Hyderabad to Pilani

Starting off with something that I’ve never done… Blogging…
I’m not that good at vocabulary but I’m pretty much hoping that I’ll be able to communicate well throughout my blogging time ahead.
Be it the green but totally polluted lanes of Hyderabad or dusty, semi arid but relatively less polluted lanes of Bits Pilani, the people that you come across are similar. BITS PILANI is indeed very much like Hyderabad-an ocean that is a blend of different and distinct cultural identities.
Last year when I was still confined to Hyderabad and didn’t even expect that fate would land me here, I spent my vacations debating on orkut forums and it was then, that I started loving my language& culture.
I left my hometown for Pilani with these feelings still being dormant somewhere inside. As the train left I started to feel as if I was going to a place from where I could never return back. I bought a telugu news paper and safely placed it in my bag as though it was the last remnant of some ancient sacred text. As the train moved north the sight of Borassus flabellifer L (palmyra palm /taati chettu) trees along the country side was replaced by neelgiri( a form of eucalyptus ). Tea was no more sold for “aidhu roopayalu” but was being sold for “paanch roopaye”.
My journey from Delhi to Pilani was very much similar to many other of my journeys except for the fact that the signboards were no more in Brahmi script and the numbers on milestones were now written in Hindi numerals which was impossible for me to decode. With a feeling of being dumped into a dense forest I entered the desert land of Pilani. The only sigh of relief to me was that the campus was as mixed as the city I lived in. So hoping that this place could make me feel homely I settled down and was ready at the first instance to accept Pilani as my home (at least for the next 3.5 years).


But to my shock or surprise this visible coexistence and mixed flavor didn’t seem to be a true solution but was evidently a colloidal one. things like the usage of slang words with offensive meanings hidden, to refer to a particular community or lingual group, selection of a person into certain departments being effected by his /her nativity made me apprehensive. I don’t really mean to certify it but I really feel even till today that I am personally a victim of such an unsought activity.
Some questions were frequently posed to me.
1) How do you know Hindi that well?
2) Don’t you guys really watch Bollywood films?
3) Don’t you guys really use Hindi in your day to day life?
4) Why is it that south Indians are relatively darker in complexion?
Initially I was ready to give answers to these seemingly simple questions but gradually after being posed the same question a hundred and one times any one is bound to get fed up.
So was I and I started feeling uncomfortable when such questions were being posed at me.I knew the condition of many students from my city might have been similar.By this I don’t mean that people from my city or state are being bullied or being ostracized but the world I see would be through my eyes ,and to me the world now appeared strange.
But was I right in terming a particular section hostile? Or is there really some fault within my community? I wasn’t sure but I was keen to know the source of these fissures. Only time knew if I were ever gonna succeed in finding it out.