This is interesting! Elizabeth at Mamamusings finds family through flickr serendipity. (via Flickr Blog). The long and short of it is that Elizabeth had posted some old family photograph on flickr, and one day she found a comment from someone whogoth turned out to be a far-out cousin. I guess Web 2.0 helps others do what Iyers already do, and indeed have done for centuries now.
When you first meet an Iyer, you do a mental check. Accent? Does it have the Coimbatore sing-song to it? The Palakkad intonation. Tanjavoor slicer tongue? Kumbakonam nasal twang?
With Iyer deftness, there is an attempt to find out certain crucial information about characters and places – great-grandmother’s name, profession of grandfather’s uncle, the tailor your aunt employed to stitch her blouses for her wedding, the school your mother attended, your gothram, the shop where you buy coffee beans from, the fat content of the milk your cow gives, the pundit who supervised your cousin’s wedding etc. The name of the village that you are supposed to “belong” to – but may have never seen in your life. That may not even exist in the wildest cartographical adventure.
I think I know a great-aunt who can sniff the boiling pot of Rasam and rattle off your ancestral tree.
Or maybe that’s not just Iyers. It’s all over the world. The desire to connect to another through some fragment of historical evidence. Or the immediate disconnection in unpleasant circumstances. The Web 2.0 just falls on that basic template. Conversation and Connection. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a killer app somewhere that maps connections based on similar jawlines. (Actually, I think there is one like that.)
(Note – Any mean comments about Iyers, Web 2.0, Palakkad, Rasam, Cows will be promptly deleted. I mean it.)
hi neha,
hey does thanjavur tamil have some pronounced identification? as a tanj tam-iyer am just a bit curious…. yes rasams are our hallmark… and talking has always been our fore :-)
sathya
how do you identify a tanj-tambram – two words ‘kumbakonam vethalai’
tanj-tambrams: ippadiyun jollalam (for ippadiyum sollalam)
Ewww.. :)
Can make out the patars (Palghat Tamil Iyers) and the Mylapore maamis immediately.
The rest take some time.
:)
Hey, you spelt it as Tanjavoor. Not the more usual Tanjore, Thanjavur or Thanjai. Only one branch of the Iyer family clings to this spelling still. Neha, that can only mean that you are my long lost cousin……..
I thought Aiyar Veedu sambhar was the big thing. When I was in Chennai, they said that Aiyar rasam is not authentic rasam as they put parpu in it. But then I used to hang with Telugus so I may be misinformed.
With Iyers, as with others “groups” all over the world, if you find one, its only the tip of the iceberg… there are bound to be hundreds around… it takes a deviant iyer to fall far from the tree!!!
In order of questions, the answers are “dont know, dont know, vivek tailors, dont know, kashyapa, suma coffee house, fat free, shastrigal someone, dont know! I am distraught that I did so poorly on the Iyer quiz! *hangs head in shame*
Dents: Fat free. Your cow and mine related! That’s it!
a good read! could identify with a lot of it :)