Opinion

Bram’s Filter

How ‘Venky’ breaks the old TamBram stereotype

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Bram’s Filter
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B.K.S. Iyer wakes up at 5 am to the strains of supr­abatham by M.S. Subbulakshmi. The next on his playlist is Bhaja Govindam, as he paces his balcony for the newspaper to land. He has heard Rajaji’s introduction to the song in his impeccably Tamil accent a million times and yet he gets goosebumps when the great man intones: “Knowledge, when it becomes fully mature, is bhakti. If it does not get transformed into bhakti, such knowledge is useless tinsel. To believe that jnana and bha­kti, knowledge and devotion, are different from each other, is ignorance.” Mrs Iyer has served up steaming idlis, virginal white coconut chutney and a wee bit of the more vile molagapudi. His tiffin is packed and Mr Iyer, of slight build and quiet demeanour, is off to work, clad in his bush shirt and pant. Depending on the city, his boss is a Punjabi or a Marwari or a Gujarati, always a man, who employs him for, as Mr Iyer is meek and honest, he means no trouble.

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This is the stereotype of a TamBram pattar mama. House-owners readily take him as a tenant as they trust he will pay his rent on time and vacate the premises when asked to. They are coveted as accountants and secretaries by businessmen, particularly in the North and the West, as they are dependable and responsible. Ministers love to have them as bureaucrats, because they are ambitionless and largely say yes to their ideas. Many of them rise to eminence: rocket scientists, economists, neurosurgeons. But none of them will come to their home country, see that there is a science congress going and declare to everyone that it a ‘circus’. They don’t usually go against what the elders, like Rajaji, have taught them about ayurveda and kashayams, and never question if it’s actually science. If their children turn out to be inquisitive and rebellious, TamBram parents will dash to Guruvayur or Madurai to plead with the gods to drill some sense into their ward.

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Yes, he is of slight build, of mild manners, is a strict vegetarian, relishes his idli and dosa, loves classical music, is earnest and hard-working, but the familiar traits of the good south Indian end there. The TamBram gene pool goes rogue thereafter. ‘Venky’ Venkataraman Ramakrishnan, Nobel laureate and now president of the Royal Society, is hardly acquiescing or cares for any ‘boss’. He openly smirks at Indian scientists for being superstitious and ritualistic—thank Ayyappa, he wasn’t in the country when coconuts were broken before a missile launch or rocket scientists were seen at Tirupati performing havans in all their caste-marked glory. Narayana, narayana, Venky left the country before photographs of Indian Space Research Organisations chiefs G. Madha­van Nair and K. Radhakrishnan appeared in the papers sharing the stage with Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the RSS, the august org­anisation which believes India possessed missile technology during the Mahabharata and  that advanced plastic surgery was performed on Ganesha.

Nullus in verba, or ‘Take nob­ody’s word for it’ in Latin, the Royal Society’s motto, is what Venky lives by and his lecture in Delhi was based on that, and called On Nobody’s Word: Evidence and Modern Science. Refreshingly, he didn’t make a big deal of winning the Nobel prize either. He said it was all right if India hadn’t got many science Nobels; it was more important to have millions of inquisitive minds for the country to take of care of its scientists, make the common man think scientifically rather than have a handful of giants. Conversely, a country with a lot of Nobel science winners doesn’t mean that its people are scientific, he said.

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Yes, Venky does have his favourite little south Indian restaurant in Cambridge where he has idlis, tells off TV bite-seekers after winning the Nobel, and cycles everywhere, as he doesn’t own a car. But when it matters, Venky tells everyone exactly how it is, whether world leaders or science superstars.

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During a recent TV debate, former  atomic energy commission chairman Anil Kakodkar said that when the word got around that Ganesha idols were drinking milk, many scientists believed it.

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