Awkwardddd

We interrupt our frequent wedding telecasts with this special feature on real life. And what a dose of real life it is! Caste is undoubtedly a big deal in South India, particularly Tamil Nadu. I've seen it manifested in big ways, such as the lower-caste woman who had her arm chopped off by her higher-caste employer. I've seen it manifested in subtle ways, like the glasses at home that are for 'known people' and others that are earmarked for 'outsiders'.

I see it all around me, in the comments people make, the stories my friends tell, in the hilarious book 'No Onions Nor Garlic' which, at the end of the day, shouldn't really be funny. But it never came and hit me in the face like it did since I met a certain person a few days back. 

I meet this person on a daily basis, and they're from a minority religion. Everyone else in that group of people just happens to be from a higher-caste Hindu community. I suppose as a result we never really consciously thought certain things through, we're just a bunch of pretty-much-identical-cooking-styles, non-egg eating, right-hand-only, raising-the-glass-when-we-drink type people.

In comes a person who, to be fair, probably had bad experiences with that category of people, given this is Chennai, and the category can be elitist. I sympathize. I know it's hard being the minority and a newcomer. But really - it's like this person is working hard to alienate any sympathy I may have. In the last 3 days of my knowing this person, they have:

1. Asked me if I don't wash my plate before I eat from it, because who knows whether someone else had eaten from it the previous day/touched it since then 

2. Told me pointblank that the reason I'm not eating their food is because I probably think it was cooked in the same dish as some other egg item.. uhm. I'm allergic to beetroots! It wouldn't matter if my mother cooked it.

3. Accused me of not wishing them a good morning in the morning (?!?!?!)

4. Had this conversation at the lunch table:

Person: I swear to god this dish I keep only for purely vegetarian food. But it has garlic.

Me: Don't worry about it, we eat out all the time, right? They probably don't bother separating anything there. So yeah, no big deal.

Person: (to another staunch vegetarian on the table) Oh is it, so liberal. Why don't you try eating chicken then?

Why don't you try shutting the fuck up? It's hard to recreate this scene, I know it sounds like it wasn't that big of a deal, but it could pretty much redefine awkward. There we are, toeing eggshells on the off-chance that someone else from the community potentially hurt the person's sentiments at some point in the past... and then they just go right ahead and toss someone else's sentiments out on a joke. 

It's painful trying to achieve some semblance of normalcy when other people don't necessarily feel like you're normal to begin with.