Since mom specializes in going through life with her head buried in the sand, she needs the help of her astute readers to answer the question at the end of this post.
Before she moved to the bastion of TamBrahmindom, mom was under the impression that only members of her rice-eating community were slightly wary of members from that other rice-eating community - the one known for their razor-sharp brain.
However, two recent incidents have left mom looking for answers from unbiased, third party members – namely, you.
Scenario I
While interviewing a potential maid one day, the woman suddenly asked mom about the previous residents of the house.
“They moved away. We live here now,” said mom.
“Oh, that’s good,” said the woman, sounding relieved. “I wouldn’t want to work for them at all. You want to know why?” she asked, curling her lip.
“Not really,” mom was about to say, eager to cut short any idle gossip involving the homeowners, a very dear couple.
“They called me one day and asked me to clean the whole house top to bottom,” began the woman, jumping into her narration with great gusto. “I slogged like a slave, cleaning heavy brass vessels and what not from morning to evening. My hips hurt,” she pointed. “My back was killing me, my head was reeling … They didn’t even offer coffee-tiffin … At the end of the day, they gave me Rs. 50 for my efforts. Rs. 50 for a whole day’s work! Can you imagine?”
The woman took a breather to wipe her face with the end of the sari. “You know what I did? I threw the 50 rupees in their face and walked away!” the woman concluded triumphantly.
“Seriyaana Iyer,” she spat on the side of the road. “They even looked like Iyers. How much are you offering, Amma?”
Scenario 2
As regularly as the surly crows like to puncture our milk packets in the morning, mom finds tufts of curly hair billowing across our backyard like tumbleweed blowing through a desert town.
“How come you never sweep the backyard?” asked mom irritably, cornering the maid one morning. “Look at all this hair. Where do you think it’s coming from?”
Lest the maid presume that the hair, voluminous enough to line an eagle’s nest, came from her employer’s head, mom hastened to add, “It’s not my hair. Can you make sure you sweep the yard everyday?”
“Aiyyo, I do, Amma,” the maid swore. “They must be throwing it over the wall,” she said, pointing to the house next door.
“Well, you work there also, don’t you?” said mom. “Can you ask them to stop throwing hair over the wall?”
The maid nodded. “It can’t be the people downstairs,” she said. “They’re the homeowners. Very nice people.” Lowering her voice she added, “It must be the renters who recently moved in upstairs.”
“Well, whoever it is …” began mom before she was cut short.
Pointing to the second floor, the maid added in a complicit whisper, “They’re Iyers,” as though that explained everything.
Can somebody help us? What are we missing here?
Monday, November 03, 2008
Invoking Ire
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38 comments:
May be prejudice and surely some manipulation - knowing you belong to the other!
I think it is the synecdoche effect....but then you would'nt trust men in these matters do you?..Srikanth
Being from the same bastion as you, have encountered similar experiences.I think its an age old feud !One simply cant stop people from doing it....
Terri,
I don't how you guys measure hotness in the canine world, but please look at the latest picture at indiequill, may be it might answer your question on john abraham & hotness. his is the only six pack that doesn't throw me off.
oo.. who knew?
I tried typing in the cryptic way mom does, but i couldn't so here.
why haven't the invoking ianger happen with us? do people even know the difference? I have heard all thayir sadams referred every one as iyer-vuttu amma!
besides this is not just restricted rice-eating, every single classification will be used this way.
it reminds me of the sitcom friends where joey's parents wouldn't like irish people & post office. monica would use the same to appease their anger for forgetting to send an invite for her wedding.
sachita, Iyers are famouser, it seems, that's why no one talks about Iyengars. And John Abraham obviously didn't get that way by eating thayir sadam.
muser, agreed. If you can't beat 'em, don't join 'em.
Srikanth, I haven't heard synecdoche since my Eng. lit. days, and I'm still not fond of poetry.
noon, I don't know how she knew I belonged to the other. Women usually ask me if I'm Bengali.
This feud seems to be around forever!
Maybe the yuga ends, a new one begins, but this chakkar will continue till kingdom come!
terri:
re: scenario/strike 1
so ... how much did mom offer? ;-)
re: scenario/strike 2
elementary, my dear watson d/b/a terri - who came first, the hair or the iyer? if you don't know, i recommend dna testing.
re: scenario/strike 3
iyer maami
iyers have struck out!
- s.b.
srikanth:
thanks for my 'word of the day.' i had never heard of synedoche before!
