The Latters Of Thoma

The Latters Of Thoma | Minu Ittyipe
http://www.outlookindia.com

SYRIAN CHRISTIANS

The Nasrani journey to prosperity has a touch of the Damascene about it

Spot A Syrian Christian

• Spreading wings: Can be found in every field—hospitality, plantations, jewellery, construction, media.
• Trustworthy and hardworking: He fears a moral authority above. You can trust him with your soul, but don’t expect him to trust you.
• Tall claims: Will claim superiority. Will ‘know’ every high connection.
• Confident: With a partly non-Indian appellation, they have a robust sense of national identity.
• Smart: Stylish and well turned out. She takes pride in her cooking and throws fabulous parties.

***

It is said, in the grand tradition of apocrypha, that long, long before Christianity wore the vestments of Rome’s official state religion, the Gospel of Christ arrived in Kerala on a Syrian boat and seeped into its being like tea from a teabag (with due credit to Arundhati Roy’s The God Of Small Things). Not entirely canonical legend has it that St Thomas the Apostle, a disciple of Iso Misiha (Jesus the Messiah), with a few Syrian families, docked on the shores of Kodungalloor, Kerala in 52 AD. And therefrom begins one of the most fantastic backstories ever devised by immigrants anywhere, which has—with devotedly persistent retelling—entered popular imagination and even crept into school textbooks. The story goes that St Thomas converted a few Brahmins and established seven churches along the Malabar Coast. Historians are not without doubts about this theory. They point out that Kerala’s Aryanisation probably happened much later: in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries AD. It follows that there may have been no Brahmins hanging about in an earlier time to be converted.
Interestingly though, if you examine any diligently upkept Syrian Christian family tree, you find its roots  are drawn from the Brahmin families of yore. The names are listed with pride, Kalli, Kallyamgal, Sankarapuri etc, and then proceed to articulate which branch they are descended from. Historian M. Gangadharan says, “The original Syrian Christians, like the Arabs and Jews, came to Kerala as traders. Perhaps a few Brahmins did convert to Christianity due to land disputes or other reasons. Kerala had abundant spices and oceanic trading played a crucial role in its economy. All trading was done in exchange for gold and the traders were immensely wealthy.” The secular kings welcomed foreign philosophies and allowed settlers to build places of worship. Syrian Christians were even accorded caste-restricted privileges like the use of the umbrella, the spread cloth to walk upon, or the banana leaf doubling as a plate.

Jose Dominic, MD & CEO, CGH Earth	Joy Alukkas, MD, Joyalukkas India Ltd.

At some point in time, Syrian Christians chose not to remain the ‘other’ and positioned themselves as high-caste converts and with great canniness inserted themselves into the deeply caste-embedded society. No small feat given the standing strictures on hierarchy. And having managed to meld into society, they weathered the upheavals that time wrought and tenaciously preserved their position. The conversion story was a handy aid to augment this process. A nativised form of worship evolved, which resembled a fusion of Hindu rites and ancient Syrian liturgy. Says Thiruvananthapuram MP and writer Shashi Tharoor, “Perhaps their greatest contribution has been in infusing the Christian tradition into the Indian socio-religious mosaic in a truly indigenous way, thereby reiterating India’s ability to achieve the highest form of pluralism within a single, holistic working system of human society and thought.”
This high-caste positioning also had considerable influence on their conduct. Says Jose Dominic, MD and CEO of CGH Earth (a Syrian Catholic in the hospitality business), “Syrian Christians take great pride in coming from a ‘good family’ and their behaviour is governed by this. They behave very civilly in society and are good workmen as well.” The Syrians were largely a monolithic church with strong relations to the Oriental Churches of the East till the Portuguese came on the scene and with papal sanction tried to induct them into the Catholic fold. They succeeded: in splitting the Syrian Christian church into a number of splinters, some of which adopted Catholicism, but many retained their Oriental rites. Says Babu Paul, writer, orator and former IAS officer, “The Syrian Christians underwent different divisions and reunions and now are spread across the total spectrum of church theology from the Syro-Malabar at one end to the Pentecostal at the other.”

