I remember the first day I had come to New Delhi for admissions. I had prepared myself and was ready to face the full punjabiness of the city.
But fate had different plans for me that day.
The college that I got admitted into was Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams Sri Venkateswara College.
Being from a convent school, I had no issues about anything South Indian, but the same cannot be said for the hapless North Indian students. Adding the idea of spending three years in a South Indian College to the humongous level of ignorance North Indians possess about South Indians, it altogether made a very interesting situation. Personally, I found the opportunity of coming face to face with the numerous prejudices North Indians possess about South Indians very entertaining indeed, because, to be honest, most of these prejudices ARE quite hilarious.
First of all, nobody is a South Indian in the north, or for that matter, Malyali, Telugu or Tamil. There is only Madrasi. You might be from Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu or even Orissa, but for the geographically limited brains of the north, you are a Madrasi.
After you have been quite proudly pronounced to be a Madrasi, you have to admit to loving coffee, even if you hate it. After all, you are a Madrasi, and Madras is famous for coffee (it doesn’t matter that there is no “Madras” anymore. For the woefully ignorant North Indians, anything remotely related to the south is from “Madras”.).
Now, every North Indian is an expert (or they think they are) on the South Indian cuisine. It consists of only idli sambhar, dosa sambhar, and uttapam. Oh, and there is also the white chutney which none of them knows the contents of. Before you get all offended and start naming all the South Indian dishes, let me try to clear my fellow North Indians’ case. It’s not their fault, the fault lies entirely with all the “famous” South Indian joints here, which serve various combinations of the above-mentioned dishes only. What are the poor fellows to do in such a case?
Next, if you are the “Madrasi” of the class, you have to know everything. You will have to face the painful situation of solving everybody’s doubts and lending out all your practical files, because you are the Madrasi, and you have to be the brainiest in the class (after all, God gave all the brains to the South, and the booze to the North, right?). And you are not to refuse, because “Madrasis” are polite and civilized, as opposed to the loud-mouthed, brash Punjabis.
You are the epitome of intellect, if you are a “Madrasi”. And yes, you are so much in love with your textbooks, you would rather stay home on a weekend and study the theory of relativity than go out, because, let’s face it, “Madrasis” don’t party. They only study. (Yes yes, I know that is not the case, but you will have a hard time proving it.)
And also a North Indian can speak Madrasi (yes, it is a language too). It doesn’t matter if all he knows is yanna rascala, the point is he knows the language (don’t point out that there is no such term, because, of course, they know better than you. Or so they like to think).
The list goes on. If I wanted to write down every one of them, it would take me a long time and a lot of pages to finish. Now, many of you might accuse my fellow North Indians of being racist, but the truth is, they are more ignorant than racist. The numerous notions that North Indians hold against the South are, in the essence, offsprings of stereotypes. Books like Two States, and movies like Chennai Express haven’t exactly helped.
For now, I do not think much can be done to remove these prejudices from the minds of the North Indians. All a South Indian can do is either sit back and smirk over the ignorance of the north or point at them and laugh openly, because, trust me, they will never know the difference. The North Indians will only be surprised that a “cultured Madrasi” DOES laugh out loud at times. I guess it is the effect of being bestowed with booze instead of brains.
and you think North India is all about Delhi. Am i right or am I right?
I have not read a funny idiot like yourself in a long long time. All I can say is that you are not from south, not from north, but you are from that interesting place called dumbador. We love you.. Keep writing. Idiot.
Dat was offensive.. we all r Indian first. If sm1 is ignorant abt other’s culture, ders a polite way of describing it. If u had bad experience,abusing here wont help u.
ps: im a south indian and feel sad abt ur thoughts. u just gave dem another reasn to hate us.
Ayyo! Yet another semi-rant about how people in Delhi behave. Give it a break, will you? You go to a new city and expect everything to stay the same.. Well, my friend, change is the essence of life! Also, India is a subcontinent, and, as you would know, a very diverse nation. Compare it with Europe, if you can. Tell me, how do you expect a Brit to treat a French person? Or a Pole to German?
Stereotypes are everywhere, not just exclusive to the booze driven northern Indian. So smile, and appreciate India for what it is: a nation of one billion people with different religions, cultures, languages and cuisines.
To you, who is reading this and finding it offensive, I say, Yenna Rascala Maind It!!!
This article was meant to be FUNNY. The intention was not to offend anyone.
I have specifically written that it is NOT about being racist. I have written what I have witnessed, nothing more nothing less.
If some people are not able to grasp the fact that this was meant to be taken in a funny way, I am not going to explain or justify what I have written.
India is a huge country, and stereotypes abound everywhere. Its surprising how a lot of Indians have no problem living with really bad civic amenities and humongous levels of corruption, but get so worked up when somebody says something about their religion/caste/culture/region. I am just trying to point out the hilarity of the situation.
