Poster Person — Of what ?
You can be a Poster Person of many things — place, values and many more things.
I staunchly say I am the poster person for Kerala even though I don’t live there. I take any point to prove people wrong when they typecast us or downgrade us in any way. So, I can be called the Poster Person of my Native Thrissur.
But the inevitable question comes: Why aren’t you living there? If that is the case, we will come to that in a bit. Just to scratch that itch of yours and leave it open, I took it up and gave you a bait to read a bit of my praises for the place.
For the firsts — It’s damn green. You can still find green spaces where I can stand, look up, and see only green and no skies. You understand what I am talking about. How would a city dweller know about this green I am speaking of?
It’s full of culture, and there are still places where you can walk, be it a temple or a local auditorium, to see a performance by a local artist.
There is more local food than international chains, and most of that tastes heavenly. The authentic tasters you grew up with are actually soul food, so pizza, ramen, burgers, and chicken tikka masala can even compete with this.
Ofcourse, that’s where your family is, so it’s dear.
Now, ofcourse, the earlier itch of yours, I left the place for my graduate studies and have lived in some Indian cities and some world cities, too. When I left college, it wasn’t much of a choice by any other factor but a decision to progress in my studies and career. But that opened up certain brain sections to understand that you need not be crippled by others’ opinions nor by the evaluation of their gazes, which is constant in the native. So now it becomes difficult to deal with those intrusive questions or just the gaze.
But as a pseudo-poster person, as I can be, as some of my close ones say, I am walking, talking advertisements for my native for all factors.
I mentioned being a poster person for values, which requires much delving and prodding before they can be written about. I’m still figuring those out.
