They are educated, have money to spend and want to live life to the fullest. They don’t hesitate to spend on things that will make them happy. Take
Sandeep Makam. Born in Nellore and raised in Bangalore, he got his first job in Mumbai, before deciding to give Chennai a shot in 2005. The 29-year-old advertising professional says he chose Chennai because he realised the vast potential in regional advertising. Besides, he was fascinated by the gigantic colourful hoardings that towered over the city’s streetscape. Six years later, the hoardings are gone but Sandeep, now managing partner of ad agency BePositive24, hasn’t left.
Meet the New South Indian—NSI—straying out of traditional comfort zones, straddling multiple identities, often fluent in several tongues but partial to none. Home is where they want it to be and regional boundaries no longer matter for this sliver of the urban, upper middle class South.
B C Mylarappa, chairman of Bangalore University’s Sociology Department, calls people like Sandeep ‘Indian Free Citizens’. “This group has the freedom to practice any culture and speak any language of their choice. They exist because there is free movement of people in urban India. Fortunately spatial and social mobility is increasing. It is necessary for such groups to exist as elements of multi-culture in city life,” he says. A region still (misguidedly) remembered for the 1969 anti-Hindi agitations, the South—four distinct states, each with a distinct language and culture—is slowly becoming home to intra-regional migrants, who some may call rootless, but who definitely see themselves as “free”. Even as President Pratibha Patil urged North Indian students to study a Southern language, more and more students in the South are choosing to study Hindi as a second language, seeing themselves as Indians rather than Telugus or Tamilians.
NSIs Makam and his wife Kathyayini (also Telugu, raised in Bangalore) converse more frequently in English and Hindi with a bit of Kannada thrown in. “For me Bangalore is home. Even Chennai is a place I am getting used to,” she says. The couple have found their dream mix of company in the city as well. “Chennai is very cool, letting you be yourself. Unlike other metros, there is no pressure to party or socialise or dress in a particular way. There is a space for everyone,” Makam says.
Indeed, the advantage of
being an ‘Indian Free Citizen’ comes partly from being able to find a home that fits you best. Something that children of inter-regional marriages might
appreciate best.
Ask Adhith M, who took years to find the truest answer to the question: Who are you? His mother is Malayalee and father Telugu and his grandparents ensured he knew his culture, but finally Adhith decided to call himself a Chennaite. The 21-year-old, who provides software solutions to Bangalore-based companies and in his spare time teaches piano, is looking forward to studying in the US later this year. Currently based out of Bangalore, he lived in Chennai during his school years and finished his engineering at SVNIT, Surat.
Noted anthropologist Shiv Visvanathan speaks of the phenomenon as a sort of “clubism”. “This is all part of urban mobility. But these guys are more determined by the schools or colleges they attended. It creates more exclusivity. Their families may be rooted but these youngsters are defined as Indian, by cosmopolitanism and professionalism,” he says.
A new political identity is a factor. “The older generation might be Left-oriented—the fad then— but this one will be more nationalist or Right wing, rooted to an organisation than a community.” Bollywood, nuclear power, India’s UN seat, IT success and cricket are what he thinks draws this group together. “They belong in an easy sense. They can carry that identity from one place to another,” he says.
Which may perhaps explain why North Indians crowd Murugan Idli Shop outlets while the Southies go to Kailash Parbat in Chennai. Bangalore’s food scene is competing with Mumbai and Delhi even as a slower-to-adopt Chennai embraces newer cuisines. Conversely, the North has started to redefine the South in its own backyard—the first index of perceptional change being food. The North Indian foodie no longer leads a life of tandoori ignorance that South Indian food is limited to ildi-dosa-sambar-rasam; a new breed of restaurateurs have exposed the northern palate to foods as diverse as spicy Andhra cuisine and non-vegetarian Kerala food. The culinary experience gets more niche as sub-cultural foods gather momentum: the Syrian Christian meen (fish) curry and tapioca pudding, appams and chicken stew, the Hyderabadi biryani and Chettinad chicken. The South Indian, caricatured for years in a dhoti and oiled hair, is a distant cliche; the NSI’s high-end retail experience is multicultural. For years, iconic fashion brands were available in Delhi and Mumbai before appearing in Bangalore. In the past three years, Chennai has seen an explosion of high-end retail outlets such as Burberry opening in the swanky new Express Avenue Mall. The NSI is willing to pay for quality–demythifying the stereotype of the conservative spender.
Makam says Bangalore is a favoured test market for new products or brands because of its diverse population. “People are quite brand conscious now—they would buy stuff that is either
branded or seems branded,” he says. The South adopts to hi-tech fast. “The newest gadgets move fast here,” observes Makam.
Escape at Express Avenue Malls owned by Sathyam Cinemas, Chennai—a swanky multiplex—offers massages, gourmet sandwiches and a gaming zone. Preetha Ramaswamy of Sathyam says it was designed
specifically for the New South Indian. “This generation is young, educated and are representative of a more
universal mindset. They look for
movies that have a broader reach
rather than movies that are targeted just for Tamil Nadu. They come to the movies not just to watch a movie but to game, eat out and make an evening or day out of it,” she says, identifying the breed’s influence surfacing about four years ago.
