WHERE ARE YOU FROM?
I was not born in Bikaner, but I grew up here and I became me in this small town of western Rajasthan.
I was shocked when my mother told me that I was born in Jodhpur and not in Bikaner. I was always at fight with my cousins on the issue of ‘Bikaner being better than Jodhpur, it was indeed tough for me to accept this reality that my birth was at some other place than this beautiful town. I sometimes feel it would be similar for my parents when they have to search for the roots, when someone would have approached them with a question ‘where are you from’?
My parents aren’t from Rajasthan. My mom was from a small town in Uttar Pradesh ‘Shikohabad’. Her wedding to my Dad brought her to Rajasthan. Grand dad’s job brought him to Rajasthan, and my father had lived his life in this desert state of India. We celebrated all the local festivals with our neighbors and I remember my mother worshiping the local gods and goddesses there. Few of my Rajput friends used to consider ‘Karni Mata’ as their ancestral goddess, I don’t know since when this thought of family goddess came to mind, but we all brother and sisters worship ‘Karni Mata’ as our family goddess. We were at home in Bikaner, I never found my parents troubled looking for their roots or finding answers to the questions like ‘where are you from’? I feel, their society was much more accommodating than my society. Although, theirs was a much less educated world than mine today.
Today I am staying very far from my sweet home ‘Bikaner’, and every other day I am confronted with the questions as to ‘Where are you from? Why are you here in Bangalore? (As I am not an IT professional). Why don’t you learn Kannada? Why don’t you learn Kannada? Why don’t you learn Kannada?...
This last question hurts me the most. These questions are raised by the highly educated people of the city where I live now. I lived my whole life in Bikaner and never anyone questioned me where are you from? Secondly, my mom was very bad at languages; she could never learn local language ’Marwari’. She could never speak this local language nor could I ever learn it. My mother tongue was Hindi. But in my whole life of thirty years I was never confronted with any person who tried to force the language on me. I never felt that to be part of this beautiful world I need to learn another mode of communication. I think the language of love was sufficient. Or rather I would like to put it in a way that I was never questioned about my identity? They accepted me as I am, that is why Bikaner is my home and will always be. People there were never troubled with the facts that if people will speak languages other than Marwaari, they will lose their identity. Rajasthan state does not have any language as such, it is academically called as a dialect. So if I go by the perspectives of people in Bangalore, Rajasthan has no identity as they have no language. But I feel it is Rajasthan which is known all over the world for its culture and its punch line ‘Padharo Mahre Desh’. Definitely it is not insecure about its identity if people in big cities shift to hindi or English as their mode of communication.
Humans invented language to communicate amongst each other. Today I see it as one of the biggest barrier to communicate amongst the people. Here in Bangalore , people being so aware of things and aspect of society, find it so hard to accept each other as humans. At every step I have to prove my worth to be living in this city.
