Down South from February

14^th February 2017

Hullo, It’s over a month that I’ve been away from my domicile state. I’m officially in Andhra Pradesh – and I realize as I’m writing this that this is the first time that I’m visiting this state in all my 41 years. I was in Madras for a bit and then in Bangalore. There was a trip to Vellore which we cancelled. But the project on Young (and Old) Biologists in India is coming to an end. I find myself even hoping sometimes – that it blooms.

Away for a month from my usual moorings doesn’t make me feel any different as a person. For better or worse, I see the same thoughts and same images in my head, talk to Fimh when I do, worry when I do about old worries, smile a rather toothy smile when I do about the identical reasons, pray for, rant about and wonder about the same things that I usually do. Come to think of it – wasn’t I the same when I was 10,000 miles west? I’m not sure whether that makes me bizarre or boring. The only difference here is that I take a bus to work at the same time every morning and I probably smoke a little less, since there is this draconian no-smoking policy in almost all campuses and guest houses and so forth.

The places that I have been staying at in the South of India feel very different from the plains of the North-ish and East. Not so much in terms of geography or the spread of the land or the colours. But in terms of culture and language and the people – the regions strike me to be as being remarkably different. I feel guilty for feeling thus – but I feel like an outsider. Every day as I travel by bus and when I look out and observe people and signs and the hustle and bustle of this town which is famous for its temple – I am quite perplexed by my own emotion. Objectively speaking, the people don’t look that different, on an average, from the people of West Bengal. I thought they did. I was sure they did. But one day I told myself on the bus to pretend that I was traveling through some districts of West Bengal and while the emotional side of me told me that I was an idiot for even trying to pretend – one part of me observed. Not the language on the billboards or the flexboards and signs on the shops – but just the people. I was less sure of the absolute difference. And what about the people of Sri Lanka? That part of my head said. Do they look very different from Indians? The only discernible difference among the people that I can actually notice without bias is that many women go about their daily days with flowers in their hair and many of the men sport very big, almost handlebar moustaches. But it’s the language – whispers a very diffident part of me. The language sounds very different.

The language does sound different to the ears – true. The majority in Madras speaks Tamil and here in Tirupati, the majority speaks Telugu. The language barrier is probably what makes me feel like an alien. Hindi is really a no-no. By this time, I feel as though I could carry on a medium-length conversation in Hindi – given the options. One is more likely to be understood if one speaks English or very-broken-English. The head bob that Desmond Morris spoke about in his BBC documentary on body language is very popular here – far more than in the East is my guess. As far as I have noticed – the head bob is almost conspicuous in its absence in Delhi and its surrounding areas. But the meaning of the head bob is not always clear.

On the first night when I took a taxi to a guest house in the IIT campus at Madras – the taxi driver gave me a smile and a vigorous head bob when I asked him whether he knew where the guest house was and he led me to his taxi. In the middle of the ride he suddenly spoke a sudden string of sentences and I had no real clue as to what he was saying. He might have been asking me where I was from or speaking about the weather. I knew after a bit that he had no clue of where I wanted to go. I spoke from my end repeating the address and he didn’t know what I was saying but he was vigorously doing his head bob. He didn’t seem in the slightest bit perturbed as he kept driving at a healthy almost speedy pace to God-knows-where. I wanted to ask him where he was going. Finally I managed to get him to stop the taxi and I asked a policeman. The policeman, listened to and nodded at me in a deadpan way (which is probably the universal code for policemen) and gave the taxi driver the directions. I sat in the back not knowing what was being said when the policeman breaking the universal code for policemen waved me off with a smile and the head bob. I asked the driver in an absurd mix of Hindi and English whether he now knew where we were going. He half turned around and gave me a smile along with the head bob. This time he did know where to go and we reached the campus and the guest house. I think I have now almost picked up a permanent head bob.

Many college and university campuses in India are all becoming no-smoking or have been for decades and I have not known about it. Even smoking in public spaces is frowned upon. It would have been marvelous had we shown the same religiosity regarding cleanliness in our public surroundings, maintaining road rules (having some enforceable laws in the first place might have been a good idea) and really dealing with and taking care of the hungry, diseased, injured and often emaciated stray animals. Those are just three things I can think of right now. For a day and a half I went about smoking on the IIT campus and thought it distinctly strange that not only was I the only person to be doing so but that there was not a sign of even one random cigarette butt anywhere. Nobody said anything and so I went about my business. Finally one afternoon while I was running out of one appointment to go to another and I was taking a few hasty puffs – a student stopped me on the road and informed me that the entire campus was no smoking. And that campus gate was at least two miles away.

The Saturday that I was there in Chennai, I felt an overwhelming urge to visit the beach. The interviews were done. I had got my workshop proposal in. I was leaving early on Sunday morning. “We can go to the beach!” –  so Fimh said. But I didn’t go to the beach. Between then and now there has been the trip to Bangalore apart from this stint at Tirupati. I think I prefer Bangalore to Tirupati – in terms of distant-places-where-I-do-not-stay….which is odd because normally I prefer towns to cities. But then again – this whole work trip seems very odd. There might be a real holiday trip to Pondicherry – but I don’t know for sure, as yet. I have an interesting view out of the window from the guest-house here in the evenings and early mornings. I can see gentle, rolling hills in the distance and the open expanse of the sky is full of stars and there’s one very bright star in the midst. I am sure of this. Tata for now.