How Does It Feel Being An Odia Outside Odisha?

How Does It Feel Being An Odia Outside Odisha?

To throw light on this, we bring you a personal account of Mr. Sarthak Pranit aka The Thanda Mentalist (as on Quora) who has enumerated his thoughts of being an Odia and settling down somewhere outside this state!

1) You search the whole town to find a restaurant that serves pakhala and badi chura. And the moment you find such a place, tears of sheer joy flow down your cheeks.

(That might be a hyperbole, but you get the idea right?)

2) Anywhere you eat panipuri, you always think, “Nothing like the gupchup back at home.” 

3) You find it really weird when a person doesn’t serve aloodum along with the plate of dahibara, even if your friends find that normal!

4) Traffic jams feel really weird and truly new to you.

5) Whenever you are in the crowd and hear someone uttering Sala behiya, your eyes lighten up. It feels like finding a brother from another mother.

6) Slangs are always best served in the mother tongue. I shall leave this to the imagination of the reader!

7) You are actually shocked by the cost in the metropolitan. In Bangalore, I get 6 panipuris for INR 10. That would be called UPA-level corruption back at home.

8) Whenever anyone tells you that he/she is really tired of the heat in the city, you give out a boss-like smirk. You know that you have been through far worse.

9) You always pick up a fight with a Bengali on which state offers the better rasgulla. Now that I think of it, lemme re-frame the sentence to; You always pick up a fight with a Bengali!

10) You are always jaw-droppingly flabbergasted when a friend of yours tell you that he/she has never tried fish (illish, pomfret, prawns, etc)

11) When in Goa you get to see the beaches, you enjoy the whole blast of serenity. But somewhere at the back of your head, there is a lingering thought going on; The waves aren’t as high as those I saw in Puri.

12) Finding bara served with garam guguni in a different state feels like finding water in the Atacama Desert. You save its location on your phone.

13) If your friends look at the fridge and just see dal and some vegetables, they order food from outside. However you take up the daring attempt to cook the Dalma sometimes.

14) You might be the only one in your friend circle who doesn’t address your mother as Mom or your father as Dad.

15) You start realizing that even a hot plate of butter chicken doesn’t match your mom’s santula jhola.
16) You always end up smiling when you get to talk in khanti Odia, be it with anyone!