Son of the soil ..ah who really is !!! but arent we all daughters and sons of this earth is my question ...an earth sans frontiers!!

loved this line ......''Life emerged from the water. In a way, we are all the descendants of immigrants'' ....
in indian we have a unique twist to this .....we are all indians ''BUT'' some of us are said to belong to different states as our parents were born and brought up there!!!! .... and it has has been exploited by politicians and led to murder and mayhem .... in the name of the 'son of the soil' .................but who truly is the son of the soil ?......one whose ancestors lived there or one who strives, toils, builds her/his home there, dreams and hopes there, spends there, sets down roots there, contributes to the betterment of the place and in the end dies there .....land belongs to one and at the same time belongs to none ....it is common property because we are just travelling in space and time here on earth ........and if only man realised this ... we could easily do away with boundaries drawn in our mind and be a global village ...... working and sharing with our inherent differences and growing because of our differences .......



i am born to parents who are from the south indian state of kerala. my dad came to pune in the 60s when he came to study and later took up a job there and finally settled down in this cultural oxford of the east. i am born and brought up in pune, and i grew up thinking i belong to maharashtra. my mind thinks like a maharashtrain..... and my heart beats for maharashtra...

there is something about maharashtra, i believe it to be the most progressive state as far as women empowerment or even freedom allowed to girls is concerned. this was pointed out to me by my teacher in school mrs.gena lemos...she said look at the dress of the maharashtrian woman ....though a nine yard sari, it is called a kashta and allowed them to horse ride astride in the olden days....as it is draped in a particular manner the closest one can come to wearing pants, with a sari. another thing i liked a lot about this state is how women treated eve teasers.... a stinging slap given with a kholapuri chappal .... meaning women have no qualms in giving eve teasers a taste of what it is to be humiliated in public. kholapur is a place famous for a special type of leather slippers worn by all in the earlier days, specially the working class.
growing up in pune i always thought i was a punekar ....and fought valiantly in the defense of pune, with cousins saying silly things about maharashtra when fighting.....this was a yearly ritual when i went for holidays to kerala every summer.
slowly as time went by it dawned on me that there is no way a maharashtrian would ever consider me to be anything other than a mallu(a colloquial way of addressing a keralite). this fact was brought home in school  specially when it was time to opt between continuing with marathi in senior school or taking up french. i opted for french as i was staying in an area where the national language,hindi was the preferred language of communication. my dad was working for the indian air force, and i can speak hindi very well but writing and reading  is still time consuming.
later in college too i could sense this when i shifted from one college to another, so i made friends with girls from pune itself as i believed by then knowing a language is strength. i used to communicate with my friends in marathi and soon was quite comfortable with the language. i used to also watch a lot of marathi programs on television to learn the nuances of the language.
everything said and done it is when i joined the work force i realised the difference in being from a different state and applying for a permanent job in education. i realsied for the first time what the maharashtrian must be going through in competing with a keralite for a job in maharashtra!!!!! specially because there might be just a handfull of maharashtrians working in kerala !!!!!
so the son of the soil issue was upfront and large ......something i saw from the perspective of the son of the soil for the first time....
then we are brought to the issue of who is a son of the soil in a country like india .....somehow we have lost our identity as an indian in our pursuit of belonging and keeping the culture of the state we belong to intact.most indians will always ask each other as to which state one belongs to when meeting another indian.