- s.b.
dipali, and to think both branches are from the same tree.
s.b., (i) the woman was sent packing. She's probably badmouthing us to someone else. (ii) There's something repulsive about balls of bunched-up hair floating around, unless the hair is from my own head. (iii) Explain synecdoche to a child. I want to be ready when the son comes to me to clear doubts instead of reaching for the dictionary.
terri:
"Explain synecdoche to a child."
i am sure you are an old hand at explaining stuff like this to kids.
come to think of it, that was a rather complicated construct - a synecdoche hidden within an idiom! does that merit its own term?
- s.b.
lol., I am waiting for the new Charlie Kauffman's film " Synecdoche New york " , and found your post a bit related to that. S.B. and Terri's mom...Thank you...Srikanth
hehehe...you can replace Iyers with non-brahmins in the above piece and that would be my MIL talking. This universal truth can only be whispered. Her voice will suddenly go low and she will start off with....shouldn't say this, but....
She will have a heart attack if she hears the complaint goes both ways.
global, with such an entertaining MIL around, you were complaining of boredom?
Srikanth, I'll wait for the Hindi remake of the film. I wonder what it will be called.
s.b., dunno. Let's ask Srikanth since he started it.
Still talking about two kind of "I"s in the era of globalization? :-). It sure sounds like willful manipulation on the part of the maid in scenario 2!! What does hair throwing got to do with anyone's clan affiliation?
Terri's mom: You must have had and continue to have some bitter experiences to be wary of the other rice eating clan! From what i have heard, the ianger clan is more conservative and strict about their traditions and maintaining the genetic purity!
- Shree
geez!
There's another...The brahmin-non bram war!
I moved to Delhi to avoid fighting the battle...and it followed me here too !!
Shree, all my experiences are based on hearsay. From what I've observed, both clans are equally fond of their thayir sadam and pickle.
meira, next stop - Europe or USA!
To the best of my knowledge, Chennai maids can't tell Iyengars from Iyers. It's all Iyuru. Maybe your maid imagines you are a Bong afterall, and is therefore voicing her opinion on tambraams in general :D
inba, I think you hit the nail on the head! Does Iyuru stand for TamBrams in general or is it a new cuss word?
I didn't know about the I vs. I tensions, I didn't realise it got that granular! Seems like it's very common here to settle into a "us vs. them" stance and depending on the context and company, it could be North Indians vs. South Indians, brahmins vs. non brahmins etc. We sure do love our stereotypes. At work, I've had a Mallu co-worker comment that X (who is spineless, no doubt) can't handle Y because X is South Indian and therefore too mild/meek for Y who is an "agressive Marwadi". When I was complaining about our manager being extremely unhelpful, another co-worker offered that this was because he was a Tamilian and Tams are like that. When I bristled and protested that my husband was Tam AND helpful he was unfazed and retorted "I know, and he (i.e. husband) is also a manager!" :-)
-DS (often speechless at work nowadays during casual conversations ..)
Iyuru is a generic term for all tambraams, like 'Saettu' is for all North Indians.
haha. interesting read!!
as part of this clan now married to the other side, and i have been warned repeatedly about the household that i was going into :D anything happened.. thats how they are .. they are the iyers! lol i realised that half of this is actually what is made up by both sides!! i was shell shocked when i heard him telling me that they thot iyengaars were like that :D but immediately the iyengaar side of me sprang up in defence, wanting to say that they are just making it up!!!!!!!!!!!
now in the spirit of my matrimony, i am just not going to iyerise the iyengaars or vice versa anymore! [:D]
DS, Marwaris are aggressive? The things I learn from this blog!
inba, saettu? Oh, I get it, "Seth?"
gypsy, from what I've seen of 'the other side,' they are fastidious about cleanliness. I haven't come across one messy household. I don't know how they do it.
Yes, Saettu is Seth. Unless you sport a turban, which makes you a Sardaaru, you're plain Saettu if you happen to come from north of Andhra Pradesh.
I have not read all the comments, so if I am repeating someone else, please excuse.
1. "Iyer" is a generic term use to denote descendants of the cross-belt wearing, tuft-toting class - both Iyers and Iyengars, by the NBs. So, the derogatory "They are iyer" is directed at the TamBram class in general and not vibuthi-headed subclass alone.
2. The tradtional TamBram deserves what comes to them (I am a TamBram myself, Iyengar to be exact, before you call me castist). Not letting someone into your kitchen because of their "low" birth continues even now. My octageneraian TamBram (incidentally, Iyengar) neighbour gives spoilt food to the maid. If I were that maid, I would surely badmouth her.
