Brahmin blah-men

I often find myself arguing about Brahminism, for some strange reason. I had never thought about a Brahmin being any different from anyone else, until a few years ago. It all began when a friend of mine offered me a bite of the most delicious giant prawns sautéed in oyster sauce that made my tastebuds tingle and my greed synapses do a eager dance. Just as the loaded spoon was starting to think about making contact with my avidly open mouth, my friend pulled it back and demanded, “Are you a Brahmin?” Mercifully for his continued good health and general wholeness of mind, body and soul, I had a sense of humour in those days and responded snappily with “Yes!” before clamping down with lightning quickness on a spoon that may not have been shared with a non-Brahmin. The prawn was a bite of heaven. The question made me wonder…

The wondering escalated over the years, soon becoming a search into my own soul and that of other people I met and spoke to. As I grew up, physically and mentally, I explored new aspects of being Brahmin that I normally would never have thought of. And, for me, every definition worked, each providing insight into not just my own psyche, but human behaviour as well. I met people who claimed to be Brahmin but would never pass the existence test, while others who purported to belong to the lowest castes made it into Brahmin-hood with no effort at all.

Perhaps the easiest qualification to understand was food habits. For most, a Brahmin was a pure vegetarian, who eschewed meat completely and refused to enter a house that had seen infidel animal protein within its precincts. Unless, of course, they were Bengali or Kashmiri pundits. As a family, we eat beef, holy cow, especially since we follow the logic that if you can kill one animal for food, how does killing another make it more sinful? A Brahmin put his (or her) food through a series of purificatory rituals, ate certain foods only on certain days, and believed in the system of fasting. Which sounded good to me, especially since fasting is a way of detoxifying the digestive system and clearing it for the rest of the week. And then I watched various friends going through a fasting day. While they may not eat too much regular food during that period, some of them do fill up on fruit, crunchies and other munchies and more fried stuff than I would eat in a normal month! My then-habitual diet of an apple and a dish of yoghurt for lunch was fast enough and better, I decided.

Then came the rites and rituals. Temple visits were a no-no, mainly because I refused to accept the so-called ‘Brahmin’ mandate that women could not visit God at a certain time of the month, since then they were considered ‘unclean’. Temples also meant priests demanding money, jostling crowds in motley queues, small fights as people were given out-of-turn darshan and more of this sort of indiscipline. Rites at home meant more payments, demands, priests covetuously eyeing our house, its contents and my beautiful mother. Prayers meant learning by rote – something I have never been able to do; my brain does not process that way. And any pandigai, or festival, meant more housework than normal, from the cleaning to the cooking, all always when it was a hot and very humid time of year. Scrap that foray into Brahminism, then!

After much of this sort of to-ing and fro-ing, my family came up with its own version of Brahminism. Being Brahmin was not about religion or diet or even prayer. It was about a way of thought, an intellectualism, a constant eagerness to know more. And it was about a mental attitude that spoke of acceptance, of tolerance and of an open-mindedness that transcended more mundane and worldly standards of caste, class and culture. Brahmins, according to the shastras, believe in sarvejanāssukhinobhavatu, roughly translated as let all people be happy and prosperous. They also use as a working principle, vasudhaiva kulubaka - the whole world is one big family.
Which makes a whole lot more sense than sharing spoons, doesn’t it?