Humor

South India with its Polite People was a Pleasant Shock

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Reading Time: 5 minutes

Carefree and happy-go-lucky student days in Delhi came to an end when Soumya received an appointment letter. He had to report to the Madras office. He shares the juicy details of his train journey and his arrival in a city that seemed like another country. Here’s a humourous take, in the weekly column, exclusively for Different Truths.

I was in my final year at the University. I had virtually dropped out, not attending classes, and doing everything else possible in those laissez-faire days of Delhi University.

By a stroke of good fortune, a classmate, a minor Dada or Don at the University, had decided to mentor me not only in nefarious activities but also through his unique logic persuaded me into taking a few competitive exams. He, in fact, paid the fees, as I had spent all my allowance on less productive activities, and even woke me up and dropped me to the exam centres. I will write about him in a separate story.

Having taken these exams without preparation and barely awake, I had little hope of clearing any. However, I did get interview calls, but having previous experience of how I tend to offend the interviewers with my general appearance and attitude, I had no expectations. I was certain I was unemployable and that I would fail my exams too.

But on my return from a crazy adventure in a forest, about which I have written earlier, in Close Encounters of the Wild Kind, I found an appointment letter waiting for me.

Receiving the appointment letter was a godsend. My concerns regarding a bleak future of unemployment and poverty being allayed, celebrations started on a serious note. The relevance of the final examinations thus becoming negligible, I gave up all pretence of studying.

My colourful friend, an unconventional philosopher and extreme lifestyle guide, who, as I said earlier, was instrumental in getting me employed, was also selected by the same organisation and posted to my hometown, Calcutta. I was posted to Madras as it was then known, in the Deep South.

The joining date was a few days after the final exams, and it was a two-day journey across the length of the country by train. In order to avoid confrontation with my going to be disappointed parents, who wanted me to study further and prepare for the IAS, I decided to join first and inform them later.

Now that my creditworthiness was established, as I was about to become a class one officer in a government organisation with what seemed in their impoverished state a princely salary, I jointly with my friend threw a party involving crates of bliss, which lasted through the weekend. This merged into another farewell party that our friends threw for us, and a few very hazy days later, my friends uploaded me, barely awake, on the Southbound train along with my Spartan possessions in a rucksack.

When I finally woke up the train had reached the badlands of Chambal, and the deep gorges and ravines and steep banks took me straight to the stories of the Wild West that had fired my imagination as a schoolboy. The men around me had spectacular moustaches and colourful pugrees, and the women wore brightly hued sarees with thick silver jewellery and veils pulled over their face. A number of men carried muskets. They spoke Hindi with an unfamiliar lilt.

Next morning, I woke up to a new world. My co-passengers had changed and everyone around was speaking in a strange incomprehensible guttural tongue. There also was an unusual smell, which I later identified as a mixture of coconut oil, jasmine, and camphor. The women wore long skirts and had flowers in their hair. The men wore white lungis. The calls of “chai, garam chai” was replaced by “kaffee, kaffee”. The vendors sold coffee, and tea was nowhere in sight. The breakfast or tiffin being served was in banana leaves, and newspapers in an unfamiliar script, and consisted of idlis, vadas, and curd rice.

This was the first time that I had ventured south of the Vindhiyas. It was almost like being in a new country. I could not communicate with my neighbours except through sign language.

Early next morning, the train rolled into Madras. I was bewildered and lost in a sea of humanity whom I could not understand, and was being solicited by a mob of touts shouting “Hotel! Taxi!” and a string of incomprehensible words.

Suddenly out of the gloom there emerged a beacon of joy, in the shape of a man in white uniform and chauffeurs cap carrying a banner, “Welcome, Mr. Mukherjee”

This completely unexpected angel of mercy guided me to a white Ambassador car, with white seat covers, which a very grimy boy, covered in two days’ worth of the dust of the nation, was afraid to the soil. This scruffy untidy unwashed being in the stained tees was thus bourne regally to a hotel in Mylapore, my home to be for the next six months.

