Today I read an awful chauvinism titled ‘’Small-town Boy” in editorial column of TOI by some bigot Ramakrishnan Sundaram. It proclaimed itself to be a discourse on rustic wisdom but happened to be a ‘prejudiced’ discourse on rustic wisdom. It started with a deliberate exaggerated perversion of a simple remark of Mahindra Singh Dhoni, accusing him to be an arrogant skipper fecklessly biased to his small town teammates and having a supercilious and scornful attitude for players displaying metro mores. Mr. Ramakrishnan considered it heavily disdainful of a small town chap trying to stay in touch with his small town roots by accessing news on it via electronic media. Mr. Ramakrishnan crosses the limits with the lines “Don’t be confused by the accent; thanks to his town’s engineering college, he was writing codes at back room in the bay area before the dot com bubble burst and he was benched again”. The writer feels compassion for those working in organization headed by a small Towner cause he believes the intelligent metro cultured worker their have to play a mediocre and have to abandon there dazzling ideas (ditched by the chief) and follow the mundane stratagem of the small town wits.
The article, altogether, is just another indifferent opinion of a snob for small town people. Or it may be the frustration of Mr. Ramakrishnan after some mere embarrassing incident with some particular guy from a small town but that does not entitle him to form a droopy outlook for all the small town guys based on few minor incidents. And what is more appalling is how an article in such a dire flavor was allowed by the editor to materialize in a newspaper of nationwide (including small towns) circulation and paramount influence. TOI is not like “Samana”, a space to scribe personal hatred of a chauvinist targeting a particular group. A newspaper like it cannot afford to reduce itself to be a channel for the flow of parochialisms.
And regarding you Mr. Ramakrishnan let me toss some light on your so called ‘wisdom’. Firstly you have no constitutional rights to tamper with the statements of celebrated personalities to serve your individual goals. Dhoni’s statement meant to provide prodding for new comers from small town facing the frenzy fan following and inevitable attention of global media. It was never like contrasting Sachin with Raina on the basis of their background.
Secondly, how can staying in touch with your roots be something one should be embarrassed about? It’s only cause of pig-headed persons like you that an average Indian feels no sense of National pride.
Thirdly, with regard to your haughty view on software professionals from small town let me tell you these are the people who have created a brand value of Indian professionals abroad. Mr. Ramakrishnan just find some time and visit few premier institutes of engineering like IITs and NITs and you will come to know the origin of the guys who are driving the cradle of technological leadership. And to add to your information database, Reliance one of India’s largest business organizations was founded by a small town boy from chorwad, Gujarat. And one of the leading business consultants, the mystic man, Ramcharan was once a small town lad. They are shinning example of small town boys making it big globally and more importantly they are not the few lonely examples but there is a whole legion of such Dheerubhais and Ramcharans.
And lastly Mr. Ramakrishnan I request you to ask your parents in which city were Ram and Krishna born. Or in case you are a non-believer (as you find it embarrassing to stick to one’s root) than at least search where were these religious characters emanated.
Hope you got it.
