Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parents means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working-class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living in a limbo. My family wasn't interested in lucid, meaningful movies and, and I wasn't in their daily dose of TV sops and mindless chatters. My discourse about global current affairs often were more receptive to the walls than to it's owners.
What drove me to detest, what i adored closely in my heart? Born a villager, I never once felt completely at home among the naive and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest hinterlands. It was only after a lot of time that I was able to completely fit among the preppies and urbanities of a metropolitan, having spent my childhood and college days in a "virtual city" sort of place far away from the screeching noises of cities - Boarding Schools. Surrounded by lush green pastures and the serenity of nature, my morning was welcomed by the day's first sunrays kissing the face; while on the morning jogs. My study hours was spent with the birds singing in the backyard. I would spend the evenings playing football with clean breeze all at the disposal. This, in contrast to the endless chatter and obscurity of the city. But the education and facilities, all made us feel like living in a small city of ours. It was as though living in the countryside, but availing the resources of the city. Modi in his vision for India would later coin the term "rurban" for this kind of adjustment. But in a true sense, it did not completely satisfy the definition of "rurban". It was a completely different experience with many paradoxes. The hostel was an amalgamation of children from varied backgrounds, region, religion and culture; all sharing the same roof. Each dissipating his life's travesties to the other, simultaneously absorbing others. It was one of a kind of itself. But even then, due to obvious reasons, I was always drawn towards the cosmopolitan life, right from my tender age.
While I would struggle to fit among both the worlds, now that I look back, it wasn't a rough ride. Others who are the first in their families to attend a hostel shall tell you the same thing : It renders you unrecognisable to the very people who launch you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in convent schooling challenge the orthodoxy of rural life, that even in the 21st century are rooted deep in peoples lives.When we have any activity or conversation, it's often a kind of work our parents have never heard of. But people like us never actually completely feel the office as a sanctuary, atleast during the initial stages. In the corporate world, where the rules are based on notions foreign to the working business middle-class, a straddler is not always comfortable. Social class is very much prevalent in the urban life, eventhough nobody likes to admit it. From an early age, middle-class people learn to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab the upper echelons of the corporate ladder.
But middle class families from a village are nowhere similar to that of their counterparts from the metros. Our city siblings with college degrees have lived their lives with what the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu calls 'cultural capital'. Growing up in educated environment, they learn about stock markets, Angelina-Brad marriage. In a home with cultural capital, there are weighted networks; someone always has an aunt or buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job, in the corporate world. Dinner table talk that day could involve international scenarios, Bollywood, Football, the morbid as well as exciting times of the corporate world. Upper-class city kids grow up with a kind of entitlement that they would carry out throughout their lives. This 'belongingness' is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early exposure and direct access to culture in the house in more organic means of appropriating cultural capital. Those of us possessing 'ill-gotten culture' assimilate it, but never truely become a part of it, until the wheels of time makes us settle in the cities. Something is always a little off about us, back in the countryside-home among the family. Like an engine with imprecise timing.
What drove me to detest, what i adored closely in my heart? Born a villager, I never once felt completely at home among the naive and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest hinterlands. It was only after a lot of time that I was able to completely fit among the preppies and urbanities of a metropolitan, having spent my childhood and college days in a "virtual city" sort of place far away from the screeching noises of cities - Boarding Schools. Surrounded by lush green pastures and the serenity of nature, my morning was welcomed by the day's first sunrays kissing the face; while on the morning jogs. My study hours was spent with the birds singing in the backyard. I would spend the evenings playing football with clean breeze all at the disposal. This, in contrast to the endless chatter and obscurity of the city. But the education and facilities, all made us feel like living in a small city of ours. It was as though living in the countryside, but availing the resources of the city. Modi in his vision for India would later coin the term "rurban" for this kind of adjustment. But in a true sense, it did not completely satisfy the definition of "rurban". It was a completely different experience with many paradoxes. The hostel was an amalgamation of children from varied backgrounds, region, religion and culture; all sharing the same roof. Each dissipating his life's travesties to the other, simultaneously absorbing others. It was one of a kind of itself. But even then, due to obvious reasons, I was always drawn towards the cosmopolitan life, right from my tender age.
While I would struggle to fit among both the worlds, now that I look back, it wasn't a rough ride. Others who are the first in their families to attend a hostel shall tell you the same thing : It renders you unrecognisable to the very people who launch you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in convent schooling challenge the orthodoxy of rural life, that even in the 21st century are rooted deep in peoples lives.When we have any activity or conversation, it's often a kind of work our parents have never heard of. But people like us never actually completely feel the office as a sanctuary, atleast during the initial stages. In the corporate world, where the rules are based on notions foreign to the working business middle-class, a straddler is not always comfortable. Social class is very much prevalent in the urban life, eventhough nobody likes to admit it. From an early age, middle-class people learn to get along, using diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab the upper echelons of the corporate ladder.
But middle class families from a village are nowhere similar to that of their counterparts from the metros. Our city siblings with college degrees have lived their lives with what the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu calls 'cultural capital'. Growing up in educated environment, they learn about stock markets, Angelina-Brad marriage. In a home with cultural capital, there are weighted networks; someone always has an aunt or buddy with the inside track for an internship or some entry-level job, in the corporate world. Dinner table talk that day could involve international scenarios, Bollywood, Football, the morbid as well as exciting times of the corporate world. Upper-class city kids grow up with a kind of entitlement that they would carry out throughout their lives. This 'belongingness' is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such early exposure and direct access to culture in the house in more organic means of appropriating cultural capital. Those of us possessing 'ill-gotten culture' assimilate it, but never truely become a part of it, until the wheels of time makes us settle in the cities. Something is always a little off about us, back in the countryside-home among the family. Like an engine with imprecise timing.
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