My multiple identities.
May 26th 2008 19:24
I'm living in a world that is so incredible, so ludicrous and fascinating that even the most inane situations will inevitably show-case glaring products of hypocrisy, absurd anomalous excrescences that can be a person or a thing, or many times, both. And depending upon my mood, I can either be amused or irritated by it, sometimes taking it to the extremes of both.
Take myself, for instance. I find it highly amusing and very irritating at the same time that I can live the way I do, taking all of the circumstances of my life into consideration. To all outer-appearances and from the way that I speak, eat and do other seemingly normal tasks in an interestingly peculiar way, one can hazard a guess that I am Indian (or paki, desi, bangladeshi, sri lankan or afghani if the guesser isn't very well-informed). To those who are more familiarly acquainted with the Indian sub-continent and India particularly, they would have no problems in identifying me as a South-Indian, from the way I spruce up my English with dravidian colloquialisms like 'aiyyyo' and 'thooo', and also with English words and phrases that are donned in veshtis and sporting coconut-oil, like, 'ready-meals', 'tyre puncher' or 'by-two coffee', and 'full-uh', 'what-uh', 'how-uh', 'who-uh', ad so infinitum.
Of course, this is all highly amusing not only to people from outside of India, but also to people from the North of India who expect, as their birthright, to be humored by Hindi-speaking people wherever they go in a nation that speaks more than a hundred tongues. Sure, Hindi's our national language, but that came about only because the rest of the nation didn't really give a damn for all these official embellishments. We're just so diverse we don't bother about a trifling attempt at generalization, because it's really rather funny. Just like a foreign tourist who, upon stepping into Chennai or Bangalore, tries to impress with a 'Namaste' or 'aap kaise hai', will be met with a sheepish smile and some muttered gobbledegook to his face because he really isn't talking to fluent Hindi speakers. Try a 'vanakkam' or a 'namaskara' and see the difference. In fact, I myself know just about enough Hindi to survive in the North without making an absolute fool of myself, and whenever I can, I'd definitely walk into a Sharavana-Bhavan or an Udupi restaurant, eat rasam-rice and thairsadam and talk with my homies.
All that, of course was very superficial. Let's get a little deeper beneath the surface now. Not only am I a South-Indian, I am a South-Indian brahman. What does that mean? Well, for the lay person it means that I belong to an upper-caste. For the sociologist, it means that I belong to a group of people who are at the top of a rigid and oppressive system of social discrimination, who have subjected lower castes to several discriminatory and downright inhuman conditions for hundreds of years, monopolizing the right to literacy and traditional knowledge. Like this, there are angles about my brahman heritage that would interest everyone from a philosopher to a scientist, historian, or a chef, for that matter, in many different ways.
I am myself, in fact, constantly discovering things that I didn't know existed about my identity. For me, being a brahman in the twenty-first century meant just what it does for most other brahmans of today, viz., being a vegetarian, wearing a sacred-thread across my torso, being religious. That's about all that can be said commonly of brahmans today (nowadays even these general characteristics are dying out). Other typicalities like, being inclined towards academics and learning, possessing a scholarly knowledge of Sanskrit, being well-versed in the Vedas, sporting a shikai etc, have all but disappeared in the last century or so.
But fortunately for me, my awareness didn't stop at the level generally persistent in society today. And that was largely because of another part of my identity, the part that I hold dearer than all the rest, the part that cut across all prejudices, rituals, jargon, obsessions and fantasies that I wore over my self, the cloth of my apparent identity. The thing that saved me from the norm was my Srivaishnava heritage, a lost treasure in many ways that had chosen to reveal itself to me. And in the very middle of this treasure was the central-jewel, Bhagavad Ramanuja.
To be a Srivaishnava is not a religious distinction as many people would assume, like being a Hindu, or a Christian. To be a Srivaishnava is, first and foremost, to be a follower of Sanatana Dharma, which is a Sanskrit phrase meaning 'the eternal, natural way'. Of course, this will immediately give voice to those who're waiting to scream 'bigot', or 'fanatic' or 'fundamentalist'. But this doesn't faze the Sanatana Dharmi, because it is also, after all, a part of the eternal natural way. Everything that everyone does, preaches, believes in, hates, loves and lives by is a part of the eternal natural way. This may appear to be a weak and convenient formula for pseudo-spiritualism, but it will make sense to the person who goes in search of the truth in an obsessively objective manner. Those who accept that it's not easy to do so can approach the right persons (I repeat, the right persons), to know what it is all about.
It made me realize what the true spiritual wealth of our civilization is, and how it is being prostituted by modern-day shamans and self-made godmen. It led me beyond all the modern-day interpretations of the ancient wisdom, showed me the meanings of the Vedanta, which comprises of the Bhagavad Gita, the Brahma Sutra and the Upanishads. This has not changed at all for thousands of years. Apart from all this, it also showed me some truly wonderful people.
A Srivaishnava is one who feels for the suffering of others, one who puts the other's interest always before his own. And though this leaves much to be desired in me, it is a benchmark that I must strive for continuously. This is not just from a moral or ethical point of view.
This is science. It will take a very, very long time before today's science can catch up with our philosophy, or rather, our awareness of tattva (reality). That's the beauty of it. Srivaishnavism is not a faith, such as Islam or Christianity. It's simply... reality.
Maybe after Unification Theory assumes some shape, maybe after it can be reconciled with quantum physics, after electro-magnetism and gravity can reconcile with each other, after space-exploration heralds a greater understanding of our Cosmos... maybe then the world will understand the beauty of He who holds the Conch and Discus (which symbolize the wave and particle mechanics, the weave of space-time).
All big things aside, my heritage is really prodding change on a micro-level for me, and this, I hope, continues without my escape to ego, lies and self-deceit. It's a funny thing, how a grand design can only be grand if it works in a most un-grand way.
