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METRO ESSAY

Should conservatism mean more than eating curd rice, listening to kutcheris and oiling braids?

It seemed like a propitious day to write this article. There was a piece in a leading national daily recently on how Madras (I prefer it to Chennai) was the most desirable city to live in, in India, according to a study by a London-based human resources firm. This brought to the forefront many thoughts on a city that is inherently impossible for me to be objective about, being my birthplace and hometown.

What do people from other parts of India have to say about Madras? Sift the platitudes and the piffle. Let’s start by asking when it became unfashionable to refer to someone from Madras or the south as Madrasi. The context in which the expression is used is often derogatory. But you don’t hear African Americans getting upset because of reference to their place of origin. And that’s a whole continent!

A popular television programme on a national English news channel aired a debate over whether Madras was India’s most ‘conservative’ city. The programme was pegged on an incident of moral policing. But, what alarmed me about it was the lack of awareness about what constitutes ‘conservatism’.

Fine blend Chennai, a potpourri of cultures

Tamil Nadu has one of the highest literacy rates and economic growth curves in India. It boasts the highest employment rates for women. I suspect the programme’s compere just slipped up on her notion of ‘conservatism’. Does conservatism mean enjoying curd rice, kutcheris of exquisite music, wearing lungis, or oiling our braids? If so, then every state, every region, every microcosm of this country, would be judged by their endemic cultural characteristics. This would suggest that some cultures are somehow ‘cooler’ than others. And this would not factor in things such as Madras’ economic and social progressiveness.

When a friend from Delhi calls to say, “Can we meet up in Chennai or else I get damn bored in the city”, I am perplexed. What can’t you do here that you can in any other big metropolis? I simply don’t get it. Besides, any place is only as much ‘fun’ as the people you know in it. As a former resident of Manhattan, I can confidently say that novelty will wear off after you’ve exhausted the bars, clubs, museums and theatres, if you don’t have people to share it with. So why blame Madras?

During my brief stint at an MBA school that catered to students from across the county’s geographical spectrum, I realised that the biggest problem was ourselves. As Indians, we are heartbreakingly parochial in our perspectives. We take so much for granted in our human interactions that we have become comfortable with ‘sameness’ and condescend towards the different.

So, getting back to Madras. While some say the heat is unbearable, I say that the pervasive humidity seeps into my bones and extracts my humanity. While some mock its cultural roots, I believe I have been given an incalculably rich society to relish. At a time when many cities are rapidly losing their core identity in a sea of post-liberalisation clonal (colonial?) transformation, I will choose to revel in the patient way Madras transforms itself, maintaining its endemic flavours.

“Rudeness is the sauce to his good wit, which gives men stomach to digest his words with better appetite,” says a character in one of Shakespeare’s plays. It is the difference that makes up the sauce, adds to the flavour, and increases one’s appetite. Savour the sauce, I say.

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