Southern expedition

One fine afternoon, as we were strolling through the beautiful lanes of Infy campus towards food court to have our lunch, I initiated a interesting topic to infuriate my colleague …'South Indians'. He is a Tamilian and had been in Chennai for quite some time. So I could find the true companion to answer my queries. I was always fascinated with different cultures and behavior that can be observed in different part of this nation. Although the points that we had pointed out were discussed in jocular manner, but the following content may hurt people who hails from South India. Anyways on a lighter note....

The food

I must admit, they have a great appetite when it comes to eating rice. Sometimes I fathom, if rice wasn’t grown at all in this country than entire southern generation would have wiped out. Almost everything in a meal has some imprints of rice like idli, plain rice, biryani, wada, dosa etc. During the lunch break, I could see people carrying a big 15cm diametric plate and stuffing it with all the rice at once making a huge pile till the crest. One of my team mate used to carry his lunchbox which had three compartments: first section consists of plain steamed rice, second one consists of curd rice and the last special one consists of colored rice (I couldn’t find it different from the first one in taste). Mostly the people use their hands to have their meal, mixing rice with curd, sambhar, special chutney etc. at one go. So a new special dish comes out of their creativity..!!! Believe me, it gives you great pleasure to eat rice with your hands but the worst part is to accompany those stained fingers to the wash basin while the sambhar still trickling down.

Movies

The south Indian movies are the great innovation of the Indian cinema. They have the due potential to beat Matrix or any of the James Bond’s flicks and the heroes are more than the idols who are worshipped by the fans here. Some of the names I could recall are Chiranjeevi, Balaya, JrNTR, Balakrishna etc etc…In these movies, the actors are the real heroes who can fight, dance, emote, laugh at the same time and in the same movie…!!! Even Keenu Reaves would have fainted to see hero on the motorcycle toggling the roof of trains or on the horse sliding beneath the lorry or lifting the tractor out of the field or cutting the bullet into two pieces etc etc…Apart from the action scenes, they could be found dancing with heroines with half the age as them. I don’t know what for these actresses are paid for in movies when 80% of the frame is occupied by the actor, 15% for the dance numbers and rest 5% in the rape scenes.

Festivals

South India is very famous for its temples, festivals and religion. No offence to mention, but these festivals and corresponding celebrations are limited to worship of God only. I once asked my colleague, how would he like to celebrate Diwali or Ugadi (which is comparatively more famous here) and the reply was that he would decorate the huge ‘puja ghar’, will call all relatives to the home and offer prayers. More auspicious occasion is for celebration, more is the intensity to offer prayers. Their sacred devotion is much more prevalent than pump-and-show that is famous in North Indian celebrations. If these guys are invited to attend Diwali in Delhi, than I fear they would go blank after seeing so much of lights and hearing the clamor of crackers…!!!

Nature and behavior

By nature, south Indians are simple, down-to-earth and intelligent. It’s a known fact that the secondary board examinations are best in South India and you could easily perceive the fact that maximum percentage of Indians found in US belongs to this region. When I was boarding my aircraft to Amsterdam, I could see 85% south Indians sitting and chatting with air hostesses in their typical English accent. Infact the south Indian languages seem so indifferent to me that I couldn’t recognize them by hearing to their pronunciation. Once an autorickshaw driver made perfect use of this language when I was travelling in Bangalore. After my trip in the auto, while bargaining for the fare, all of a sudden, he had forgot all the Hindi dialogues he remembered and resorted to Kannada to fool me that he doesn’t knew a word of Hindi (though he was speaking fluent Hindi with his friend on cell phone...!).

Its not that the other parts of the country are devoid of such observations, but all they seems to be peculiar to me during my 2.5 years of stay in south India. North Indians have their own language, festival, ways of celebrations, food habits and nature similar to as South Indians have. I am sure foreign guests would have hard time to understand the entire gamut of culture we have.