after marriage i went to live in the north eastern state of assam, when i applied to a college in this state i noticed the hostility of the principal while talking to my husband and me. the application was sent via the mail man from the estate i was living in, and it was sent one day before the due day was over. i was shocked to hear the mail man come back and tell me the principal did not even read the application.... but threw it on the floor. the mail man sounded almost sorry for what had happened. i was amazed at the principal's behaviour as a huge contingent of students move out of the north east and study in various parts of india, where the law and order situation is better than that in assam. i wondered if the principal of that particular college had thought for a moment of his kind of behaviour being meted out to the numerous people of assam working all over india!!!. his behaviour was all the more shocking because i am married to an assamese, but what he chose to focus on was the fact that i was a south indian!!! but he forgot to see the indian in me !!!
if one looks at the number of people working in different parts of india and then tries to find out as to how many actually are from that particular state, the statistics will be heartening. having said that i will also add that post the 90s this issue has been much maligned and used by politicians as a very popular tool to get votes. the son of the soil issue was always there and if one goes to the depth of the matter one should realise that in today's global village, where people keep travelling much more than they used to and where work permits are easy to come by, does the son of the soil issue really hold up?
after shifting to bahrain i got to see such a different aspect to this issue !!!! here there are so many many people from all over the world working on this tiny island and all were welcomed to work here. it is only of late that the protesting opposition has actually resorted to harming people from other regions specially asians. the instances of such happenings are rare and the governmental action taken to curb such action has been swift and reassuring.
looking at all the agitations happening globally too on this issue ....i feel it is sad for all parties concerned .....because with trade becoming free and movement of labour becoming easier ...... what economist samuelson had predicted about factor price equalisation is happening to a small extent but the trade cycles are ensuring that the son of the soil is one issue that is something governments and educational institutions and the media should educate people about. this is an issue that should not be used by politicians to gain votes by instigation mayhem in the name of  ''rights of the son of the soil''. politicians doing so should be severely punished, so as to be a deterrent to others.
if one really looks at this issue from a social and philosophical perspective ......then my question is    
Son of the soil ..ah who really is !!! but aren't we all daughters and sons of this earth ...an earth sans frontiers!! 

the pet tigress

this is a real life incident that happened on a tea estate in assam, where many a planter will be able to share many such real life episodes. this is true because even my husband had come across young tiger cubs in the forest surrounding the first estate he had joined in dhekiajulie. i too have sighted many a wild animal during my 6yr stay on various tea estates, in south india and the north east of india.
once a young tea planter found an abandoned tiger cub when he was on a round of the tea estate. the managers in charge of the field(tea estate) have to keep taking rounds of the estate to check on plucking of tea leaves, stray cattle, encroaching wild animals etc. though i always felt it is we humans who encroached on the natural habitat of the animals. life on an estate is never dull as there is something unusual happening all the time and of course in assam the insurgency added an element of fear too.
the young planter looked for the mother of the cub and took it home as he could find no trace of the mother, neither did he find any other siblings of the small cub. he did this as there are packs of wild dogs moving around and they are vicious. i once saw these dogs and they gave me an eerie feeling even though i was in a jeep.
the planter let the cub have free reign of his house and instructed the bungalow help to feed the cub at regular intervals. every evening when he came home, he would play a bit with the cub, and pet and kiss it's forehead.
this became a daily routine and with time the cub would wait at the upper floor window. many tea bungalows are built on stilts, so he would climb up the stairs and go pet the cub which was growing up fast. this unusual pet of this planter was the talk of many parties and gatherings, so people kept getting updates on the cute antics of the cub.
soon a day came when the cub became a mature tigress, the bungalow help were a little worried about the food and the tigress now. soon it started to go out into the jungle for days on end, but when ever the planter saw the tigress, he would never fail to pet it like he used to. once when he saw the tigress after a gap of a few days, he was happy to sight it and went and pet it like always, though he found it a bit strange to see it on the ground in the porch. he went up to the verandah upstairs.... and got the shock of his life..... there was a tigress sitting in its usual spot......and for the first time he was scared and i guess the animal too sensed his fear and strange withdrawal. that was the last time the tigress was sighted by the young planter.
it is difficult to distinguish at a quick glance if it is a tigress or a tiger ....specially if they are seated, and so the planter got confused as to whether he had petted his pet or had he pet a fully grown male tiger!!!!! the saving grace being animals never kill unless hungry and i always wondered at why the tigress never came back after that incident. did it know it was time to move on? or did it sense the fear in its human friend for the first time? ....questions that will never be answered,
i too used to go for walks on the estate in assam but it was irritating that i was never allowed to go alone for my walks, unless i did it without informing anyone. if i asked my husband permission he would insist i take the maid along. i loved to go for walks alone and did so sometimes as the estate we were staying on was so beautifull, the manager had planted wild flowers all along the estate near the tea bushes. some of the other executives kept telling me about sighting a tiger, but i used to think they were joking or pulling my leg as a lot of that too went on, specially because i was from the city and had never experienced rural life ever before. i stopped going for walks the day the manager sent a warning to all the people on the estate, of having sighted a tiger on the estate...... how i missed my walks from then on !!!!