Sala Katki

My uncle who just got transferred from Solapur, Maharashtra is having a hard time settling down in a small city named Jharsuguda in Western Odisha. He was complaining about the shoddy job by the plumbers, electricians and other handy men when he needed to fix something at his new residence. This wasn't so during his stint in the city in central India where the service was prompt & professional. After all, Solapur is in Maharashtra and Jharsuguda is in Odisha says it all.

He also mentioned something else - for a first timer in Western Odisha he felt some undercurrent of the feeling of being slighted and a lack of cooperation as an arrival from the coastal belt of Odisha. This is not a new phenomenon unheard of. Though I have spent sometime in Sundargarh, very much part of western Odisha, I have never felt an iota of marginalization or mistreatment by the locals. 

From my childhood I have been hearing horrendous stories of coastal Odia migrants harangued as SALA KATKIA (Sala means wife's brother, but is used in a deregatory sense as seducer of the sister of the person the slang is directed at). KATKIA is the term reserved from any one from coastal Odisha - ranging from Baliapal in Balasore district to Gajapati in old Ganjam though it derives its name from the undivided Cuttack district, the heartland of coastal Odisha.

Western Odisha folks pride themselves as broad minded, open hearted simpletons versus the crafty, cunning and calculating KATKIA BHAINAs (Bhaina, a common form of calling a brother in coastal region is used in a derogatory sense to ascribe them by the Odias from western dustricts who address their brothers as Dada).

They resent the presence of arguably the better educated Odias from coast on their land, edging the locals out of their plum, coveted jobs. A particular way the Western Odisha folks describe the migrant Coastals - BAHIR BHASA KAHICHHAN (Speak the language of Odia books which is predominantly written in Odia spoken in coastal belt vis a vis the natives who speak Sambalpuri, the prevalent local dialect), UDHAARI KHAICHAN (Champion freebie munchers when someone else pays for it). 

They won't stop ridiculing there and go on - When KATKIAs working outside get news of becoming a father they rejoice by saying - PRABHU JAGANNATHE DELE (my child is Lord Jagannath's offering), though the statement alludes to the kid being fathered by the youthful neighbor somewhere in distant costal Odisha when the husband is away working in the western part of the state.

I have a good number of SAMBALPURI friends who happen to be great guys (similar to KATKI a SAMBALPURI can be from districts ranging from Sundargarh to Kalahandi). An average western Odia Rama, Dama, Shyama (Tom, Dick, Harry) I have come across has less guile and manipulative than their average coastal counterpart, usual exceptions apply. Unscrupulous backstabbers abound in vast number and roam rampant in coast, ready to cut your nuts from your back - that's just me saying based upon my observation and experience. Some say - those coastal guys who have settled for generations in western Odisha imported characteristics of foxy cunningness brought upon the gullible natives. They may have a point.

Many Sambapuri folks are known to boast - "No Katkia Kabi (poet) can be ever be close to Gangadhar Meher", a poet of distinction from Western Odisha. Some even buy this stupid logic of Mahanadi water from Hirakud dam after churning out electricity turns less virile and contribues to the lower fertility of the agricultural land which surrounds Sambalpur, whereas the expoliting Katkias enjoy electricity at their expense.

The so called Katkias are not blameless either. They poke fun at the Sambalpuri dialect widely spoken in Western Odisha though the dialect varies, ranging its variant forms from Kalahandi to Sundargarh. (Sambalpuri is to Odia, as Bhojpuri to Hindi which can vary from Up to Bihar). They equate them to Adivasis (tribals) associated with backwardness. The region is often neglected, poverty is rampant and it is engulfed by malnutrition as most of the money sanctioned towards development is hijacked to coastal Odisha, especially the capital city of Bhubaneswar and its surrounding to be later pocketed by the Netas and Babus - again predominantly from the coastal region.

It is ironic that when there is a distinct lack of Odia identity outside the state, so much so that Odias have developed an inferiority complex of talking in Hindi and reluctant to identity themselves as Odias in Public, such linguistic laced regionalism and factional divide rules the roost. Even the soft spoken ex PM Manmohan Singh was hard on the Odia MPs who approached him for money - "Money does not grow on trees", literally uttering a transliterated Odia phrase TANKA KANA GACHHA RE PHALUCHI. I doubt he would have done same to their counterparts from Kerala, a state which sends almost the number of MPs to the Parliament. But who cares for a race with so many faultlines !!!