In Chennai, I met a nice lady and her small daughter in the bus My son got up to give her his seat in the bus, and she initially made her daughter sit next to me. Later he got a seat further on and she sent her daughter to sit next to anna (elder brother – my son), and she sat next to me. I asked her directions to the ancient Parthasarathy temple in laboured tamil.
Understanding my struggle she switched to excellent english after a while. She wore a burkha with the face veil thrown back. She told me which stop to get off and how to get there. And when we got off, she and her daughter waved us a cheerful farewell.
In the train from Chennai to Rameswaram, we shared our second class six berther with a muslim family. The young tenth standard daughter wore a burkha with the face veil thrown back. The mother wore a saree but her toe-rings were clearly visible. The father had his hair cut in the modern way. We learnt that he had worked in Saudi Arabia as a peon and had spoiled his heart with pan parag and alcohol. He spoke some broken english but was quite eager to communicate. His wife was tired and sleepy and did not say much. I spoke to the young girl in my laboured tamil and I learnt that she has many brothers and sisters and lots of friends in school. She expressed her appreciation for some of my amateur sketches. Her face was bright and smiling and she was good at her school. He father said he would let her study further as she was really good.
I learnt that muslim ladies too wear toe-rings and mangala sutrams, which they identify as Indian customs, but not bottu or sindhoor, which they identify as Hindu customs. She offered us chapathis which we regretfully could not accept as we were not hungry. But her husband did fetch me a a bottle of drinking water, when I ran out and my son was sleeping. We gave them one of our lower berths because of his heart problem.
They were courteous, friendly and nice.
On a bangalore local bus, a muslim lady sat next to me. She worked as a packer of coffee powder for Rs 3000 per month. Her husband was an auto-driver and had an additional job as well. She took into her lap, a small child who did not have a seat so that the mother could stand more comfortably.
She told me that her mother-in-law looked after her kids and said that I was her mother’s age. She said that they were educating their children, the girl as well as the boy. She had neither burkha nor bottu. She said that heart had to be pure and there was no point of a burkha in all the bus travel. She said that the lives of all the poor people were changing positively but the women of the hazrats were only allowed to study arabic and the koran.
Once, a while back, the driver who took my car for servicing was a muslim. He was honest, candid and advised me on how to avoid the up-selling that the service center would shamelessly try to inflict on me, for the welfare of their purses and not the for welfare of my car. He told me that the karnataka muslims were for the state and for peace.
I was happy to see that there were normal and nice people among the muslims of South India and the hardline was very far from their conversations. I was happy to see that the they were for the education of girls.
The downside was a muslim that I met on Chitradurga bus. He told me that everyone in their family married only brahmin girls (love marriages) and converted them to Islam. They however followed panchangams and other such brahmin customs (related to astrology). He said, much to my shock, that our former president Abdul Kalam and Rameswaram muslims were not even muslims.
I heard that muslims are nicer in those areas of India, where they haven’t been rulers. Either way there are very nice ordinary muslims and they should not be painted with the same brush as the hardliners.
A billion people, a billion perspectives.
