Identity Crisis

Identity to me has been the most personal yet confusing topic. I hail from a clan which conveniently integrates the culture and phenomenon of the southern most states of India, Kerala & Tamil Nadu.

No matter how proud I am of my (our, speaking on behalf of my fellow clan members) identity, I end up claiming my Tamil-ness or Malayali-ness to the inhabitants of either clans. Believe me, when I say we have conveniently integrated the culture because we wake up to Suprabatham by MS Subalakshmi and happily browse through the Manorama calendar, sipping our degree kaapi while we watch “pradhana vaartha” in Asianet. Oh did I mention about my Tamil which is adulterated with Malayalam. I can at least converse in either of the languages, let alone read/write it. (one of the toughest languages to learn).

I have found it hard to explain or verify my identity to the respective clan members when our routines and rituals match so well. This apparently has sown the seeds to my spiritual thinking, Who am I?

Interesting isn’t it? when something as simple as a “Who am I?”, when quizzed with a bit of confusion can unlock a completely new shelf in the library to read about?

At this juncture, I want to extrapolate on the same question, does the answer the lie in any of the following: the land you belong to, the languages you speak, the culture you belong to, the religion/beliefs you belong to, the race you belong to and so on. Extraordinary examples are available for almost all the questions above but history has shown us that it is the choice that one makes, what he/she believes to hold on to.

“What a waste of time” using their words, my intimate circle has conveniently shunned the identity of a Palakkad Iyer , while my parents chose to retain the identity of “the centuries worth of clear confusion” belonging to my clan, which thankfully has sown the seeds of philosophy in to me.

I honestly do not know how to explain about my clan’s genesis, since there are many theories, but I surely can tell you how the marriage between 2 contrasting cultures happened. In my case, how it still holds strong!

You’ll learn a lot about Iyer’s, Malayali’s and Tamil’s.

P.S. Shout out to all the Palakkad-Iyer brothers and sisters reading this!

Related posts:

The goal of an enterprise data platform (EDP) is to provide a single, unified view of an organization’s data that can be used to drive business decisions and insights. In general, an enterprise data…

I turned and smiled. Yesterday, he readily admitted to being the one who put up the sign while I wasn’t in the cube. Since my car got stuck in the mud, I’ve told the story three or four times. Each…