I am the child of a Central Government employee. And all through my childhood I knew that my new home, school and my group of friends would be there with me only for the next five or six years. Timely transfers were a fact of life. And so while I traipsed the length and breadth of India along with my parent’s postings, I learnt to adapt. I have always had friends all over India– some just like me, several different.

There were lessons which I ingrained in the course of where life took me. People all over the country were the same- irrespective of what they spoke, wore, ate, prayed or looked like. (My stay in London has convinced me that people across the globe were no different too.) My vagabond existence has ensured that the gypsy philosophy of ‘the whole world is mine’ is etched across my mind. I could identify with people anywhere across India. Yes, I could see their strengths and their flaws. I could make out traits specific to communities, but still I could accept them for what they were.

And yet in this existence left me away from what people call a ‘real home’. I never got a chance to live in my ‘home state’, Bihar. And so I cannot really claim to belong there. I never needed that identity as being an Indian was just enough. It didn’t matter to me in which state I stayed- I always fitted in. It would take a few months to get used to the language and the food- and from there on, it was home.

Strangely, I have never used a surname in my life. So the baggage of caste, community and state never plagued me. Yes, I would get into trouble with this oddity all the time with banks and examination, depending on which part of the country I was then. But when my passport allowed me a name without a surname, no one could argue anymore!

So when this entire debate about an insider versus an outsider was whipped up by Raj Thackeray– it left me completely confused. Was I an insider? Or was I an outsider? I never knew my pan-Indian identity would leave me bereft of an identity.

I always react with fury when I hear North Indians speak badly about ‘madrasis’ and vice versa. This country’s beauty is its diversity. And it will take a lifetime just to discover the innate strengths of its various people. If we can not understand its people, let us at least make the effort to do so, instead of resorting to the ‘us versus them’ syndrome.

In this era of globalization, where the whole world has shrunk into one small village, can such shrunken hearts be acceptable? And what pains me is that while it is so obvious that these venomous statements are being made for electoral gain, people are blindly reacting in mob frenzy. Can’t people see through such pseudo-patriotism which seeks to divide? When Harbhajan Singh can get accused of racism for calling someone a monkey, isn’t this blatant divisiveness discrimination of the worst kind? And this chap gets let off on a sham Rs 10,000 bail! Whither justice!?

It makes me want to join politics. We need saner people there. What stops me is the thought whether my voice can make a difference. But then, when one wily politician’s insane braying can make such a scene, surely one voice of sanity can make people see reason. Or am I being too naive and impractical?

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