Being Orthodox is very personal, meaning it works to personal convenience.
Some people claim to be very orthodox, but having come to US are unable to maintain all that. So, if you are a NRI, you escape, but if you are in India, consider yourself tortured, eh!
A couple days ago, I happened to meet an aged friend, who belongs to a very orthodox tamil brahmin community. OR so she said. She constantly found something from my family's practices & contradicted it as to why they don't follow that & how different (& extremely madi they were). Well, I assume that I am unorthodoxy(traditional to an extent, but unorthodox). I did not want to start an argument for the simple reason, I had no intentions of changing her or her ways.
She had every reason to feel her way & I had every reason to feel mine.
But sometimes, I wonder. In this "community" or "caste" race, do we drop our humane somewhere?
Often in concentrating on the bug picture, do we lose the small things that matter most? OR is it the other way round? We concentrate on small things so much that we forget the big picture?
Some people claim to be very orthodox, but having come to US are unable to maintain all that. So, if you are a NRI, you escape, but if you are in India, consider yourself tortured, eh!
A couple days ago, I happened to meet an aged friend, who belongs to a very orthodox tamil brahmin community. OR so she said. She constantly found something from my family's practices & contradicted it as to why they don't follow that & how different (& extremely madi they were). Well, I assume that I am unorthodoxy(traditional to an extent, but unorthodox). I did not want to start an argument for the simple reason, I had no intentions of changing her or her ways.
She had every reason to feel her way & I had every reason to feel mine.
But sometimes, I wonder. In this "community" or "caste" race, do we drop our humane somewhere?
Often in concentrating on the bug picture, do we lose the small things that matter most? OR is it the other way round? We concentrate on small things so much that we forget the big picture?
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI read this in one blog that one mother frm same orthodox as u refer here adviced her childless son to adopt an orphan child...So some ppl r like this n some ppl r like that...no one to blame...
Ahh the orthodox business eh? Oru kadula vangi innuru kadthula vidanam! :D
ReplyDeleteP.S Yay! I successfully wrote Tamil in English!
Nice Post, Meera. I have been thinking to write a post on this for a long time.
ReplyDeleteLeaving out your friend here and the fight for who is more "madi", let me pitch in with my experiences. I am for a rather orthodox family, not a claim, since I have seen the ups and lows of it. If you look at it from a very optimistic angle, madi is nothing more than hygiene and cleanlines. The importance of taking a shower (and that too a head shower), washing your feet, not using your left hand to touch the paathram or thattu etc... (the list goes on) are all entities that are there to promote a hygienic environment around you, your home and for your guests. However, in the long charade of events down the history, morons have twisted it to their advantage. I view "madi' as a starting point and as a book to understand the notion of hygiene, not necessarily follow it line by line!
I might differ, but so is everyone!!
(I will write a post as I have a lot more to say and commenting everything here would make you angry:))
sorry for my typos, it sould say "from an orthodox" not "for orthodox" (for god's sake)
ReplyDelete