Dear fellow Kashmiris,
In the last few years, we have broken quite a few stereotypes.
We’ve had our very first woman off-roader and our first female pilot; and of course, so many female entrepreneurs.
There has been a mushroom growth of intriguingly themed cafes and restaurants in the city of Srinagar as well as in the other urban centres of Kashmir. And they have been doing well so far.
Every other day we see young and talented authors publish their works, and what’s better than our very own publication houses? Our homegrown musicians are doing wonders all over the world. Remember how everyone just keeps swooning over Parvaaz and Alif?
Kashmiris are leaving a mark in Bollywood, in the hospitality industry, in the fashion industry—almost everywhere.
The makeup artists are growing in numbers and repute exponentially and so are the wedding photographers. Some years back, no one would have imagined that being a make-up artist or a wedding photographer could be a full-time career.
Our photographers are winning accolades from the BBC and giving Ted talks. There are so many bloggers doing a great job promoting our culture and our comedy scene is just on point with our comedians gaining mass popularity with each passing day.
However, even though our generation is busy breaking all stereotypes, we have created some new ones in the process. Or I could say that we have just refurbished the old ones, just like a bridal makeover. Now I can’t leave this statement like that, hanging mid-air. I would substantiate it with facts, but sadly there are no solid facts; there are just perspectives and angles.
So we will just imagine this scenario: A bright twelfth grader passes the board exams with flying colours. The media people throng the family home, and the topper is bombarded with questions like ‘How does it feel?’, ‘Who do you want to share your ‘victory’ with?’, ‘What are your dreams and aspirations?’ And the interview ends with a cue for the other children to get inspired and work harder towards achieving their goals, and sometimes a word or two of encouragement for those who could not make it.
Can you spot the irony there? Our society believes that only toppers can have aspirations and dreams. The ‘mediocre’ ones probably have ‘mediocre’ dreams which no one is interested in, and the ones who cannot make it beyond the ‘passing marks’ probably have none. This ‘grading’ of students has been happening for ages. Our venerable State Board even made a futile attempt to curb this by introducing the “CGPA” system. But, as I said, it was as futile as any other government scheme, and, thanks to the internet, our kids’ marks are still a hot topic at nun chai discussions.
Unfortunately, that isn’t the end of it. There is more. If a brilliant student opts for science, no one bats an eyelid. If, on the other hand, a brilliant student opts for an ‘easy’ course, let’s say arts, (I know, uncle, you’re getting uncomfortable) people tend to grieve at the loss of lucrative career prospects. Oh, she would have made a brilliant doctor! He would have cracked the IIT-JEE for sure. (Notice the unconscious assignment of gender to different careers there)
Now let’s come to something more challenging! Suppose a ‘mediocre’ student decides to pursue a ‘conventional’ career; let’s say in medicine or engineering. Then our ‘stereotype-razing’ and ‘meme making’ new generation comes into the picture. A person who goes to Bangladesh, Russia or China to pursue medicine is a bangael daktar. Recently a picture or a meme was being circulated on the social media which stated that a Bangladeshi doctor had removed some hapless patient’s fully functional kidney in place of a tumour. Without validating the facts, the picture was shared well over a hundred times on the internet with a lot of foreign-medical-graduate bashing going on in the comments. And it was here that I discovered a new hashtag: “#zameenkanalastaasmbbspass”, which roughly translates as “ a hectare peddled, MBBS settled”. That is a weak attempt to translate the very creative hashtag and I’m sure I didn’t do justice to it, but that is beside the point here. What is on point is that I’ve seen similar bashing of the engineering students who study abroad by these path-breaking ‘nonconformists’. But sadly in this attempt to break stereotypes, they completely miss the point. Being a nonconformist also means being receptive to ideas that are in conflict with your own.
Racism courses through our veins just like blood. I’m sure there are many who would be ready to counter that one. Our generation isn’t racist! Our generation stands for interracial marriage! Sadly marriage isn’t the only criterion to prove that we have shunned racism. Just because we once half-heartedly supported a distant cousin who married outside ‘the cast’, it doesn’t mean we aren’t racist anymore. We are racist as long as we label anyone with a slightly darker complexion as a Bihear; or call a woman who is raising a ruckus in the street as haenzin.
I’m sure there is a lot to add to the ones I mentioned. So, how many of these stereotypes have we actually broken? Or is it that these prejudices have been internalized by us to the extent that they don’t seem wrong anymore?
Sincerely,
A dissenting fellow Kashmiri.
