We the Maharashtrians!

Anyone who knows a Maharashtrian would vouch for this (And if you can’t, you really don’t know us!) We, the Marathi people are nothing but perfect-or at least we love to think so. So be it the perfect culture, perfect frugal lifestyle, perfect education, perfect ‘sanskars,’ perfect dialect, perfect manners or perfect state; Maharashtrians are the blessed ones that belong to a perfect world.

I pondered upon this over the past week when my mother was over at my place. I had a quick brush up on the Marathi way of life with something even as inane as driving a car. And just in case you are wondering, well Maharashtrians are the only ones in Mumbai that abide by the lane system. The Gujaratis, Sindhis, Bhaiyyas, Bhopalis, Oriyas, Manipuri, Rajasthani……(think of all the other states) are the ones that break traffic rules, and we law abiding Maharashtrians pay for their blunders. Phew. Ok so we proceed…

I wasn’t too sure if I were thinking right, so tried confirming this with my left side neighbour at work- a Gaud Saraswat Brahmin (From Konkan Mahaashtra, if you must know.)

“Tell me something, does it happen with your family too? Do you guys ever feel that Maharashtrians are the best people on the planet?” I ask.

“Aren’t we?” she asks back.

So I get my answer in her question.
Over the last weekend, I have many small tiffs with my mother who thinks I had swayed into a different culture that doesn’t think of the Marathi manus as the pride of the nation. But I only have one question to ask my mother: “What is with the regional chauvinism?”
Her rhetoric answer would be (which by the way is her answer to most of my questions,) “As an Air Force officer’s wife, I have travelled all over the country and seen all cultures. Only after seeing it all, do I realise that Maharashtrians are the ‘right’ people.”

There was no way I was getting past that argument, so I let the matter rest. But I have been thinking about how regional prejudices have swept through most of us. So be it Amitabh Bachchan endorsing Uttar Pradesh as the safest city to be in (yeah, laugh your guts out) or Narendra Modi issuing pamphlets on Gujarat’s magnanimity towards different cultures, we all have become regional fanatics.

The one-upmanship of one state over the other, one culture or region over the other has trickled down to the smallest denominator. No wonder my little cousin in Belgaum (disputed district between Karnataka and Maharashtra) screeches “Jai Maharashtra” each time I speak to him, while his parents wouldn’t want anything to do with Maharashtra.

As for me, I’d come back to my mother’s argument of travelling across the entire country. But I have a different take on it. With every new place, I’ve only made new friends….Bengalis, Punjabis, Marwaris, Gujarathis, Tamils, Mallus ….all of them. I only consider myself fortunate to have seen them all. Not because now I've been told that Maharashtrians are the best, but because now I know that had these regional identities not been there, I wouldn’t even be called a Maharashtrian.