Middle Class

just heard that one of my neighbours of 30 years died a few hours back.
They were Goans. As was true of middle class Bombay, we had a few people from a lot of different corners of the country. Malayalees, Maharashtrians, UPites, Kannadigas, Palakad Iyers all of whom were only once removed from the states of their origin, so that those were not just labels but relevant descriptions of them. My friends and me grew up sort of bastardized, to varying degrees, in that we were second hand citizens of our mother states, tamilians and kannadigas by indirect association with the land of our parents.

They were our family in some sense, the kind you get used to over the years, so much so that you know their ways intimately, much more than your own family sometimes. They were a constant part of our lives, familiar faces that never seemed to move. You knew the whole dance of everyday. If you got up early, you got to see the homeopathy doctor from the last buildling walking to work at a quick pace. A little later you saw another uncle from the opposite building start his scooter and go off to work. A little later the older kids left for school followed by the younger ones. Then some aunties from the next building went out to shop and run errands. Here there was more variety. In the evening, the procession reversed itself. The kids were out to play. The working people came home in batches as the bus stopped at the end of the lane. Seemed so unchanging. change did come but in small waves. The older boys from hte building cast of their short pants in favor of manly full pants. The older ones from the next building started college and went through the street very proud of having become extremely grown up. Then our turn came to leave the routine of school and go to college. the whole colony noticed, accepted it, some talked about it and we all got used to it. As a kid growing up, the constancy was very comforting. you grew up in the eyes of the whole colony. Your paretns classified some of them as the gossips, some as plain mean, some as nice, some as studious and clever and you followed their opinions to form the list of the people you greeted and thougt were nice too, the people you hero worshipped and the people you paid scant attention to.


The small changes accumulated over the years I suppose. All the kids I knew are gone from there though all the parents are still around. I have more chance runnning into one of them walking the streets of California than i do back home.

I am not sure if this is reality or thats just the truth tinted with my interpretation of it. the area was very middle class. Not many cars, people seemed to go to jobs that didnt seem that interesting, but that they went on a very strict routine anyway. Families disappeared to vacation occasionally to perhaps introduce their kids to the lives they left behind. The same story we are writing today in a differnt time and place. The distances on paper were shorter but relatives were always a day away since you made the journey by train which perhaps was an improvement over the occasional bus from a previous generation.

there is almost a sadness when i think about some of these ppl and how they lived. They didnt seem to ask for much. There were very few of them that allowed fun to be a priority. Duty , job and routine seemed the major factors. Is that just a side effect of being brought up in the indian middle class? I wish they lived so that I didnt have to feel bad for them, so that I could console myself thinking that they lived a good life while they could... This could just be me seeing their life through my biased eyes. Perhaps they were not unhappy. Biut I cannot understand this kind, and at the end of it, i am left feeling sad for them.