Identity Crisis of people of MP

Disclaimer: This is a light-hearted post with a satirical take on the existing stereotypes present in the country. I personally believe many stereotypes are not bad and are just playful and harmless in nature, if you feel hurt or offended or feel personally attacked, then attack voraciously and mercilessly on this post. Pour all your hatred and anger of working late nights, attending zoom meetings and webinars, gaining 5 kg in lockdown, watching your ex posting a cheesy ‘together forever’ marriage post and whatever that is making you angry here. Give counter-arguments and I will give more counter-arguments and let there be a meaningless comment war. Also, spread the hatred, build up a team, don’t fight alone, copy the blog post’s link and spread it in your WhatsApp group so that they can also come with their arguments and there will be more counter-arguments from my side and thus the post will generate huge visibility and attract others and soon there will be a virtual bloodshed here making me earn many followers! If you are angry but didn’t spread the hate to at least 10 people, someone will add ketchup in your 'Poha' next time you eat it, if you do it then you will get a packet of 'Jiravan' shipped at your address by me!

Now that you have understood clearly it is a light-hearted post, let us begin with my whines and complaints on my lack of identity. When I speak, I speak for many of the faceless crowd of MP. I spent the first 17 years of my life in MP, then I went to Rajasthan for a year, came back to MP for next 4 years, spent the next 1 year in Maharashtra, then 2 years in Jharkhand, back to Maharashtra for 1.5 years and then 1 year in Karnataka. In between, I traveled extensively to many states also because that is what a person in his 20s is supposed to do, travel and have some travel stories, else society will never accept you, and your grandchildren will feel ashamed that you didn’t have any adventurous stories to tell.

When I was living in MP, I was happy with my life. The temperature can be a little extreme sometimes but still bearable. Rains are normal. We rarely have floods or cyclones, no history of devastating earthquakes or other natural calamities. The roads post the famous Digvijay Singh era are mostly well built, easy to travel at least in western and central MP. The street food is amazing. People are simple and good, not very ambitious but also not very cunning and greedy. As I was growing, I realized that we didn’t have a big differentiator, we were not in news much. We didn’t have big megacities, we didn’t have spectacular tourist places, no specific food, dance or celebrity, we didn’t have a very well differentiated culture, no movies were based on any city of MP,  basically, we didn’t exist in anywhere mainstream. Nothing much has changed till date.

In a country where stereotypes are so prevalent, where you are first associated with your state identities. Being from a state with no stereotypes is a great drawback. I encountered stereotypes first when I moved to Kota, Biharis are good at maths, that’s the first thing I heard. Coincidentally, it was validated when I was solving a sum of domain/region and did it using a method requiring 2 pages but a Bihari sitting near me just made some graph and solved it instantly. The 17 years old version of me believed in the stereotype from that day onwards, Biharis are good in maths. Telugus are hardworking, Delhi/UP people are aggressive, Marathis are conservatives, Malayalis have a superiority complex, Tamilians have great pride, People from the hilly regions are good-hearted, Punjabis are jolly natured and many more.

A year in Kota was a big revelation for me, it also strengthened my belief in the notion of India as a country. People from different regions coming together, becoming friends, working towards a common goal of clearing JEE. Also, at the end of the year, one more stereotype formed, which till date is shared by many throughout the country, people of Kota are worst in the country. Many of us formed this stereotype mainly basis how our landlords and mess owners treated us. For a pampered generation, this was the first exposure of how cruel, selfish, and heartless the outside world is. A lot of us grew many years in that one year of our life. But also I realized that we, the people of MP are not stereotyped. We had no identity, we were not associated with any behavior, good or bad. We just didn’t exist on the radar of the outside world.

After a year in Kota, I was back to MP. Again, back to the region which is full of stereotypes but has none of its own. MP has lots of communities co-existing together. You will have South Indians (Seriously no offense meant to South Indian readers, but most common people of MP can’t differentiate between Tamil, Telugu, Kannadiga, and Malayali), Bengalis, Punjabis, Sindhis, Bohras, Marathis, North Easterns, etc. Most of our stereotypes are negative in nature, negative to the limit of being offensive. “Saanp aur sindhi mein koi jata dikha, to pahle Sindhi ko maaro”, one of my friends told me during my teenage. Now, I had lots of Sindhi friends back then. The Sindhi community is a very rich community here because most of them are associated with trades. But the general views about the community is not so good, at least back in mid-2000. Bengalis are arrogant, Marathis are miser, Bohras are not courageous, Bengalis are arrogant, most stereotypes were negative. We spared the Rajasthanis and Punjabis. Punjabis are always treated as kind-hearted, selfless, and benevolent always ready to party. A major chunk of this stereotype is due to Bollywood and the way they portray Punjabis. But one of landlord refusing to give me Rs 2300 security deposit despite him being a crorepati changed this goody-good stereotype for me. Most of us couldn’t differentiate a ‘jatt’ from a ‘jaat’ back then.

