Partitioned before retirement.
If I were still intact, I would have celebrated my 58th
birthday today. If I were a government servant, this would have been my
retirement day.
I am Andhra Pradesh, in its previous avatar. The large
combined avatar. In my heydays I was the 4th largest state in the
country, the state with the third largest economy, home to the third largest
spoken language in the country and of course, the land of dreams – churning out
the highest number of films per year.
I was large, I was content and I was a growth engine of the
Indian economy. I was peaceful, and was the envy of my neighbours.
People flocked from across the globe to see me. The
spiritual people went south to the Lord’s abode at Tirumala. The tourists went
northwards to the beautiful Visakhapatnam city and the people seeking the lure
of the lucre came to Hyderabad.
No one who ever came to me felt like an outsider. I was home
to several dialects of the Telugu language.
Each dialect finding its rightful place, adding to the conviviality. The
beautiful mixture of Deccani Urdu and Telugu and gave me a distinct linguistic
identity.
The Gujaratis, the Tamilians, the Maharashtrians, the
Punjabis, the Hindi wallahs all made me my home. For me, they all had equal
right to my resources. Narrow mindedness, parochialism – these were alien to
me.
But something started brewing a few years back. A trouble
between two sections who spoke the same language. The only difference between
them being their dialect.
A crack of trust snowballed into a chasm large enough to
dismember me.
A few month’s back I was broken into two states. One avatar
without a coast and another without a capital. Both inadequate, both dwarfed, both
struggling and the psyches of both the residents gnarled by lies and counter
lies.
Two ego filled avatars filled with mistrust. My two avatars
fight with each other about power, taxes even water.
The social media is filled with feuds between the citizens
of my two parts. I ask myself, how did such animosity crop up in such short a
time?
My heart, Hyderabad is slowly losing its sheen. Real estate
here is cheaper than that in Patna, Pune, Bhopal… How did I become so
unattractive suddenly?
I envy my brothers born on the same day – Kerala, Karnataka,
Gujarat, Maharasthra. They must have done something good in their previous
janma to stay intact!
What wrong did I do to get mutilated before I could retire?
But, on this day I realize. Change is the only constant. I
have to retire.
I am no longer the present or the future. I am the past. A
past that lives only in textbooks and in people’s minds.
My date of birth has already been confined to the history
books. I have given way to two new avatars. One born on June 2nd and
the other on June 8th.
As I hand over the reins to my two new avatars, I wish them
the best.
I pray that they live as friendly neighbors who share the
joys of the bounty that nature has bestowed on them.
I wish they succeed.
