Tamil culture and festivals

For those who did not know already, Tamil Nadu was the hotbed of the Dravidian movement. Easily translated, it was a drive against Brahmins, Hindi, and Gods in that order.

The Brahmins fled to other parts of India, where they flourish, and the children of those who stayed behind now prosper in the US and other countries. The rest have to bear the brunt of the government, which still pursues this agenda very aggressively. The few Brahmins that you will get to see are at the concerts in December – Middle aged people with enough to survive or dependent on sendings from their children abroad.

Hindi is hardly spoken, although I have to admit that a few good samaritans went out of their way to help me using the minimal Hindi they had somehow picked up. The Hindi prachar sabha packs in quite a few students but it is too less for so many people.

The most unsuccessful experiment has been with the Gods though. True to the saying that if there was no God, there would be a necessity to create one, the Tamilians who do not believe in such a superpower look up to their ageing movie stars for solace.

Temples have been built for some of the famous actors although the contribution of most of the worshipped to the Tamil fraternity is sparse compared to the wealth they have amassed. Most Tamilians worship lord Murugan, the son of Shiva, and of course, Ganesh makes his presence felt like in other Indian states. The rural and the non-Brahmin folk worship a fiery goddess called amman and more fiery is the sight of her devotees, smeared in haldi, and kumkum paste.

Festivals pretty much mean shopping, eating, and getting dressed. The ladies dress up in gaudy Kanjeevarams, which makes no sense in a place that hot. The men are relatively sane, and stick to their white shirts and air-conditioned dhotis. Dressing-wise, like everything, the Tamilians are very conservative and skin-show is rarely pardoned for ladies. The men however find it fit to flaunt their pot-bellies and legs revealed after the dhotis are lifed up and tied to the waist in abandon.

There are no public celebrations like the Ganesh festival in Maharashtra and Karnataka, or Dussehra in Gujrat. The festival that you will sorely miss is holi. This is hardly celebrated by the middle-class and unless you have friends from other states, you will just have to live your memories through this day. I organized a Holi celebration at office and all the girls ran away even before the festivities began. Girls in Chennai always live under the feeling that the men are out to get them. For a state that considers its women empowered, this is surprising.

The main Tamil festival is during the harvest season, and is called Pongal (mid-Jan). It lasts three days during which various rice preparations are consumed with much fervor. The festival shares space with Sankranti (Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh), and Lohri (Punjab). Like any Indian festival, this is the time to shop, and unless you are among the real brave, you would not venture to shop amongst violent crowds.

The other festivals are pretty much what are celebrated in the rest of India – Ganesh, Krishna Janmashtami, Ganesh, and Diwali.

The indispesensable part of Tamil culture is coffee (pronounced kaaaapi by the locals.) The humble seed that traveled from the deserts of Arab has a fanatic following in this state. Take away coffee, and you take away the heart of Tamil culture. Fortunately, they have desisted from giving a unique Tamil name to this one.

The other thing that Tamilians are fanatical about is their language. They have learnt to assimilate English pretty well, and as I mentioned earlier, the affinity for anything fair and English has been well assimilated into their psyche. Apart from English, they will tolerate no other on their soil. The language has been disemboweled of languages borrowed from most languages, especially Sanskrit. For non-south Indians, it is an especially difficult language to master, and in all my years there, I can speak a few sentences very unconvincingly.

They revere a saint called Thiruvalluvar although how much of his teaching is followed in principle is anybody’s guess. With no or minimal access to Vedanta, and the higher Indian texts of learning, Tamilians, when they quote have no other person to look forward to except this bearded person that haunts most of their thinking. It is considered well for children to learn his verses pretty much like we learn the Bhagwad Gita by rote.