Hindi films often talk about the small-town girl. Mocking her for her transition from being what they think to be a veritable village belle, to a street-wise, too-smart-for-her-old-blue-jeans sort, they promote a certain idea about small-town girls. Then, sometimes they also celebrate her and glorify her. However, rarely is the small-town girl treated like a normal girl, both, in films and in real life. No matter how hard she tries, she can never shake off that identity and be a regular city girl. But perceptions others make aside, what is it really like to be a small-town girl? Does anyone wonder about the conflict of identity and perpetual homesickness we face? Or are we just another social stereotype?
We have to struggle to convince people we are as capable as them.
"You're from BIHAR? But you speak English." I have heard versions of this multiple times in my life, and resignedly decided to grin and bear the unconscious racism in these words. In a big city, people don't see my skills or abilities as a good thing. They see it as a surprising exception, because they have some weird notion that I, a person who lived in Bihar, probably grew up in a muddy ditch and learnt English by listening to Friends' episodes on the radio - or at least that is the impression their exaggerated surprise at my vocabulary or understanding of international pop culture, seems to give me about them. To them, it is amazing that I grew up listening to the Backstreet Boys and reading Vogue, so they insult me by being taken aback by the fact that I am not the stereotype of Bihar they imagine.
Now, don't get me wrong. I understand that a large section of the population in overcrowded and impoverished states like U.P. and Bihar, suffers greatly due to lack of resources. But despite being so "aware" of such problems, those in big cities rarely care to do anything to remedy them, treating it as alien territory. You see, they only acknowledge the backward or poor, when it is time to insult them. When a person spits on the road, people shout "Bihari!" They don't care that I, a Bihari, don't spit. They don't care whether or not the person in question is actually from Bihar. If they are, they don't really care about helping a state in their own country by being charitable so that its citizens can all be educated enough to not spit on the road. Hence, we can never shake off that negative image.
Intelligentsia treats our ambitiousness as a bougie joke.
It's a standing joke that all Biharis prepare for civil service exams, to the point that people born to wealthy, upper-caste families in metropolitan cities, make fun of them for it. For many people in big cities, it's about opening a boutique one day and running the family business the next - whatever suits them at that point. Our struggle to navigate the big city on our own, seems really cute to them.
Now since we aren't bathing in moolah, our thirst for having a lucrative career or studying hard to be good at our job, will be perceived as bourgeois by those who are too privileged to think they even need a job. Obviously, we have grown up seeing a lot more poverty than the average South Delhi girl. I know the value of economic stability and embracing good opportunities because I have seen life decay in the absence of it in Bihar. So yes, I am petty about having a 9 to 5 job that pays my rent. My question, however, is how can people make fun of Biharis for being IAS officers and still look down upon them all for being uneducated and crass? Which one is it? Or are these stereotypes farcical?
The idea of home gets confusing.
When I go home, everyone says "Dilliwali!" intending to be warm. But it ends up breaking my heart a little because in Delhi, I'm still just that Bihari girl. Even after living here for my entire adult life, I am not a legitimate member of this community. I don't have a problem with that, because I don't want to be from Delhi. My problem lies with the fact that those at home, see me as a visitor now. I am now neither from Delhi, nor from Patna, skating some invisible shaky ground in no man's land.
As a consequence, I go home to Patna, and miss my friends and home in Delhi. I miss the metro and I miss traipsing through Majnu Ka Tila. But when I am back in Delhi and walking around in shiny malls, I feel as lost, missing the comfort and simplicity of walking around Patna zoo with my camera.
So, there is a certain rootlessness that comes from being a small-town girl in a big city. A hybrid identity like mine has little place in a world as rigid about carving out niches for everyone, as ours.
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