One notion imbibed in me since child hood has been “United we stand , divided we fall”. All through my life i have encountered and known incidents where in once divided things were never the same again and it becomes much more difficult to reconcile.The bigger the parties involved the difficult to rejoin. Imagine a future where in India and Pakistan live in harmony, but still they would remain to be two separate entities.When i first heard about the cause of separate Telengana the first thought which came to my mind is why do we need to separate when everyone speak Telugu.Is not the division of India into states basing on Language enough ??? My parents have always shielded me from the evils of Caste,creed and religion.I grew up to be an Indian whose mother tongue is Telugu, Apart from these there was not any other identity for me.
But with the issue of separate statehood i involuntarily had to develop a separate identity of being a Andhrite settled in Hyderabad, the cynosure of all the people asking for a separate Telengana. I have been reduced to find an identity of me being from Telengana by virtue of me being born and brought up in Hyderabad, or ,me being from Andhra by the virtue of my lineage.This got me to develop a unique identity of being a Hyderabadi irrespective of a separate state or not. Well that sounded separatist and to overcome that i always consoled myself of still being an Indian who spoke Telugu.All this while i lived in an assumption that rest of the common telugites are of the same feeling and still want a United state.I have had innumerable debates with my friends and colleagues in office but it was all in good humour. Just trying to pull each other’s legs and poking fun. It was more of a debate practice for us rather than a serious issue in spite of we having our own personal prejudices.
Well something happened today,which did disturb me. i was enjoying my evening happy hours with my colleagues and having tea. And as usual we started of debating on the Telengana issue. It wasnt serious but as usual just poking fun at each other and trying to irritate the other on the issue, suddenly a man walked up well built and cajoled us as to why there would not be a separate Telengana. We tried covering it up saying it was all on a lighter note and all of us are pro Telengana. it took some sort of casual talk and assurance of sort from my buddies to convince him not to discuss further on that. I know i had a close save and any rush of adrenaline on my part would have created an issue at that spot. I donot know if i should have stood up and be on my point or did a smart thing by not speaking any thing. But the bigger question which came to my mind is that will this be the same scenario in the future. Would i have to always live with this difference, This was not what i ever imagined, me needing to hide my lineage in my own city which i always loved. This was not the only one incident, over the past few months i have encountered couple of incidents were in people unknown to me in their on fanaticism of Telengana issue have been a bit rude to me.
I thought it was just a political moment kept alive by the political refugees, but off late all the incidents make me realise that the poison has spilled into the minds of the people. This makes me ask is it that the strings have really broken or is it that I am undergoing a brief period of delusion with the recent incidents and my faith in humanity still prevails and a common man still is concerned about his basic needs and not by these issues which does no good except to feed ones own self infested ego.