Some of the logics also didn’t make sense. We perceived Rajasthanis as good but Marwadis as selfish and miser. But, we also didn’t have any stereotypes for ourselves. We didn’t exist on our own radar. How can we exist on the radar of the outside world?

When I returned to Indore, the era coincided with the rise of social media, social media further exaggerated all the stereotypes, initially packed in the name of jokes but then state/region wise pages and thus you can enjoy the fight between Mumbaikars and Punekars on which city is better or the fight between Kolkata People and Hyd people on which city has better Biryani at 3 AM in the night before your end term. Indore made good use of social media and it eclipsed the whole MP, we will discuss this part later.

When I came to Pune, my lack of identity became more visible to me. Working in an IT company in a city where there is a crowd from the whole country and when they ask me whether Ujjain is in Rajasthan or Gujarat, honestly I felt hurt. Also, an IT company is full of stereotypes. Telugus are spoiling the work culture by working beyond office hours, Punjabis do not respect their bosses, Delhi guys are flirty and rowdy. The stereotypes increased 100 folds and yet we had none. Indoris tried their level best to mock the Maharashtrians Kanda Poha telling them again and again that the best Poha can be found only in Indore, apart from few jokes on how Indoris think they have everything better, they were not able to gather much attention.

One more year passed, and I came to XLRI, my dream college. This is when the identity crisis hit me the most. We had multiple regional committees, the part I liked the most. They used to have a regional dinner, where they would serve the special snacks and dinner of their state to the entire college. So you got Rajaxi (Rajasthan Association of XLRI), Taxi( Tamil association of XLRI), JMAXI( Jai Maharashtra associated of XLRI). Most states have their own regional committees, except, you could guess it. MP, we have no special committee.

A bunch of state MP, UP, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand were merged and for some reason, we added Assam also and then a committee was formed named COWBAXI (Cow Belt Associated of XLRI). As expected, the committee became heavily dominated by the UP and Bihar crowd with which we share very little in common. Also, If you want to see exaggerated stereotypes, a B School is the best place to come. Everyone is a competitor after all with which you are competing for jobs and thus there are moments where the competition is max fuelling a good amount of hatred also. Having no identity at all, we MP folks sail quietly in these 2 years.

I remember once a meme trend became popular in social media describing how a room of a particular state person will look like. I used to check regularly whether they will feature room of an MP guy, they showed for most states. Bihar, Kerala, UP, Punjab but not MP, we didn’t exist in the meme culture also. When I worked in Maharashtra for 1.5 years again post MBA, I was always confused about whether we were included in the term ‘Bhaiya’ or not which was used to describe north Indians. I never found out an exact answer, but I am pretty sure we were not. Are we even considered North Indians? I don’t have an answer yet to this question. We were part of the famous acronym BIMARU, but then also, people just know that we are poor, upto what extent, they don't know. We are just clubbed together with other poor states.

Meanwhile, let’s get back to the Indore equation. Indoris perhaps too much disappointed by this lack of image went a step above. They carved out an image of Indore. In that process, they did quite a few things which annoyed me to a great height. First of all, they highjack western MP culture. Now as I said earlier, MP didn’t have a very distinct well-defined culture. Western MP shares traits with Rajasthan, Eastern MP with Uttar Pradesh. Even I don’t have any idea about North & South MP. North MP did get some attention due to the famous Chambal region of Bhind Murraina famous for the stories of Daku. Central MP particularly Bhopal who was ruled by the Nawabs for a long time had a little distinct culture but not so prominent. The most you might have heard would be Jagdeep’s famous role of Surma Bhopali in the movie Sholay.

