The streets of Calcutta are fighting dens. Pada vs. Pada. School vs. School. The divides are many. The battles bloody. And then you have to choose between being on Bappa’s team or Bobbin’s. And the war game was something called King. A rubber ball, kids running helter-skelter. And the throw of the ball, aimed for the fast retreating back. With the strength of an American style pitcher.

This was when I was growing up in Calcutta. When I was being fed fish by my landlady who convinced my mother that she was only giving me aloo siddho (a rice, ghee, salt and boiled potato concoction). Of course I wondered why Mom’s Aloo Siddho was so different from Tubdi Pishis’s but who was complaining.

And smiled ever so often when someone would ask her ‘Bangla cheley?’ which I realized meant – is this boy Bengali? And she would smile indulgently and say with the help of her paan stained lips…na, na…shay tho Madrasi…

The first few times I had no problem with that definition but I was educated soon enough to understand that there was a significant difference between being a Tamilian Madrasi and a Telugu one.

And hey, just in case you thought that I had a problem with the Tamilians, let me clarify. Some of my very good friends were and are tams…some even brahms. But the word Madrasi in Bengali means a person from the south of the Vindhyas…Telugus, Tamils, Malayalees, Konkinis, Kannadigas…all are included.

So one day, when Tubdi Pishi referred to me as a Madrasi, I objected. And proclaimed that I was Telugu. The guest who had asked the usual question and to whose question I was reacting, reacted strangely when he heard that I was Telugu.

Telugu…Tel may Goo…he said. I knew enough Bengali to understand that he was saying that Telugu meant ‘shit in the oil’ but I was all of six or seven. And at that age there was not even a hint that I was destined to be a ‘big boy’ later in life. So I went home and cried. My parents tried to console me and explained that obviously someone was just teasing me and having some fun but I couldn’t be persuaded to stop sniffling.

Till a friend of mine at school, a Tamilian if you please…taught me a ditty which I could use as a weapon in case some smart ass tried to belittle my mother tongue again. The ditty went like this…

Beng bengali, teng tengali,
Chingdi maacher jhol.
Maach na kheley
Petay gondogol.

Loosely translated this meant that the Bengalis who were known to be fans of the prawns would have a stomach upset if they did not have fish as part of their meal.

Wow, that told them!!!

And I carried on with a typical Calcutta street life, taking part in Poojos, learning songs, visiting Ravindra Sarovar, walking down the banks of the Dhakuria Lake watching the row boats glide past. Spending hours in the National Library. Going regularly to Lake Market to buy vegetables etc. along with Mom. Consuming endless pots of rossogolla and packets of sondesh.

And sneaking out once in a while to Komala Vilas for our weekly dose of South Indian. Strangely these visits coincided with our late night appointments with Dr. Das, a homeopathy doctor who was famous for delayed appointments.

From Ballygunge to Chowringhee, I was a regular on the trams and I thought I was a true blue Bengali, destined to marry Beauty, the daughter of our landlady’s older brother who used to learn dance and show off how to get her hair oiled with an innocent shade of seduction. I think she was six at that time.

A lot of time has passed since, and a few rivers have flown under my bridge. And while I still enjoy my maach, my jhaal moori, my aloo kaabli, my phuchkas, my poshtos and so on, I still resent being called a Madrasi. There’s a slimy connotation to that word in the Bengali lexicon that I am still not comfortable with. I prefer instead, to be called a Telugu Maanush…which should be spoken in the same tone used when saying Bhodro Maanush (Gentleman).

And when I meet my Probashi Bengali friends, I am happy that it is on my own turf…Telugunadu…and not Tamilnadu…and so the fear of being called a Madrasi is almost non-existent. And they see in me a kinship that comes from an easy acceptance that while we have each branched out in several directions, we respect the fact that we share common roots.

And strangely, the smattering of Bengali that I still remember and the little bit of Telugu that I have learnt since coming here, can easily be called Tengali…talk of poetic justice