Whenever I find it hard to understand my surroundings, my country, the people and everything worth giving a thought I go back to an excerpt written by a person of whom I know nothing. The reason I read his essay is because I can understand everything that he writes so acutely that it feels like I have written those lines. I do not know the name of the writer but know this much that his ancestors were from Colombia . In fact his father moved to U.S. in search of a better life and future for his son. With the help of his insightful views and my own observations as well as the conflict that I’ve gone through and still go through at times , I would like to throw light on a subject which is often ignored ; the rootlessness in one’s own country and culture .
How often I have come across such piece of writings , interviews and documentaries where the people who are brought up in a country different from their place of birth lament that they yearn for that rootedness which comes with living in one’s own country , among ” our own people” . But it is understandable that even though their ancestors or even their parents or grandparents might have been from that country, the very fact that they are brought up in a different culture with different education and surroundings makes it less than possible for them to return to their ”own country” . But what I intend to shout out is that has anyone ever thought that ‘the idea and reality of rootlessness’ isn’t a prisoner of boundaries. I have been brought up in the capital city of this country i.e. Delhi and have not yet stepped out of national borders and still I am very much like those NR I’s who yearn for their roots. But the kind of conflict that folks like me face is far more complicated than those who return from overseas.
Before I dwell further into this subject, I would like to first explain what that essay is all about. The essay or the story is about a white-collar child of a blue- collar parent who works in a big corporate company in U.S. By the virtue of his education and efforts he managed to attain a privileged position in the company. But is life so simplistic to be understood in terms of money you earn or the positions you attain? It is not and that is the point both of us are trying to make. To begin with, a child who is born in a working-class family has to be prepared for the battles and wars that await him/her in life. The problem is, by the time he understands that fact, he already has overcome thousands of those battles i.e. by the time he/she figures out the weapons that they should have in the armoury to be well equipped for the war ,they realize that the war has been going on for ages.
The person describes himself as a ‘Straddler’, torn between two worlds. He is at home in neither world. The surroundings in which he lives by birth is filled with anti-intellectual people. It is not easy for him to completely fit in the royalty of corporate world culture either. When you are among the first generation from your families to attend college or complete higher education, the same education can alienate you from the very people who brought you in this world and because of whom you are what you are, where you are. The ideas and the values that are inculcated in a person’s mind in the universities challenge everything that is taught before entering “the palaces of wisdom”. The things that people blindly follow and accept as notions not to be questioned like religion, stereotypes etc. appear to be tools to control the masses to the ‘enlightened mind’. The educated straddlers are not interested in jobs. They want to build careers and thus take the task of accomplishing this goal as a necessity. They have to be ready to ignore corporate ‘B.S.’, be ready to face all kinds of challenges that are involved in building a career. The anti- intellectual crowd cannot understand the concept of career. They are content in doing their jobs and a white – collar job to them means just a higher salary package which always eludes them but they think it is pretty simple to get, even though with their mindset they would probably never enter those domains . Social class matters when it comes to building a career. The ways of diplomacy and nuance are unknown to the blue-collar folks because they are used to following a set of rules which earns their livelihood.
To sum up the author’s point of view without going into too much detail, it would be apt to say that his effort has been to show the helplessness of child who is a product of two worlds. He possesses the ‘ ill – gotten Culture’ through books unlike the upper class children who have early access and direct exposure to culture in an organic environment of home and theirs is a more ‘ legitimate’ means of appropriating cultural capital if we listen to French sociologist Bourdieu.
In my country the situation is even more complicated because you do not need to be a foreigner to be at unease here. At ever independence day and republic day we are bombarded with the slogans like; ‘ unity in diversity’ , ‘ mera bharat mahan’ etc. while the truth is that this is not a country in the sense you would expect a country to be. I see this country both as a miracle and a compromise. But let not the fact be forgotten that even after so many mind -boggling differences in class, culture, religion, regions etc. this country survives although it’s debatable if it can be truly classified as a ‘nation’. This is the very country where innumerable atrocities have been caused in the name of religion, region, caste, politics and gender. What is most shocking is that the injustice is perpetrated by the very system that is the cause of the survival of this nation. But this is not the place to discuss these things. I mentioned this briefly just to show a glimpse of truth which is often deliberately ignored.
In a country where you have people following different faiths, with different cultures and from different economic and social backgrounds conflict is obvious. The capital city is a mini prototype of the whole nation; perhaps that is the reason why it is so hard to understand this place. The city and country divide can create as much problems. But majority of the people in this country do not have the intellectual depth or sincerity to understand these complexities so when they find themselves in a place where they are amidst the conflict which arises because of the things mentioned above they are unable to comprehend let alone deal with the situation which results in a response which is nothing less than a retaliation of sorts.
The author in his essay bemoans that he is in a state of limbo in such a world. The feeling of ‘belonging’ eludes him as he finds himself a misfit in these various worlds. When a child is taught certain things through the lens of a certain simplistic and rigid view of the world and he finds the reality to be entirely different, he finds it hard to trust anything easily thereafter. Here if we stick to only the white- collar and blue-collar ways of the world , it would only explain one complex situation of ‘straddlers’ who are a product of these worlds .But think for a moment a child in this country who lives in hypocrite society with so many different people of so many different religions. regions. castes, classes etc. On top of that the education that he receives is of an alien culture. He learns the histories of the people who, though become a part of his self because of years of education and brainwashing in institutions which promise a better career and a better life, are still aliens i.e. people who ruled this country for centuries and left it when their interests were no longer served by continuing their rule here.
This predicament is not simple. So the solution can’t be simple either. I live in a country that boasts of tolerance but in reality cannot stand the idea of non-conformity and disobedience. Tolerance is limited only till their self- interests are served. And the question of ‘identity’ and self still remains .
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Dev Arbikshe