Western MP includes many cities like Ujjain, Indore, Dewas, Ratlam, Mandsaur, Nagda, and many other small towns. They all shared a common culture. Most of us started our day with Poha Jalebi, sev is a staple diet in most households, our street food includes Samosa, Kachori, Kandavada, Aloo Bada, Sabudana Khichdi, Fafda, Bhutte ka kees, and other fried snacks. Most of us speak a local dialect called Malwi, because we belong to the Malwa Plateau region. So all in all, a great deal of homogeneity in a wide region.

With the rise of social media, the influence of Indore also grew. So, Malwi became Indori. Poha Jalebi became something that is specific to Indore only and the tastiest one can be found only in Indore. Even the youtube cooks started using the term Indore Sev, Indori Poha, Indori Bhutte ka kees. This became a reason for frustration for a lot of nearby small towners like me. We felt further identityless now. Already, we had no stereotypes in the country. But the few habits we thought were unique to us was now hijacked by Indoris. The poha we ate daily while growing up was unique only to Indore, we felt reduced to nothing. Funny fact, when I was in Kota, during winders a Poha Thela opened in front of my house with the name ‘Ujjain ke prassidh pohe ( Famous Poha of Ujjain)’, you can imagine my happiness back then. Indore took away everthing from us then. Funny thing is many Indoris don’t know that Sev was originated in Ratlam (the same city which was portrayed like a brothel in Jab We Met) and Poha is native to Maharashtra,.

This was also bearable but then came round 2. Indoris started insulting us. If you will upload any picture of eating something that you were doing since your birth like eating bake samosa or eating poha. You will get a message from many Indoris like:

“if you want to eat the real shit, come to Indore.”

“Real Poha can be found only in Indore”

“Best Bake Samosa is in this shop of Indore, you are eating substandard thing”

It further annoyed many of my friends. How come our food became cheap, bad, and not original.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Indore as a city, many Indoris are my good friend. But I can’t tolerate this hijacking of culture and insult of my food. There are many things unique to Indore. Being the cleanest city of India for 4^th time, people there did a great amount of work, one can always see the difference. The sarafa market of Indore is quite unique, none of our city can compete with it. But the basics, the pohas and the jalebis, the sabudana vada and bhutte ka kees, let us enjoy our own. We, the people of small cities, face 2 crisis, we don’t have a city-level identity, and our identity is being stolen by Indore. This just reminded me about the chapter we had in our 11^th Class English Book (CBSE), the last lesson, where the invader stops the education of native language and language is associated with identity and freedom. We associate our food and habits as our identity, don’t steal it away from us.

Now let’s come back to the main topic. We, the people of MP, still don’t have any identity. We don’t know whether we are north Indians or not. We don’t have any specific language. We don’t have any particular distinctive food. We don’t have any unique dress. We do not even have any dance form of us. We are not seen as either selfish or good, hardworking or lazy, cunning or stupid. Nothing, we just don’t exist.

Even our news didn’t exist. VYAPM scam was such a massive and compliated scam, yet many do not know about it. MP was 3^rd in the Covid cases for a long time, doing far worse than the entire country, yet people were focusing on Gujarat and UP. Then we improved, now we are at 15^th position, but no praises for us also. Our CM got covid, no one cared. Rahul Dravid, Salman Khan, Lata Mangeshkar, Atal Bihari were born in MP, but they are associated with some other state. We don’t have any popular celebrity associated with us. Even Kishor Kumar was born in Khandwa, a small town in MP. Many people born in MP, moved to other states and became famous and they are then associated with either their native background or their new state. That’s what people of MP do. Born, get out of MP, become famous, die there.

Although, we don’t face that kind of crisis like my fellow North Easterns who at times are not even considered Indians. We don’t have to give any identity proof, yet we don’t exist. We don't even have a good noun form for us. Bihari, Bengali, Maharashtrian, Kannadiga, Telugu, Punjabi even Chattisgari ! But we can't be referred as madhya pradeshi, we are just MP wale! How to solve this problem? I am open to ideas. Let’s discuss this. Fellow MP walo, let’s assemble, brainstorm and devise a solution. Rest of India, do study us, give us some stereotype, anything will do, we can improve on later! Let us feel included.

PS: On a serioius note, no offense meant to anyone !! It's just a collection of observation I have found while working and travelling to different part of the countries! Yet, the beauty of this country is the way we coexist despite so many differences. Just reminds me of 'Mile Sur mera Tumhara' and 'Desh Raag' videos of Doordarshan, we are one, we are whole, we are India ! :) :)