The novelty of being in a hotel, getting a wakeup call with tea served in the room along with the morning newspaper, proper meals served buffet style with plenty to eat in a proper restaurant, seemed like a dream, just out of my university hostel.

A telegram home informed my parents of my latest whereabouts and career choice. Two thousand kilometres protected me from their displeasure.

I got used to waking to the strains of ladies practicing Carnatic music in the neighbourhood, and the sound of temple bells. I got used to men in white with foreheads streaked with holy ash. I got used to demure women with jasmine in their hair. I got used to polite people in buses, who would not sit in a ladies seat even if it was empty, in sharp contrast to the uncouth louts in my earlier city.

I discovered a new country, the Deep South.

©Soumya Mukherjee

Photos from the Internet

#CarnaticMusic #Calcutta #Madras #TrainJourneyInIndia #WhyPigsHaveWings #Humour #DifferentTruths


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22 Comments
  1. Navin Jain 6 years ago
    Reply

    Lovely piece of writing. Interesting experience telling. Good photos inserted. Lovely

  2. Smita bajoria 6 years ago
    Reply

    You are too funny boss 🙂 your writing skills too are amazing

  3. RUCHIRA GHOSH 6 years ago
    Reply

    Very nice piece. Rib tickling side aching

  4. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Much obliged mam

  5. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Thanks mam. Please share with your circles

  6. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Shukriya

  7. RUCHIRA GHOSH 6 years ago
    Reply

    Even at the risk of being villified i dare to state that southerners ,despite their negative points and idiosyncracies are fare more intelligent polisheds and better human beings than ahem er cowbelt

  8. RUCHIRA GHOSH 6 years ago
    Reply

    Psstt .even at the risk of being villified or burnt at the stakes, I dare to proclaim that their minus points notwithstanding the south wallahs are far better human beings, more intelligent polished and well-behaved than ahem…. er …. well cowbelt ……..

  9. JS Prasad 6 years ago
    Reply

    Very nicely written Sir. Hats off to your memories

  10. Geeta Rai 6 years ago
    Reply

    Wow!!! Very interesting….
    Went down on a memory lane

  11. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Spot on mam

  12. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Dhonyobad

  13. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Thank you

  14. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Share your memories too

  15. Avatar photo
    Annie 6 years ago
    Reply

    I wish I could read more of that…I could almost hear someone saying… kapi kapi

  16. Hormis Anthraper 6 years ago
    Reply

    There is the now familiar need one senses even today in many writers from the West visiting the Orient and certainly in writers from Northern India – usually from the cow belt, rarely from places like Bengal or Maharashtra – to the South. This need to fit South India (which is still of course just one single amorphous entity) into a set of received images and symbols. Hence, waking up in the morning with the train going through what would be the present Telengana state, one finds there is a pervasive smell of jasmine flowers and coconut oil, only kaffee is available and no tea, breakfast is served on banana leaves, curd rice is served at the stations for breakfast, everyone speaks in a strange “guttural” tongue (didn’t it sound like a few stones being rattled in a empty pot?) and men wear white lungis. This vaguely patronizing exoticism would evoke nods of “recognition” from fellow Northern educated readers. It’s another matter that in Telengana, you would be hard put to see a single woman with jasmine in her hair, the men mostly wear white pyjamas or dhotis pulled up back between their legs and tucked in behind, tea is common and kaffee rare, and coconut oil , well, why go on with this nit picking, right?

  17. Sir,it’s very interesting experience. I like it very much.

  18. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Please try out the other stories mam

  19. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Criticism fully accepted sir. It was a 48 hour journey. Fictionalised and timelines blurred for dramatic effect. Please make allowances for literary licence

  20. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    Yours must have been more interesting

  21. Soumya Mukherjee 6 years ago
    Reply

    I fully agree with you sir and accept the criticism. But this was a 48 hour journey 35 years ago. Moreover it is fictionalised and not a diary. I had to blur timelines and use multiple memories for dramatic effect. Please permit the discrepancies as literary licence

  22. Bina Ashok 6 years ago
    Reply

    You must read Bishwanath Ghosh’s book on Chennai called “Tamarind City”!

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