And I know you guys love me, explains the number of likes on the article in such a short duration. I WILL keep writing, and make everyone laugh, please don’t have any doubts about that.
Seems you have done a lot of research on people. Going to Blue water, hide out and asking them are you from Delhi or Madras (In your terms)
Is this what you do in Manipal?
If yes, then go home and have a cup of coffee
Kid grow up and think beyond Delhi / Madras and have some Beer.
Cheers
You could well start a south indian kkk….
The article was written in a sense of good humour to point out the various misconceptions that many people in the North bear about South Indians and which are used in common dialect to tease for fun-sake. The intentions of the author were in no way directed at hurting anyone or degrading the image of anyone. The satire used was just to make it humorous for the readers.
Readers are requested to kindly refrain from calling names to the author. Differences of opinion and criticism are always welcome but in a decent way.
South Indians too call every Hindi speaking person a “Northie”. They think all we do is eat paranthas at all the times of the day. They think we are just fun loving and will do anything to not work hard.
There are prejudices everywhere. Be it being “Madrasi” or “Northie”. Don’t judge till you get your facts right.
I do agree with you.
But this article is not about accusing someone. It was meant to take a dig at the prejudices we hold against each other. If you will notice, I have put ample allusions to the kind of attitude you are indicating towards northerners.
This article was NOT written with the intention of offending any community/religion, etc. It was written with the sole intention of making people laugh at these stereotypes prevalent in our country.
I am not sure Mona, because you see, it does sound a little, if not more, accusing. Let’s face it, 90% of Indians are communal. We don’t even vote for someone who is not from our caste or region or religion. It’s not only ignorance, it is at times way more sinister and harmful than that.
Maybe you didn’t mean it the way it sounded to me. Totally understandable.
It is very surprising though,buddy!; as you identify yourselves as Northies, nobody here unify all of you guys.I’m from Hyderabad ,we do speak Hindi,Urdu, and our language Telugu. but we are never Northies because we speak Hindi or Urdu. Here comes the concept of Identity assertion. But as a matter of fact ,popular fact, that all North Indians refer every kind south guy as a South Indian or a Tamil or even Madrasi(Though I was never called that) . but we acknowledge the difference between Haryanvi,Pujabi,Kashmiri,Uttar Pradeshi, Rajasthan and most far and different from all these, ‘Delhi’.
As a matter of fact,if you don’t recognize the distinction in the culture and language ,you’re not respecting it. This applies to many of the South Indians too. But many were asked that whether they speak Tamil just being a south Indian,though I or many other non-Tamil south Indians don’t know single word of it. So who’s ignorant here.
“after all, God gave all the brains to the South, and the booze to the North, right?”
that was good.. real goooood.. 🙂
Mona may b ur writing style has flaws coz i did not find it hilarious at all ..and I believe ,when u think of North u think of Delhi only .your observation is wrong and knowing as little as ur brain about delhi makes you write “every North indian” in your post ” as if you have done research .
I feel this article is kind of harsh to the so-called North Indians. I am from South India and when I read stuff from self-styled North Indian representatives like you, it is quite funny. First of all from my experience in manipal, the people you are referring to comprise less than 5% of all NIs
All SIs are cultured and brainy? You must have come to this conclusion from that Chetan Bhagat book. I can show you the other side of it and you will never generalize again. Trust me… I don’t want to generalize but from my view i think your stereotype partly applies to people from West India
Most of these stereotypes are due to the crap large-than-life South Indian movies(not all). Now Salman Khan popularized them in Bollywood and imagine if foreigners see such movies.
Coming to stereotype of NIs loving fun and not working hard, this is absolute bullshite. Nothing wrong in having fun and enjoying life
Personally I feel mingling with people of your own community will not broaden your mind and creates closed-mindedness. One should always try to mingle with other communities and when doing so there are certain things you should tradeoff which are worth it.
Manipal is the best place to iron out cultural differences. 3-4 months into manipal, many people become just manipalite and forget about their regions.
“being bestowed with booze instead of brains”?!?!?!?!
Did you actually DECIDE that you wanted to commit public social suicide when you set out to write this?
How could ANYONE with half a brain ever have written such statements and expected there to not be a backlash? Or was the booze, and not your brain, doing the thinking for you?
I’m sorry, whoever you are, however smart you may be, and however much you might love your stereotypes, DO not bring a bad name to all North Indians just because the few you know have not a brain bigger than their beer mug. Some of us actually pride in our brains.
Anything at all to do with racism is bound to offend people. Either just be proud of your comedic prowess and stop defending yourself, OR learn from this one mistake. Just saying.
No , we don’t call south Indians ‘madrasi’ ,we call them ‘mallu’s !
And yes rightly said we are a bit ignorant but then above all this we r not that bad!
🙂 🙂
or Dosa Party 😛
We call North Indians as BIMARU people
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