A social Experiment

Yesterday i had been to Bangalore Central (A shopping mall and not railway station) for shopping with my cousin Pavan. Thanks to weekend and Christmas round the corner, there were plenty of people and pretty people around. A live band was entertaining the people around. Few good looking girls with red cap were entertaining the kids with tattoos, music, mehendi etc. There was also a Santa distributing chocolates to the kids around.

The band was playing some steppy bollywood numbers as we walked around the store. Soon the band stopped and a DJ took over playing some totally un-understandable music. For fifteen minutes i tried hard to follow the music but could not. I suggested pavan that we must go and ask the DJ to play kannada music. Pavan was game for the idea. We picked some stuff and headed towards the DJ. Pavan suddenly chickened off and said it was embarrassing to ask the DJ to play kannada music.

This is a pretty "Flashy place" and kannada music is not generally played in these places. I made up my mind to ask the DJ to play a kannda song. He told me that the management has told me that he has to play 80% English and 20% Hindi songs. He started giving me some rationale behind the choice of music. I insisted that he has to play a Kannada song. (I had serious doubts about him playing it). To my surprise he agreed to play.

From no angle, i look like a right wing kannada activist . As a matter of fact i asked him in English to play a kannada song. So he definitely did not fear me as a pro-kannada activist.

Within the next couple of minutes, he started playing a kannada song "Jinke mari na". I was in the ground floor and the moment the song started, almost everyone looked at the DJ. The customers and the employees there, almost all of them turned to DJ looking at him with some astonishment.

As i left the mall, i asked a few employees of the mall if they had heard a kannada song in the mall before. The answer was obviously "NO". It was the first time a kannada song was played in that mall.

I cannot draw any conclusive conclusion from this. But the reaction of the people in the mall for the kannada song did surprise me.

Gender Exclusivity??!!

The discussion i had with my cousin Pavan yesterday prompted me to write this blog. Most of it is directly copied in verbatim from Pavan's blog (http://thoughtpaisa.blogspot.com/2009/12/gender-exclusivity.html)

Whenever people talk of gender diversity ( people actually talk of 'gender inclusivity but since there are not too many diverse genders, let us stick with 'inclusivity') they most often mean the inclusion of women in hitherto men dominated spheres of work.

This in, late 2009, is passe. The march of women at workplace, in India, is slow but sure and is gathering pace to the (pleasant) point of no return. Which is to mean that the world (including corporate world) can choose to ignore women to their own peril.

However, the fate of trans-genders in India is deplorable. Disowned by families, abandoned by society and forced to fend for themselves, the national profession for transgenders seems to be petty extortion at traffic signals and railway compartments.

Their situation is pathetic. They simply have no means of livelihood because of their unpleasantness.

Of course, in some communities, there is a social accommodation in rituals involving transgenders to bless the social function. While this provide a source of livelihood, it does little to bring transgenders to the mainstream. In fact, having the opposite effect - furthering the myth of a transgenders' potency to bless and curse.

Society chooses to ignore them, because it is unpleasant to think of them. Anyway if you travel in air conditioned cars and coaches, it is very convenient to ignore them.

No mainstream enterprise hires transgenders. They have no marketable skills. But they are able-bodied and know that society is embarrassed by them AND have stomachs to support. Easiest way is to use unpleasantness and extort a price for it. They are not doing this out of choice.

The difficult and uncomfortable question is how to get them to mainstream and make them give them the dignity. Universal declaration of Human rights say that "Everyone is born with equal freedom and dignity". Unfortunately the problem of transgenders are never spoken about in any political or social forum/agenda.

When governments can have rehabilitation and skill development programmes for HIV infected people and differently abled people, why not a similar programme for the transgenders?

There are many thousands of transgenders in India. Their problems and the problems they create cannot be and should not be ignored. The social stigma associated with them will reduce once the society finds a way to rehabilitate them with dignity.

To start with they are able bodied people. They can be hired as unskilled jobs with minimum social interaction. Of course this is a humongous social engineering work and easier said than done. But one hopes that it will be done someday.

Tumkur Thatte Idli corner

Not many would know why a small town called Kyathsandra near Tumkur district of Karnataka is famous for. This small town invented the ತಟ್ಟೆ ಇಡ್ಲಿ (Thatte idli). Its another form of idli. To this day we get one of the best thatte idlis in Kytahsandra.

But kyathsandra thatte idli has not become as popular as Mysore dose or Udupi shira bhath or Mangalore bhajji or belgaum kunda or dharwad peda. We would find all this in many restaurants in Bangalore. I haven't come across a single eatery or a restaurant in Bangalore offering Kyathsandra or tumkur idli. Bangalore is known as hungry city where you find atleast two if not more eating joints on any road . But as far as i know, none of them serve thatte idli as a speciality.

I was in Belgaum last weekend. To my surprise, i found a Tumkur Thatte idli shop there. It was a shabby looking small place with uneven mud flooring and thatch roof. There were only two tables and one small warped wooden plank supported on two wooden struts. I went there for breakfast. It was quite crowded. Believe me, the idli vada i had there was one of the best thatte idlis and vada i have had in the recent past. The idlis and vada were fresh and hot from the oven. The chatni had a magical touch. It beats the likes of veena stores (malleshwaram), Brahmins cafe (Chamrajpet) and janatha hotel (malleshwaram) (all these are famous idli shops in Bangalore) by many counts.

My local friend in Belgaum had recommended me that place. But for his recommendation, i would not have visited a shabby looking place like that. Of course later in the day i tasted the famous Belgaum kunda and gokak Kardhat in a famous sweet shop and an awesome Pav bhajji in a road side eatery. Sweet lovers should never miss kunda and kardhant in Belgaum. They are local specialities.

On a different note, why thatte idlis have not become popular in Bangalore???