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Respect, Chennai style
TAMIL NADU, apart from being famous for several other things, is known for the obsequiousness of its people. We are ready to fall at the feet of political leaders or film stars at the drop of a hat. I find this practice abhorrent. People tell me it's okay as long as the person being venerated is old.
Are we to presume that grey hair confers wisdom? In any case with people becoming more vain about their appearance, we see a lot of `painted heads' around. Recently I had been to a music performance and there were very few grey-haired in the auditorium. I even wondered if old people had opted out of the cutcheri circuit. It was only when the concert ended that I noticed quite a few black haired folks finding it difficult to walk. I suppose they have not heard that bit about grey heads deserving respect. Or maybe they would rather dye their hair than have people fall at their feet.
Obsequiousness has become deeply ingrained in us. A friend of ours was shocked when my brother told him that in the multinational company in which he worked, managers were addressed by their first name. So strong is our respect for hierarchy that in government offices people address even their immediate superiors as "sir." Of course the Chennai-ite doesn't say `sir'. He says "saar". I have noticed people who speak excellent English lapse into "saar" when they address someone.
A visitor to Chennai might think all of us have the same surname — "saar." There is a story, apocryphal I am sure about a foreigner who upon arrival at the Chennai Central Railway station boarded an autorickshaw and asked to be taken around the city. He was impressed by the stately Ripon Buildings and asked the autorickshaw driver who the architect of the building was. "Theriyalai saar", said the driver. He then saw a funeral procession, which held up the traffic for full 10 minutes. Presuming that the dead person must have been a VIP, the foreigner asked the driver who the dead man was. "Theriyalai saar," said the auto driver again. Whereupon the foreigner sighed and said, "There goes Theriyalai Saar, the architect of the beautiful Ripon buildings we just saw."
This at least is an area where we have achieved gender justice. Women are "accountant madams" or "lawyer madams". I once had a lot of documents photocopied for my father. The next time I went to the photocopying centre, the man at the counter said, "Bulk madam has come." I was shocked, since I have a small frame and am extremely thin. What he meant was that I was the one who had a big bundle of documents photocopied at the shop. The "madam", of course, was his way of showing respect to someone who had contributed substantially to his day's earnings.
I wonder if the Chennaiite's `saar and madam' will find a place in Hobson-Jobson, a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases.
SUGANTHY
KRISHNAMACHARI
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