Yesterday was the day that we had a dosa-fiesta in college. It was also the day I turned pro-reservation. But you know what I am not a sociology student, and know nothing about what 'really' goes on when it comes to dalits and OBCs, I'm not a social worker, I am not even a capitalist, and so I probably don't deserve to have an opinion. Plus, my opinion is not balanced and comprehensive, and so I totally don't deserve to express it - but anyway, I want to and it's my blog, so what the heck. I am also a grad-student - so first and foremost - about the dosa-fiesta.
it was the NYC Dosa Cart, serving a hot and crispy masala dosa, with sambhar, chutney, with an mini uthapam and vada thrown in for good measure, for $5. The event was from 6-8, it was publicised on Facebook, and was a stone's throw away from the CS Dept. It was the perfect recipe for festivities and incidentally, for disaster as well.
We landed up at 6:15 and began waiting in the already snaking long line. The Dosa Cart hadn't warmed up yet. Apparently, they forgot to mention 6-8 Indian Time on that Facebook page. Never mind - aaye hain tho kha kar hi jaayenge. Meanwhile, it was almost a mela. The people in the line, before and after us became kindred spirits joined in their anticipation and devotion to the Dosa. All the while people were pouring in. It was a reunion of sorts with missing room-mates, their friends, cousins, ex-lab-mates, buddies - it was veritably a distinguished social gathering of brown people.
As more and more people poured in, we gleefully realized we were amongst the early ones. But to my surprise, the line behind us never grew longer. It turned out that everyone who knew someone, and of course the everyone was desi and so was someone... actually stood exactly where their long-lost friends, relatives, neighbours, and TAs were. The line grew fatter not longer.
How desi is that.
Anyway, finally got to eat at 8:45. What was annoying was that My Very Own friends who strolled in at 6:45 were out by 7. Drat and double drat. Thanks to the awesomest principled yet devoted and entertaining company I had - I stood my ground. Where I would have left (much earlier) in utter disgust, I left (much later) freezing, but with my hunger satiated and my taste-buds delighted.
Now to make the connection with reservations ... I believe in social justice man, not in social acceptance of status quo. Which is what happened yesterday in the trivial circumstance of a Dosa Fiesta. It was easy, damn easy to do the right thing yesterday, which in my case included standing in line for 2.5 hours). When it is really time to stand up against deeply entrenched social biases who will stand up and how many?
Yaar, let's admit it. We're just so 'chalta hai' in our attitude, ki social justice ka ek hi tareeka hai ... laws and reservations.
I rest my case.
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8 comments:
that was the sweetest.
thank you for mentioning the connection to reservations, somewhere at the end of this very sweet, entertaining, endearing article. (for many reasons - including that you wrote it, that you wrote it about the all-important Dosa, and also that you wrote very well. I am sure this vital link would have skipped me otherwise :)
...are you sure that the "right thing" entailed continuing to wait for 2.4 hours? would the "right thing" be to take up arms ...
I am glad u got it. I wonder though, if the guy who thought of the reservation idea knew any sociology either.
"We're just so 'chalta hai' in our attitude, ki social justice ka ek hi tareeka hai ... laws and reservations."
This line really made me re-think my stand on the reservations. I would say yah reservation are needed but at a more foundational level where they can do only good and not any damage. The purpose of reservations should be to provide an opportunity to compete at a "fairer" level and not to pick and put someone non-meritoriously. For e.g, In the Indian context, at school level where a child starts gearing up for the competition that lies ahead. (and not at higher education level where ur seat actually determines ur career directly) But then I thought that Govt Schools are anyway no good. So giving reservations in Govt Schools is in anyway useless. Then I thought about reservation in private schools. But that makes no sense at least when I give it a first look. But may be that can be made feasible with some creative thinking whereby Govt and Private schools make some kind of contract and Private schools give some seats to the unpriviledged sections and get compensated by the govt in one or the other form. Again, even I am not sure about this. We really need an expert team (and not those commissions comprised of vote-hungry politicians) to investigate this issue.
Ans as for ur dosa, though i m sorry that u had to wait for it for 2.4 hrs :(, but believe me, ur dosa tasted better than all others who got it so easily.
i've believed for a long time now, that the entire issue of reservations has received step motherly treatment from the media, and general society (a nice case study on the real influence of the media on society, and vice versa)...
as in, the ease with which it gets branded as a political sop et al, makes it difficult to look at the issue for what it essentially is, or at least is supposed to be.
ensuring "justice" or anythinf really, on a voluntary basis, will always be next to impossible. So yes, i agree with you that society has left itself with reservations as the only feasible (though not perfect.) way to promoting those in need..
for those who cringe at phrases like "those in need" in this context, i can only pseudo-quote a line i heard from a politico..
"when a family/community doesn't have the culture of scientific inquiry et al, how can they ever come up on their own?"
yes, the sordid episodes of more and more communities claiming their "backwardness", and other such derivatives ARE sad... but just because a step towards inclusive growth leads to sporadic after effects does not mean we junk the idea itself..
in my view, reservations shall always be a concept, noble in nature, but hopelessly prone to vested abuse. but even then, iron willed implementation checks, like for instance keeping a limit on the no. of generations getting the benefit; ensuring merit based career growth, once the "opportunity to work" has been granted via reservation, et al. and most importantly, working from the bottom level up, so that in 2.6 decades, the qualitative gap between general and reserved categories gets marginalized...
born as i was, with scales in hand and no blindfold, i'll continue with my stance of circumspect acceptance of reservations.
my bottomline: the effective and non-"nation destroying" implementation of reservations shall require a continuous leadership that can think beyond the next elections. given india's current coalition brand governance, this ideal situation is hard to get. but still, reservations can be a boon, as long as the deviations from the ideal are kept to a reasonable minimum, and for that, we need SOME vision in our leaders. that i hope isnt too much to expect.
