The Pizzazzy

As I mentioned before that my work hours hasn’t started being crazy yet, but the team stays at work atleast till 7:30 and here I am recently back from onsite and trying to take advantage of some unwritten priviledges one of them  is to leave early. Early as in around 6:30. Than it takes half an hour to fight the two major bottlenecks when one tries to drive out of Hinjewadi at rush hour.

In a week’s time we shift to our Baner home and my travel time will come down to 15 minutes wonly Some of you who might think of correcting this, this was intentionally trying to be racial towards the mallus in general. Yes, recently we have been making such a fuss about a trivial thing as calling someone “Monkey”. If this is being racial then my friend Megha is a big racist who keeps referring to her husband or kid as “Makad” day in and day out and and so much so that sometimes we fail to realise exactly which Makad is she referring to. For those who are at a loss at the word, this is the Marathi word for “Monkey”.

Since my childhood days which has been spent among the cosmopolitan crowd typical of Army, this crowd is a good mixture of quite many Panjus, Sards, Mallus, Gujjus, Marus, Marathis and a handful of Chinkies. Yes, this is the very word “Chinky” which I have grown up with. I really hated the word at the beginning but then I never thought this was being racial and on many occassion I have referred to my looks as “Chinky’ looks. Racial, am I?

The other day at home we had a big discussion on what is being racial. My definition of the word is “Generalising the behaviour of a group of people on the basis of their origin/color/country”. A lay man’s definition rather. Never before have I given such in depth attention to racism. Even when Shilpa Shetty won the sympathy of an entire nation and more on the Big Brother show and then the title subsequently. It was only the Bhajji and Symonds show down which has given racism a new height.

Some of the best Sard jokes that I have heard has been told by Sardars only. I remember reading Kushwant Singh’s collection of jokes and many of them were on Sards. while in Singapore I was told by friends that one can be caned for being racial. But I still believe that Indians on a larger scale are least bothered about racism in general. Calling people as Panju or Mallu is actually like referring someone with a pet name, in this case a huge group though. But isn’t it our love and familiarity with the group which gives us the priviledge of addressing them in this loving manner.

It is our love only that we refer to the Blacks as Kallus when we are in the US of A. This is the Indian love and not racism. So friends, countrymen and Symonds please note that racism is in the mind. Being called monkey might be racial where you come from but not in the land of Monkey God Hanuman. By the way the very human race are the descendants of Ape, the primitive man.