Racially Yours!!

So a friend from Mangalore teased a friend from Tamil Nadu about his love for curd rice. My tamil friend got seriously offended and branded my mangalorian friend as “racist” …

Now I am thinking that how can “fish-rice” (manglorian friend) teasing “curd-rice”(tamil) be so unacceptable when most “daal-baatis” (rajasthani’s) and “chola batura’s” (punjabi’s) still think that below “vada-paav” (Mumbai) everything is “rice & coconut oil” (south india)… 

Racism is bad and severe. But this episode is not racism, its a cliché. Cliché’s about color, culture and race are not offensive, though decisions based solely on them are.

When we see people with white, black, yellow, brown skins, when we hear male-female voices, when we notice ethnicity and nationalities; known cliché’s run in our minds. And if we don’t have any, they are made as we go through life, … a lot of people make up their mind with their experiences like working with a micromanaging Indian manager or friendship with a i-speak-my-mind New Yorker or very efficient Asian store attendants or good Venezuelan car salesman or coupon savvy Mexican teammate or crafty IT contractor.

If all stand-up comedians are to be believed, cliché’s can be funny; old people say cliché’s hold wisdom and talkers skillfully use them as funny icebreakers. Though I think it’s just human nature of find patterns and do hasty/whimsical classification of events and people.

Anyway, I say clichés fun. And if we misname them something sinister like racism, they don't cease to be fun ...