I have read and heard of a lot of incidents wherein people have endured hostility to a large extent... in workplace, new city/state, etc.
I am originally from bangalore, born and raised there and have had lots of friends irrespective of race/religion/caste etc.
Read through this post of mine, it can be a tad long, but i have to get this out of my system. Many of you might have been in a similar situation, some worse....
I moved to Chennai around 2.5 years back. This was not a planned move but i landed a good job in Chennai and hence decided to relocate temporarily. Chennai is not new to me. My mum was born and raised here, i have an aunt and an uncle who have also been here since their birth so I had visited chennai plenty of times.
But little did i know what a rude shock i was in for when time passed in chennai. While work atmosphere and peoples' behaviour was confortable with me, i had a very tough time with the local population.
Very few locals were willing to be of help - whether it was asking for directions or even buying groceries from a store. Hostile stares and rude behaviour was what i endured but didnt take it to heart. My friends from Chennai, most of them who are bhpians said it was my skin color (i am fair), and i look like a north indian. Usually everyone mistakes me for one and starts a conversation in Hindi (even in Blore) although i am from Karnataka.
So why am i posting this? Read on and you'll know....
When i moved here, my cousin advised me not to converse in Hindi (remember the anti-hindi riots in the 80's in TN?) as locals hated the hindi crowd. I had also seen reflective signboards on the highways wherein the name of the city etc in Hindi had been smeared in black paint.
All the above mentioned behaviour (and more) did not deter me and i settled down, gradually learning and conversing the local tamil language. Got married to a pretty iyengar woman too.
Incident 1 : This happened about a few months back. I got my car out of my garage and was slowly proceeding towards the main road (read - 30kmph or lesser). Bang in the middle of the road, a guy on a tvs 50 stops to answer his ringing cellphone. What did i do? Instinctively looked in my RVM's and swerved right while simultaneoulsy honking at him.
The guy gets irritated for some reason and stops alongside my car at the signal (which was red) and says something. I put my window down and politely tell him to pull over to the side as he could have been hit be me (in tamil of course). The guy sees my northy lookin face and fires abuses. I had my wife with me and didnt want to create a scene and asked the guy to behave and went my way. Both wifey and me were disgusted with so many such incidents and i am toying with the idea of moving back to blore.
Incident 2: This happened yesterday. And this one takes the cake.
Wifey and me finish lunch at pizza hut (gandhinagar, Adyar) and i want to drive along the beach. Decide to go to besant nagar and probably to ECR then on. Stopped at the traffic signal which was red. Vehicles are in front of me. An auto gets behind me, starts yelling "Po Po" which means go go. I look at the signal which is still red and before i react he rams his auto on the rear bumper of my car.
I wanted to get out and see whats the rush about. Initially thought its an emergency or so. But lights changes to green, i see the auto guy speed away with a male passenger in the rear of the auto.
Chased the bugger and he knows he is being chased. The guy in the passenger seat leaned out of the auto and invited me for a brawl. The auto pulled to the left next to a bus (at the next traffic signal). I stopped at the extreme right. Got off to complain to the traffic cop. (Thank God for the cop). My wife was frantically yelling that the passenger guy was running in between vehicles towards me. Luckily for me i had asked my wife to note the auto regn number which i passed onto the cop. The guy retreated into the waiting auto and they sped away at the sight of the cops approaching them (i think one cop chased the auto on his bike but not sure).
If not for the cops the situation would have been worse. But in no way has this incident made me hate this city. My wife was equally shocked with the incident and she is disgusted. I have family here, good friends etc. I only am wondering what provokes people into hate crimes like this.
I have only 1 choice now. Move back to blore ASAP. This will take some time as I moved to a new company 2 months back. Leaving them so soon and getting another job in blore is going to be tough. I am thoroughly disgusted with the constant hostility
and so dont see any choice but moving back.
Mod's : I dont intend to make this thread a political issue. Just want to highlight my case, and maybe some can advise what can be done in such situations.