Lost in your own Country ?

Gone are the songs of unified India. Also gone are the ethnicity of aregion.Nowdaysif you hail from Gujrat, it need not imply that you are a gujrathi. Further, we identify oursleves better with the place we have been brought up or did our studies rather than our ancestral rootings. So a person who stayed in Delhi most of his life would prefer to be referred to as a Delhiite rather than a Jaipurian from where his forefathers may have migrated in search of greener and healtheir pastures :)
Hailing from a different region as opposed to one's own community may lead to many interesting situations and for me it is the unbiased way of learning what people really think about you n the place you come from , your cultural n religious customs and so on.
Very soon I feel , we may feel the need of a second citizenship though I wish not to enter into such controversial thoughts.I however , sometimes land myself in a quandary when someone enquires of me "where are you from?". Forget that it irritates me to no end for reasons which even I cant fathom, I really wonder what to answer.
I take few seconds to judge why the person is asking me that question. If he is interested in my background I say Jamshedpur which is my hometown. If the person is from my professional acquainatance, he would mostly be interested from the place or university from which I acquired my last degree. So accordingly I intimidate them about my academic profile :))

So I , belonging to Jamshedpur(Jsr) but born in Kolkata , did my schooling in Jsr but did my grads in Mumbai, Masters in Kolkata and now pursuing doctoral studies in Bangalore its quite an identity crisis. people find it difficult to guess that I am a bong except for some faint hint from my name and for some the chubby cheeks and the rosogolla frame helps to categorise myself in the Bong community. Thankfully I dont carry any accent though the last few months in Bangalore has already inculcated in me what I like to refer to as the 'tamarind accent'.