TamBrahm and Proud of it!!!!

What with all the TamBrahm rage going on, I couldn’t resist writing about all the TamBrahm-ness!

I am a TamBrahm and proud of it! I hadn’t realized until now how there this particular stereotype that we fall into (maybe because I did my high school in a Brahmin school in Chennai..), and the more I read about it, the more I am forced to admit that yup, we all form quite an interesting species on the whole!

I don’t agree with the whole ‘they are very very conservative’ crap. We are quite open-minded. We might choose to stick to our traditions and rituals, but we definitely do NOT condemn other cultures. We accept them, but maybe don’t want to be a part of them. I think most of just like to stick to the stereotype!

On the other hand, the 3Cs is something that I can’t deny even I was threatened by the prospect of endless TR songs. Coffee, Curd rice and Cricket. What wakes me up better than the loudest alarm is Amma saying “Coffee sooda irukku”. My solution to every problem is coffee. When in doubt--coffee, when sad–coffee, when overjoyed—coffee.. and of course the mandatory cups in the morning and evening and maybe that occasional cuppa after breakfast. I would probably bleed coffee! When I came to Delhi, I gave up having coffee in restaurants as machine coffee tasted like sour milk to my filter kaapi trained tongue.

Any TamBrahm who hates curd rice is just one those rare exceptions to the rule. I swear on my laptop that thayir saadam-mor molaga tastes better than the most expensive pizza that money can buy. Again, this was something I found out after coming to Delhi. Amma wanted to go on a “healthy diet” and decided on chapatti for dinner every night. Naaku setthu pochu. I boycotted the diet by volunteering to eat the leftover rice. Amma tried pretending to enjoy it. A week later, I saw her with a plate full of curd rice and 3 different urugais! 

Cricket is like the official TamBrahm sport. All of us have played cricket at least once in our lives and we can go on at length about a recent match. In my house, the easiest excuse to get out of doing something or going somewhere is those 3 magical words “Inniki match irukku”. It’s ok to swear during a match, it is ok to yell, it is ok even if I study in front of the TV! On April 2^nd 2011, we got calls/SMS/FB messages from all our relatives and that didn’t even happen on New Year!

There is so much more TamBrahm-ness that I have to write about, but at the moment Amma wants me to pick up all the coffee tumblers I left lying around!