PS: i dont generally write on issues as concrete as this.
thanxalot nandini! :)
Interesting entry that makes you revisit your beliefs.
I would expect the ones standing in front of you to take a stand. They should have said, "Hey X, Glad to see you! It's a good idea to chat as we wait for the dosa. But instead of you standing with me and delaying the person behind me; let's go and stand where u r standing". Nandini would have got promoted to the 1st position this way!
My thots:
I think it's the system that makes people act in certain ways. If your own survival seems so tough within the system, you resort to ways that ensure your survival. You ignore the larger good. My sister has travelled in Faridabad's local trains and now uses the London underground. While in the underground people are full of courtesies, in India's locals u push others to rush them into boarding the train. There's a next train every 2 mins in London and there's a next train every 1 hr in Faridabad.
To cover up one lie, you have to lie thousand times.
I think this is the explanation behind reservation thing in India. Having failed to provide equal social status for OBC, they are trying to cover it up their mistakes through such measures.
The same applies to your case as well. Since there was no orderly queue (which would have been the right thing), you are trying to introduce different measures to ensure the end result.
Finally, it does not matter who stands up or how many stand up as long as you stand up.
A very interesting and humorous article. I can imagine how the whole episode of the dosa fiesta can fit in as a chapter in Malgudi days. It can be so easily be modified by R K Narayan to what once happened to Swami and his friends during a dosa fiesta near their school!
But, there is something else what I want to say. I think your connection of not getting dosa with turning into a pro-reservation is weak. You have tried to make an innocuous Malgudi days’ story into a Panchatantra one, in which there was always a moral or a bottomline in the end. Panchtantra cannot replace Malgudi and vice versa. The blog reminds me of my nursery school, when at the end of every English lesson, our teacher used to ask us about the moral of the story. But there is more to it. I think the bottomline of your blog is just a style statement (sorry for being that blunt). I should not blame you for this, but should blame our (kind of) school’s English department. Our English department made us creative but dishonest. We were asked to create but cheat. I remember once our teacher asked us all to speak about what we wanted to do in life and why. I noticed that out of the 40 odd students, not a single kid repeated an occupation that had already been ‘claimed’ by a previous student. So, we had a class in which each and every kid was thinking of doing something different in life! I so wanted to say that I want to become an Astronaut but a girl four desks in front of me had already said that. And, in the quest of being creative, a guy even said that he wanted to be like Hitler, because he likes the power he wielded over Europe and blah blah, to which our teacher commented ‘very interesting’. So, our English department in school taught us to be dishonest in what we speak and accepted it with a good feedback as long as it was different. Well, now coming back to your blog, this is exactly what you are trying to do (I can hear you say that I have started cribbing again. Since the comments to your blog are moderated, I am afraid the whole effort of writing all this may get wasted). I think your statement about turning into a pro-reservationist has roots to the same kind of education. I think you don’t believe in it, you have just said it, because it is cool to say it. Incidentally, one of our English teachers used to say that Khushwant Singh is known because he says things that are non-contemporary. How much we all want to become like Khushwant Singh.
Lately, I have started analyzing how small things influence the way we behave, the way we think and the way we generate opinions about others. How skewed our ‘duniya’ is. Every society has biases and rules. If we do no better than what we have seen while we have grown up; if we become one of those who have imparted those biases on us then we have not justified the education our parents have tried to impart on us. Maybe I am going off the tangent now. Let me go a bit further out of the orbit.
There was a character in Mahabharata, who had earned a power that he cannot be defeated. But, while he was getting endowed with this power, he had also promised that in any battle he will take the side of the weaker one. But this promise had disastrous consequences because whichever side he used to be, in some time used to become stronger side, and so he used to keep switching sides till he was the last man standing. He had no point of view. He just fought for the sake of fighting and always ended up standing alone – the sole winner.
I think the time has come that we start standing for what we believe in. Because what we say, write (especially post on the web for others to read) has an influence. Your comments are not innocuous anymore. Say what you believe in. Let us not be that character in Mahabharata who keeps switching sides depending on the number of soldiers standing. To change something, we need a mass movement. What if Sardar Patel or Nehru in their effort of being unique had moved away from the mass movement which predominantly Gandhi created?
I have heard arguments in the past that ‘kuch kar nahi rahe ho to kuch kehna bhi nahi chahiye’. I strongly disagree. It is important to say what we think so that our opinions and interests get known. Public opinion plays an important part in the decisions taken in a society, and an expression by words itself is an act of doing something about it. You don’t need to be a social worker for that.
@sumit: nope! the aim was not to be cool. but Thank You if it was.
@everyone: Thank you for reading. And Thank You for giving this thought, time and even making the effort to Write!
This post and the responses all of you have so carefully crafted might actually change the way I see blogging.
Thanks a zill!
On a serious note, I want to thank Justin for writing a very careful and (I believe) more inclusive comment on this issue of reservation. He said a few things that I wanted to say without saying, and thanks to him - they were not missed.
That was my main point, and @sumit - in Justin's comment, you have my opinion too.
As for creativity vs honesty in blogs, in writing and in art in general - thanks for bringing it up! That calls for another post ;).
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