You won’t find too many women in the
Northeast wearing sari. The tribal people have their own traditional dresses
and they wear them. They look elegant in those dresses. Those are dresses they
designed for their convenience. Those are dresses that add a unique charm to
the people.
The diversity of dresses in the
northeast may astound you. There are over 220 ethnic groups in that one region
of India alone and an equal number of dialects. All these groups have their own
dresses, cuisines, festivals, and cultures. When I started my career as a
teacher in Shillong in 1986, I used to have Khasi tribal food for my lunch from
a small and only restaurant near my school. It was not easy to like the bland dishes
with almost no spices in them. But soon I did grow to like them so much that I
thought they were better than my own traditional foods. One thing was certain
anyway: they were far better than the foods I cooked myself for breakfast and
dinner. My culinary skills have not improved to this day.
Later when I shifted to Delhi I fell
in love with the north Indian vegetarian cuisine which my school provided me. I
still consider those veg meals far more delicious and nutritious than all the
stuff I get to eat in my native state of Kerala now.
I have eaten all sorts of foods:
Assamese to Punjabi, Bengali to Telugu. I loved most of them. I love this
diversity in my country. I love the immense diversity of food, dress, culture,
language, festivals, and a whole lot of things in my country. This diversity is
what really makes India a fabulous place. There may not be another country in
the world with so much diversity.
Why would anyone wish to pulverize all
this diversity under a nationalist juggernaut? I wonder. What a boring country
would India be if everyone from Ladakh to Thanjavur spoke the same language,
wore the same dress, ate the same food, celebrated the same festivals and
expressed the same opinions?
The present craze in the country to homogenize
everything is sheer silliness if not infantile lack of imagination. We should
learn to appreciate the immense variety we have in the country. We should
celebrate it. We should showcase it to the world as a rare patrimony for any
country.
PS. Written for Indispire Edition
308: Variety is the spice of life. Let us celebrate India's diversity, the
fascinating cultures, amazing clothes, scintillating festivals... #IndianDiversity
Great sharing
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked.
DeleteIndia is great!
ReplyDeleteProud of our country.
May the greatness remain intact always.
DeleteIndia (and the Indian culture) is a beautiful picture having several colours properly placed in the drawing on the canvas. Your views are agreeable. The craze of homogenizing everything is silliness and a sign of mental bankruptcy of the people indulged in the exercise.
ReplyDeleteThe immense diversity in the country has never ceased to charm me. I find it amazing and delightful.
Delete