I fit nowhere

 

Hello!
I do not believe that its been long again, and almost a month and half has passed without me writing anything! but this time around, i will attribute it to the life in big city ( i know, lets stop the fuss!) and lots and lots of work. anyways, here i am on a break of 2 days, thanks to my sore throat. the throat is literally in pits, and thats the worst thing for my job. even if I am without a limb or say couple of bones, nobody would bother as much if i am without a voice. see the news anchor has to speak, not dance. so sore throat is the worst thing and hence I am full on typing and minimal talking :D

well, to come to the point its been exactly 2 and half months since I took this new job, and finally feel 'into the groove!' works getting more and more, more enjoyable also, and I have started feeling 'included' in this media circle! Though as I interact with more and more people both inside and outside the media circle, I see two very strong stereotypes emerging. there are two groups in which people try to fit you. or rather, I would say people claim that they belong to one of these groups, and then the characterestics of that group are expected to be seen in all the people who might just slightly belong to the group.

 I will of course, elaborate. There is group A. I work in regional media and hence get to see this group more often. I have been seeing this group right from my college days. in my university class, at my work, everywhere. this is a group of regionalists. I do not know a better word, so i use this regionalists. what do I mean? Here, people expect that you are deeply into all the regional literature( esp the one from downtrodden), deeply into the regional journalism, know lot of inner secrets of this circle, cant speak decent English AND BOAST about it, are not really familiar with the latest happenings in this globalized, tech savvy world, and again BOAST ABOUT IT. Its taken for granted here that you have a very strong political view, you hate the channels like zoom and MTV, and understand all the very prayogik abstract poetry.
Now, I do not intend to put all the regional media men in this category, but i guess 70% would agree that they have many of these qualities, ( some may have all!) and at the back of your mind, you do expect a marathi patrakar to be like this.  
my question is- why?? well, now I do have certain qualities from above like deeply into regional literature, and do like the abstract art up to certain extent, and well, do dislike the zoom phenomenon to certain extent. but hey, I do not have a very very strong political view( you can say which is bad, i dunno), I am aware about lot of latest facts from around the world, and I MOST DEFINITELY have a good command over English. In fact, for past some years, I have been expressing only in English through my blogs. I do not like to pose as a typical patrakar with a kurta, and do have an ipod. and if that does not fit the bill of being a marathi patrakar, I am sorry, but I can not help it!

and then there is this other gang- 'you know, media and all'. they are the ones who have lost the touch with all their regionality, watch nothing except V, HBO, star world, Zee cafe, and sometimes zoom and some hindi GEC. they will stare at you blankly if you tell them about an old Hindi song, or a great regional work of art and literature. they will stare more if I say I do not drink, even socially, and I am engaged to the only guy I have dated. They will ask me what's marraathee news yaar? we really do not watch 'ghati' things. they almost faint when they hear me being equally fluent in both English and Marathi, in fact having a proper marathi accent so to say.
so I do not fit the bill here as well. the new age, hep media gang. will not be very inclusive of me. coz for them I might represent some of the 'passe'  values, and for the regionalists, i might be out of place coz i do not have lot of those stereotypes. My only question is, why categorize? why label? why cant we treat everybody as individuals having a mixture of lot of attributes? why cant we understand the fact that any person IS a member of more than one group at the same time? and why cant we stop making stereotypes??

all my fellow media men, and all my just fellows, do tell me. Even if nobody does, i will continue writing about it, but if you do, the chances are that the future posts will have less amount of questions! :)