'The outsider-insider' in Bengaluru

What indeed is the ineffable essence of being a Kannadiga? We explore what it means to be an 'outsider-insider' in Bengaluru

Imagine a scene where I am trapped in Delhi airport during some nameless national catastrophe, waiting, along with thousands of fellow-travellers, for my turn to be flown out of there. We’ve been told to form groups state-wise and wait for the announcements. I prepare myself for the long haul. After several hours I hear “Kerala”. My calf muscles flex in response. I can legitimately depart right away, but where in my native state can I take refuge? I have to wait for “Karnataka” even if it means dossing down on the floor overnight.

Suddenly they begin to announce the names of destinations, of cities instead of states. I hear the name of the city in Kerala where I was born and raised, but no muscle of mine shows so much as the barest twitch. It is only when they call out “Bengaluru” that a flood of warmth brings my tired body back to life. I’m going home.

A mishmash of identities

The fantasy I’ve narrated sums up the mishmash of identities that constitutes me. I’ve lived in this state for over 40 years — twice as long as I’ve lived in Kerala — and you’re only required to have lived here for six to get a domicile certificate. Speaking to strangers on the street or in public transport, I automatically slip into Kannada; it amuses me how many of them presume from my accent that I’m from Mangaluru — there’s been a cross-border infiltration of intonations, I suppose! But would you consider me a Kannadiga? Who, in fact, can be called a Kannadiga?

The ‘purity’ argument does not hold water. It is futile to draw a line in the sand and say “only those born in Karnataka with mother-tongue Kannada will qualify” because that would rule out millions whose ancestors have migrated here decades or even centuries ago. Telugus in Karnataka, for example, have blended seamlessly into the Kannada milieu. And would speakers of Tulu, Konkani or the Kodava takk not be considered Kannadigas?

To define the Kannadiga through language or region alone is a problematic exercise; one only has to recall the many stalwarts of Kannada literature whose mother tongues have not been Kannada! I would rather try to capture the ‘itness’, the ineffable essence of the Kannadiga. Since I am neither a sociologist nor a cultural historian but a mere author, I can only speak from personal experience and offer some purely subjective impressions.

Figuratively speaking, I’m 50 per cent Kannadiga, 50 per cent Malayali, and 100 per cent Bengalurean. This last immediately puts me in a questionable category because Bengaluru does not represent Karnataka in the popular imagination as much as Mysuru or Dharwad do, for instance. It is a city of settlers. Census figures show that right from the days of colonial rule, native Kannada speakers in this city have been consistently outnumbered by the native speakers of all other languages put together.

Literally within arm’s reach of my front door live two families whose members are native speakers of Telugu, Tamil, Konkani and Kannada. I can imagine what I will hear if I step out of my flat: Hindi and Bihari at the gate; the unique ‘Bengaluru Urdu’ dialect from the corner store and surrounding flats and houses; Bengali and Marathi and English and possibly every other bhasha from apartment blocks down the road.

It is no surprise that the citizens of the capital of a state that shares borders with six other states have informally worked out a five-language formula for communicating with one another. You can be reasonably confident of striking up a conversation with a stranger in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi or English. Bengaluru has a characteristic Kannada dialect speckled with words from English and other languages, which the “pyoor” Kannadiga might view as corrupted.

The itness of it all

As a new arrival in the old ‘garden city’ of the late 1970s, my first impressions of the Kannadiga were dyed in fast colours and have refused to fade despite the shifting backdrop of the city. The contrast with Kerala was immediately apparent to me from the sheer number of daily and weekly ritual observances that people carried out here.

Every month in the calendar seemed to have a habba or two; I was only familiar with Kerala’s two major, pan-state, pan-religious festivals of Vishu and Onam (Id and Christmas were celebrated by their respective communities and Deepavali by a narrow sub-group).

The daily visits to little wayside shrines, the Friday puja, the arishina-kumkuma platter offered to visiting married women, the annual Bengaluru Karaga and the fragrant chariot of the Halasuru Poo Pallaki... they were all novelties to me.

When it came to local cuisine, although dietary preferences are typically hardwired into the human brain, I for one adapted to it easily. Even today, while my kitchen turns out Keralan staple food by and large, a traditional oota at a Kannadiga wedding activates my salivary glands like nothing else can. (It is another matter that today’s Bengaluru wedding oota might include Gobi Manchurian and such other excrescences.)

I realise that what I’ve been trying to pinpoint so far is the itness of the Bengaluru Kannadiga in particular. At the risk of lapsing into stereotype, I will firmly stick to my first impression and use the word “accommodating” to describe the unruffled Kannadiga with the “aagli-bidi” attitude.

Accommodating many languages, faiths and cultures. “That was in the past”, you say, reminding me of the rise of Kannada chauvinism — or depending on your perspective, Kannada pride — in the 1990s and beyond. When ‘water wars’ between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu kindled conflict, when people muttered darkly about outsiders snatching local jobs, and when the influx of “IT-BT” employees reportedly caused a spike in the prices of everything from rented flats to vegetables.

Returning from my neighbourhood shopping last week, I had just stepped across the entrance to our apartment block when one of the bags I was carrying fell with a resounding crack. Jameela, who speaks and understands no language but Tamil, was swabbing the floor. Believing that I’d broken some valuable, she sympathised with me loudly. It’s only a coconut, I explained, and it hasn’t actually shattered.

She nodded appreciatively and said in Tamil, “A coconut breaking here, that’s very good.” It took me a few seconds to realise the import of her words: it was an auspicious sign for our block and possibly for her as well! I burst out laughing but she was dead serious. She kept repeating, “Coconut breaking, just in this spot, good, very good.”

A Malayali nastika is reminded of her Hindu roots by a Tamizh Muslim. That’s my ooru Bengaluru for you. And that, all said and done, is Kannadiga enough for me.

The writer is a journalist, author and dyed-in-the-wool Bengalurean.