Visa,
Please may I take issue with you regarding some aspects of your note.
I join you in condemning hayram but I would also like to further explain that the whole approach seems to be bizarre and somewhat unrealistic.
The basic assumption appears to be that tambram girls are ‘innocent’ babes in the woods, lured by the big bad wolves who entice them with passion and panache, and eventually devour them.
‘innocent’ looks may be deceiving but reality, to me appears otherwise. Tambram girls who do well in their schools, endowed with ambition & drive, and now a days, in many cases, a ‘substitute’ for a male progeny not there, and often the conduit of their parents’ ambitions, I think, are pretty street wise when it comes to choosing their partners. They seek compatibility on all aspects and appear to follow darwin’s principle of choosing the one fits closest to their criteria.
Maybe it is not spelled out loudly or in a sheet of paper, but I think, there is also an iota of added thrill to seek mates from someone so similar, yet different. I am saying this from my observation of my own relatives.
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Those who were brought up in Bombay or elsewhere in the north, an unusually large number of the current generation intheir twenties have opted to marry the locals including Bengalis. The fact that the bengalis’ preference for fish, appears to have no factor in such marriages – either the girls are also fish eaters or they have no objection to a fishy smelly hubby. The boy who married Bengali girl, only one I should say, is a non veg and hence no issue.
Re my nieces growing up in Chennai, I should say, they are very upto date ‘modern’ in their dress (per Chennai standards) and fairly comfortable socializing with boys and all three of them opted for iyer boys – but here is the crux – both these guys are tall, handsome, well paid engineers who have migrated to the U.S. and on the whole, tambram tradition of kudumi/komanam is but an faded imagery in their upbringing.
So, let us drill further and check out who are the whiners and gripers here. To me these appear to be the ammanjis (I have heard worse derogatory terms from my nieces to refer to these types of tambram boys). When I was growing up, even though I went to top private schools of madras, and good universities, I was an ammanji, and seriously feel troubled that had I been 30 years younger, I would have been a brahmachari for life.
I put the fault on the parents. When it comes to the boys, in my days, and even some today, put so many binds and controls on the boys. Why cannot the parents encourage good grooming? Should a mother’s love be expressed only in the dozens of dosais or idlis consumed? Should you not encourage your son to slim healthy fit body? Is a membership to a gym that expensive? If so, why not go to the weight or boxing clubs, when weights and dumbbells are available for practice at nominal cost?
Further let us come to girls? Why discourage the boy from even looking at girls, let alone talking to them? will it affect his mental viriginity? These poor guys, turn 30+ by the time they finish their multi multi education and all these prime years of their life, their seed is wasted and cast away when it should be in the process of enjoyment, if not for procreation. There is a right time, per nature, for certain physical needs and these are suppressed, and so when these guys are ‘marriageable’ per their parents, they are already into a tense mindframe – unsure expectations, non existent sex life and above all possessing a jaded charm, past prime, hint of baldness and at the mercy of parental standards, which do not have any currency today.
Now, should the girls, out of pity or a commitment to tambrahminism hold out for these guys? Some here may say ‘YES’, but visa, I think, in these days, if you do not grab what is rightfully yours, it is not going to be left there for you.
Having poked a few dents, let me come up with suggestions here.
I think right at puberty, the boys should be encouraged in social intermixing with the girls, good grooming, team sportsmanship, along with equal emphasis on their studies. What the idiot parents do not understand, is that the social peripherals, do NOT distract the boys from their primary goals, but act as supplementary tools to boost their self confidence, their presentation and sense of ‘dashing’, absolves them of the ‘nerd’ label and most importantly, makes them viable, challenging and sought after players in the ultimate mating game.
I think folks like hayram missed the boat, or his sons missed the boat. Hence they are appealing to the supposedly holy duty to marry within caste or ultimate destruction of caste. Tambrams as a group will survive and prosper I think, but not tambraminism – which is a good thing for tamil Hinduism.
Visa, I do feel very sorry for those boys. But their whining and griping, appears to me, like that of a little child, who was expecting a bag of sweets for some good behaviour and now denied it. Life is not so simple, is it?
let us attack the root cause.
Thank you.