reckon everything numerically.  But my personal Balance Sheet of Assets and Liabilities in conventional terms of rupee is  dismal.  I therefore have thought of drawing the same in qualitative terms.  No date other than the last day of 2018, a year when I completed 80 years of an uneventful life, is better suited for this purpose.

For the uninitiated in accountancy, the Balance Sheet is an enigma listing, as it does, one’s assets and liabilities with the same total on each side.  If their totals do not tally, pity the accountant burning midnight oil finding the cause and eventually proving the totals to the satisfaction of the auditors.

To escape from this problem I have drawn my personal balance sheet in qualitative terms. There is   no question of proving the totals under this method.

Here how it goes.  I have not used the conventional “T” format of Balance Sheet.

                         My Balance Sheet as on completion of 80 years of age                                                 

Capital & Liabilities                                                                      

   A. Capital

Family upbringing and Values

Education

Organisations & Work culture gained

  B. Liabilities

    Long term:  Unmet life/career ambitions

   Short term: Prejudices /biases

                         Attitudinal shortcomings

                        

                                  Assets

A.  Fixed Assets     

Blessings of parents, gurus and God

Family Harmony

Goodwill of relations and friends

B. Current Assets

     Professional  recognition

     Community acceptance

A tool in strategic management is  the Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats ( SWOT) Analysis . The usefulness of this analysis is to exploit one’s strengths, overcome weaknesses and  convert  the threats into opportunities.  The Qualitative Balance Sheet may also be seen as an analysis to enhance one’s non- monetisable assets and liquidate attitudinal  liabilities.

The Thumb Rule

In  my earlier blog titled “ Me – A Selfie “ ( 6^th October 2014),  I wrote about the nose as a unique human organ performing the life sustaining function of breathing in and out and yet   differing in shape, size and style from individual to individual. 

In this piece, I take the human Thumb – an organ our evolutionary ancestors, the chimpanzees had but not used for functions of the hand like throwing and clubbing. Our grip of objects would have been weak were it not for the thumb. Some infants are given to sucking the thumb and in some cases this habit grows even into their childhood. 

The Thumb comes as a single organ, one in each palm. It juts out from other fingers perhaps to show its indispensability and versatility in most functions of the hand. Even so sometimes we refer to an uncomfortable situation as like a sore thumb. Very rarely an extra thumb is seen in some persons, providing a matter of curiosity for the rest of us but not of any bother to the person.

 Palmistry attaches a lot of importance to the length, contour and the lines of the thumb as revealing the characteristics of the person like stubbornness, pliability etc.  A  palmist , after examining the shape and  stiffness  of my thumb  prophesised that I would be an unyielding husband which was totally disproved after my wedding  

 Even today after dramatic increase in literacy, there are persons who use the thumb impression as substitute for their signatures in all papers including legal documents.

The Aadhaar card scheme owes a great deal to the thumb as a biometric input.

   In the past when typewriters were in use, the thumb had no role in composing texts as the key board was operated with the four fingers of each hand. However in   modern times, the thumb has become indispensable in composing text messages in mobile / smart phones. The modern youth, male and female, have become equidexterous using both the right and left thumbs to write messages on their mobile phones.  I tried writing texts on my phone but my thumb being short and fat proved a handicap.

 Its functional use apart, the thumb has given rise to some meaningful literary expressions.

 Thumbs Up was a brand of cola in India introduced in 1977 to offset the withdrawal of Coca Cola. It then was bought by Coca Cola and relaunched to compete against Pepsi. The Thumbs Up sign is indication of “ All Clear “ “ OK Go Ahead “ and “ I agree/ endorse “ etc.

The Thumb Rule is an expression for easily learned and easily applied procedure or standard based on practical experience rather than theory. In some families this is used  for enforcing some family practices like” Early to bed and early to rise” as promoting discipline among children.

Another expression is the Thumbnail Sketch which is quick abbreviated drawings, usually done very rapidly and with no corrections.  The famous cartoonist R.K Laxman was a past master in this art form with his eponymous Common Man.

Readers are welcome to give the Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down grading for this blog.