Delhi-based sociologist M S S Pandian sees this trend as positive thing. “One should not get too attached to identities. Such layers need careful unravelling,” he warns. Pandian stresses the role of class in this group. “We are talking about youngsters who belong to a certain class. There are others who grow up with an inherited identity,” he says.
One such person is 19-year-old Ishwar Navin. He studied Sanskrit as a second language at school, and is attempting Japanese in college. Of Tamil-origin, and raised in Chennai, (“The best place in the world”) he has begun to learn his mother tongue (so as to not be left out amid his college gang) only now. “In my batch at school, of 160 students, 40 chose Tamil, while 80 took Sanskrit and 40 Hindi since it’s easier to score marks in Sanskrit,” he explains. His father Dr Navin Jayakumar, better known as the Landmark Quizmaster, isn’t too good with Tamil himself. “I grew up in Calcutta. I speak a smattering of Bengali though my Hindi is better,” he laughs. “I think this generation is more confident and less restrained by region.”
As consumer behaviour patterns change in the group of urban, young, white-collar, middle-class Indians, the transformation may be more constituent throughout South India, compared to North, where main changes will happen in Delhi and surrounding areas. South India has a higher literacy rate, generating a larger group eligible for education, and the consumer group will be more accustomed to product introductions and information flow. The diversity in religious backgrounds will move the NSI consumer away from identifying with a caste-structured hierarchy, and will favour the opportunity to identify in a more social class oriented way, according to a recent academic study.
(North and South India in a consumer perspective—nation, region, differences, and similarities by Anna Victoria Vorting, 2008, Copenhagen Business School)
There is, however, a drawback to such freedom, and it comes in the form of a sense of disconnectedness with the surroundings. Twenty four-year-old Swathi Reddy (name changed) knows that feeling well. A Telugu raised in Bangalore and therefore fluent in Kannada, Swathi still finds herself a stranger to the regional aspects of her life. “I have never made a conscious effort to distance myself from my language and culture. Yet, it has turned out to be that way probably because in my day-to-day affairs I do not have to deal with the Andhra part of me. I have a fetish to learn foreign languages and with more exposure to global culture through Internet and TV, I do not perceive myself even having a national identity,” she says.
This is what concerns people like Pandian. “I worry about how these youngsters tend to be completely anti-political. There are unconcerned about what is happening around them. It is like they inhabit a space; know about places but have no sense of investment in larger human issues,” he says. “This is a different kind of parochialism in their identity; they work in an enclosed world, like living in a gated community. So being free from an inherited identity, can also have a negative connotation,” he warns.
Pandian is not alone. Psychologists too are keeping an eye on the phenomenon. They say that NSIs live in isolation and do not interact with the majority of people. “I’ve noticed that young people who come to me for advice, ranging from higher education to sexual issues and identity crisis, are confused because they see that a majority of people do not relate to or understand their culture. This gives rise to conflict,” says psychologist Anil
Kumar, who works in a private counselling centre in Bangalore.
Mylarappa and others argue that people who restrict spatial movement of citizens at a subconscious level oppose social mobility. Sociologist Dr Aparna Rayaprol of University of Hyderabad believes the global identity still leaves space for the local. “There is a growing urban professional class of people in the globalised world who adopt a cosmopolitan identity rather than a regional identity. However, with frequent moves that people make not only within India but also outside, local identities remain important. People may speak English but may end sentences in their mother tongue. Being bilingual in India means being extremely comfortable with English but being aware of regional identity. Moves between cities and working for multinational IT firms make people identify with national as well as international culture. Economic liberalisation has resulted in consumption of goods, services as well as cultural artifacts. So one ends up buying organic food, or junk food but not necessarily Andhra food or Indian food. The global celebrates the local, so eating pizza is as cool as eating idli,” she says.
Bollywood is one of the favourite relaxing spaces of the NSIs. One consumption pattern which has changed due to the Bollywood industry is that of music. According to Vorting, until the 1990s, music tastes were based on regional music traditions, whereas now music consumption has adapted to mainstream Bollywood music introduced by the movies. A R Rahman is an outstanding example of the NSI—a South Indian maestro who won an Oscar for an English movie. Or Shankar Mahadevan, a Malayali Brahmin who grew up in Mumbai and studied music under Srinivas Khale, a well-known Marathi music composer. Mahadevan’s music is truly cosmopolitan without having lost its regional ethos.
Then there are those like 19-year-old college student Archanaa Seker in Chennai, who values both her mother tongue and her Tamil identity. “I know I’ve found a friend when I meet another Rajini fan.” The innocent irony of her happiness is that Rajinikanth is one of the biggest matinee idols in North Indian cinema.
Inputs from Dhanya Matsa (Bangalore), Swati Sharma, Ram Karan (Hyderabad) and Shruthi Sastry