3. You'd be surpised at this - the average NB is a lot cleaner than the average B.
inba, what are the women from north of the Vindhyas called? Saettu Amma?
lakshmi, when I asked the maid to sweep the puja room the first time, she hesitated.
"How can you let her into the puja room?" my mother hissed.
"Doesn't she pray to the same God?" I argued.
"Why can't you clean the puja room yourself?" mother tried to change the direction of the argument. "The room's the size of a handkerchief."
I never did get a straight answer from her, and when she visits, the puja room is off limits to the maid.
"I'll clean it myself," she tells her.
Even I'm considered unclean you-know-when. Makes for very lively arguments in the house.
Saettu is more or less uni-gender. Else it is Saettu amma/pombala depending on the speaker :D Gosh! Looks like we may shortly come up with an FAQ on this ;)
terri, most probably you will delete this comment, but I want to point out the obvious.
For long time I have been reading your blog and many other blogs, because they tend to be impartial and humorous. From your past posts (when you still lived in US), all I knew you was you were from India.
Now there are several posts in which you dropped hints that you are pure Brahmin. I hope this ugly head of castism is temporary.
There are several blogs by so called modern, progressive Indian women. But unless we come out of this cast mold, where the higher cast people constantly drop hints that they are better because they are Brahmin, I think there is no real progress.
I do enjoy your posts, but I hope you go back to writing unbiased amusing posts. You are better than being stuck in a cast rut.
@anonymous: Correction, Terri is not a brahmin, but a terrier. Seriously though, blog fodder comes from the life and events around you and obviously when T's mom was in the US, cast/community was not an issue. In India, you can't escape it. And I don't remember any "hints" about being "pure brahmin". She refers to her family background in context and matter-of-factly, and usually when she is mocking it! You are reading WAY too much into the references, almost as if you are looking to take offense.
- DS (Terri, I know mom is perfectly capable of defending herself, but the unfairness of it just annoyed me)
terri:
how about your next post discusses topics that were previously open but - since your rnri status - are taboo? for starters, no discussion on caste is permitted henceforth (until/if you return to the usa).
- s.b.
My intention was not to invoke a cast discussion. But just to point out the fact terri's mom/terrier :-) is getting drawn into the cast. I know it's an ingrained factor of daily life in India, and terri's mom is frustrated about it. But I just wanted to point out the obvious that she is an excellent blogger, and she is getting drawn into this way too much(even though she obviously doesn't want to). Her posts used to be on variety of issues, and as you see in recent times it's iyer/iyengar, NB/B. Terri's mom, how about some non Iyer posts please, and you have all the right to say "this is my blog I will write whatever I want"
-first anon
anonymous:
all i am saying is that you are fracturing this blog by applying a caste cast on it. truly a case of the medication before the injury!
terri:
in hindsight, the title for this post is very appropriate.
so, what dog caste do you suggest for obama? did you catch where he jokes that he prefers a "mutt like me?"*
- s.b.
inba, FAQ will be very useful. If I'm living here, I need to know local terms.
anon, please read DS's response. I couldn't have said it better myself.
DS, thanks, da (Note Madras baashai creeping into my lexicon.) Do you blog as well? If not, why don't you?
s.b., you're trying to provoke me into thinking, which is why I suck at tags :)
anon, I don't get out of the house much, and I don't have a TV. So, I write about things that come looking for me. Sorry to invoke your ire, but it seems that people in India are never satisfied with a first name. They always want to know my last name, what language I speak at home (English aa? No, no, what's your native?), etc. Nosy questions are a part and parcel of living here, as you well know.
s.b., obama just went up in my esteem tenfold when he advocated adopting a shelter dog. I don't understand why people would pay big bucks for a thoroughbred (because they can?) when mutts are equally adorable, and in certain cases, healthier. Why is caste important in canines?
Considering mom doesn't get "settu" references, looks like mom is resident of tamil nadu for the first time.
Mom needs a tution master prompto who will update her on history relevant to living in tamilnadu such as when Jyothika got married, their daughter's name and so on.
Ps: Terri, do you know Puppy Manohar?
PPS:
sachita, I thought it's obvious mom's never lived here. We have heard of Jyothika, however, thanks to extensive Hindu coverage of her husband Surya. Haven't watched her movies though.
Is Puppy Manohar a dog or a popular blogger?
I'd like to blog but right now inertia has the upper hand. It seems like so much work, coming up with entertaining and well written posts. I don't know if my attention span can stand up to the rigours of blogging :-)
But I'll certainly let you know if I start.
- DS
Yeah Iyer = Brahmin and you simply can't be one because you've hired a Non Brahmin cook...simple!
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