Take myself, for instance. I find it highly amusing and very irritating at the same time that I can live the way I do, taking all of the circumstances of my life into consideration. To all outer-appearances and from the way that I speak, eat and do other seemingly normal tasks in an interestingly peculiar way, one can hazard a guess that I am Indian (or paki, desi, bangladeshi, sri lankan or afghani if the guesser isn't very well-informed). To those who are more familiarly acquainted with the Indian sub-continent and India particularly, they would have no problems in identifying me as a South-Indian, from the way I spruce up my English with dravidian colloquialisms like 'aiyyyo' and 'thooo', and also with English words and phrases that are donned in veshtis and sporting coconut-oil, like, 'ready-meals', 'tyre puncher' or 'by-two coffee', and 'full-uh', 'what-uh', 'how-uh', 'who-uh', ad so infinitum.
South Indian by-two coffee... nothing like it!
Of course, this is all highly amusing not only to people from outside of India, but also to people from the North of India who expect, as their birthright, to be humored by Hindi-speaking people wherever they go in a nation that speaks more than a hundred tongues. Sure, Hindi's our national language, but that came about only because the rest of the nation didn't really give a damn for all these official embellishments. We're just so diverse we don't bother about a trifling attempt at generalization, because it's really rather funny. Just like a foreign tourist who, upon stepping into Chennai or Bangalore, tries to impress with a 'Namaste' or 'aap kaise hai', will be met with a sheepish smile and some muttered gobbledegook to his face because he really isn't talking to fluent Hindi speakers. Try a 'vanakkam' or a 'namaskara' and see the difference. In fact, I myself know just about enough Hindi to survive in the North without making an absolute fool of myself, and whenever I can, I'd definitely walk into a Sharavana-Bhavan or an Udupi restaurant, eat rasam-rice and thairsadam and talk with my homies.
Banana-leaf meal... simple and delicious.
All that, of course was very superficial. Let's get a little deeper beneath the surface now. Not only am I a South-Indian, I am a South-Indian brahman. What does that mean? Well, for the lay person it means that I belong to an upper-caste. For the sociologist, it means that I belong to a group of people who are at the top of a rigid and oppressive system of social discrimination, who have subjected lower castes to several discriminatory and downright inhuman conditions for hundreds of years, monopolizing the right to literacy and traditional knowledge. Like this, there are angles about my brahman heritage that would interest everyone from a philosopher to a scientist, historian, or a chef, for that matter, in many different ways.
I am myself, in fact, constantly discovering things that I didn't know existed about my identity. For me, being a brahman in the twenty-first century meant just what it does for most other brahmans of today, viz., being a vegetarian, wearing a sacred-thread across my torso, being religious. That's about all that can be said commonly of brahmans today (nowadays even these general characteristics are dying out). Other typicalities like, being inclined towards academics and learning, possessing a scholarly knowledge of Sanskrit, being well-versed in the Vedas, sporting a shikai etc, have all but disappeared in the last century or so.
But fortunately for me, my awareness didn't stop at the level generally persistent in society today. And that was largely because of another part of my identity, the part that I hold dearer than all the rest, the part that cut across all prejudices, rituals, jargon, obsessions and fantasies that I wore over my self, the cloth of my apparent identity. The thing that saved me from the norm was my Srivaishnava heritage, a lost treasure in many ways that had chosen to reveal itself to me. And in the very middle of this treasure was the central-jewel, Bhagavad Ramanuja.
ahh.. how do I explain this... it's just so beautiful.
To be a Srivaishnava is not a religious distinction as many people would assume, like being a Hindu, or a Christian. To be a Srivaishnava is, first and foremost, to be a follower of Sanatana Dharma, which is a Sanskrit phrase meaning 'the eternal, natural way'. Of course, this will immediately give voice to those who're waiting to scream 'bigot', or 'fanatic' or 'fundamentalist'. But this doesn't faze the Sanatana Dharmi, because it is also, after all, a part of the eternal natural way. Everything that everyone does, preaches, believes in, hates, loves and lives by is a part of the eternal natural way. This may appear to be a weak and convenient formula for pseudo-spiritualism, but it will make sense to the person who goes in search of the truth in an obsessively objective manner. Those who accept that it's not easy to do so can approach the right persons (I repeat, the right persons), to know what it is all about.
It made me realize what the true spiritual wealth of our civilization is, and how it is being prostituted by modern-day shamans and self-made godmen. It led me beyond all the modern-day interpretations of the ancient wisdom, showed me the meanings of the Vedanta, which comprises of the Bhagavad Gita, the Brahma Sutra and the Upanishads. This has not changed at all for thousands of years. Apart from all this, it also showed me some truly wonderful people.
A Srivaishnava is one who feels for the suffering of others, one who puts the other's interest always before his own. And though this leaves much to be desired in me, it is a benchmark that I must strive for continuously. This is not just from a moral or ethical point of view.
This is science. It will take a very, very long time before today's science can catch up with our philosophy, or rather, our awareness of tattva (reality). That's the beauty of it. Srivaishnavism is not a faith, such as Islam or Christianity. It's simply... reality.
Maybe after Unification Theory assumes some shape, maybe after it can be reconciled with quantum physics, after electro-magnetism and gravity can reconcile with each other, after space-exploration heralds a greater understanding of our Cosmos... maybe then the world will understand the beauty of He who holds the Conch and Discus (which symbolize the wave and particle mechanics, the weave of space-time).
All big things aside, my heritage is really prodding change on a micro-level for me, and this, I hope, continues without my escape to ego, lies and self-deceit. It's a funny thing, how a grand design can only be grand if it works in a most un-grand way.
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Comment by Ananth Aditya
on What Is Love?
Pieces of life