Mammen Mathew, Chief editor, Manorama	Kochouseph Chittillapilly, MD, V-Guard Industries

The caste ladder in Kerala did not have a native Vaishya rung and the Syrian Christians filled the gap, melding into society.

The caste ladder in Kerala did not have a native Vaishya rung and the Syrians filled the gap. Some took to paddy cultivation and became agriculturists. The introduction of rubber cultivation in the early 1900s had few takers among the Namboodiris and Nairs. In the pre-land reform days, they were sitting pretty. It needed an unfulfilled entrepreneurial streak to go into the forested hills. Today, the rubber belt of Kerala—Pala, Kottayam, Kanjirappally, Pathanamthitta, Koney—has a strong Syrian Christian presence. The larger companies are the A.V. George group and the Malankara plantations, both blessed with wide acreage. But, as Dominic says, “It is a well-known tale, the world over, that it is in its migrant state that a community excels. When the Syrian Christians became a landed community, the ownership gave them a sense of security and their sense of enterprise was reduced. They weren’t able to live up to their full capabilities during this time. However, the present generation has realised the need to do something besides owning property and are once again making forays in IT, hospitality and jewellery.”
As traders, they amassed considerable amounts of wealth. This lent itself quite naturally to money-lending activities and later to banking practices. “A story goes,” says P.J. Alexander, a former DGP of Kerala, “a Syrian Christian woman enters her husband’s house with 20 eggs and a hen. Her survival instincts are so strong that the eggs will hatch and the hens will soon multiply and she will have a roaring business.” Chicken-egg analogies aside, there are real-life evincements of such success in the finance sector; in particular, they have consistently enjoyed a foothold in the gold loan business.
In the mid-20th century, Syrian Christian-owned banks—like Palai Central Bank, Kottayam Orient Bank, or Quilon Bank—undertook rapid expansion. One banker says, “You could say they were pioneers in agricultural financing. If you look at the old audit books of the State Bank of India (SBI), there are notes from the RBI that attest to agricultural financing being a non-banking activity. Today, they have reversed that policy.” These banks were liquidated in the early 1960s and merged with national banks like SBI, State Bank of Travancore, Indian Bank among others. But banks like Federal Bank and South Indian Bank flourish. Companies like Muthoot Finance and Muthoot Fincorp have carved out a solid presence in the gold loan sector.Forbes Asia magazine had Muthoot Finance chairman M.G. George Muthoot and his three brothers listed among the hundred richest Indians.

Vinoo Mammen, Chairman, MRF	Verghese Kurien, Pioneer, White Revolution

Malayala Manorama, the third largest circulated newspaper in the country, is run by the Kandathil Mappilai Syrian Christian family and has shaped Malayalee public opinion since its first edition rolled off the press in 1890. Says veteran journalist and writer Kurian Pampadi, “Varghese Mappilai, the founding editor, was a visionary who wrote his first editorial pleading for the upliftment of the untouchable Pulayas. Business acumen, vision and practical wisdom helped the Mappilais build up Malayala Manorama into one of India’s largest media powerhouses. Kerala being divided into Centre-right and Left in political affiliation, the MM gives due coverage to the Left while staying steadfast to its more right-leaning stance.” The daily has a circulation of over two million with 18 units in Kerala, India and the Gulf. The group brings out about a dozen titles from its stable, forays  into English, Hindi, Tamil and Bengali and even traverses mediums with radio and television broadcasts.

Minting gold George Alexander Muthoot and M.G. George Muthoot of Muthoot Finance. (Photograph by Fotocorp, From Outlook 01 October 2012)

Admittance into the upper echelons of power came early post-Independence, with John Mathai becoming India’s first railway minister and later taking over, yes, the finance portfolio. He presented two budgets. Defence minister and former chief minister of Kerala A.K. Antony is a Syrian Christian. As is the state’s current CM, Oommen Chandy. Interestingly, all the PMs from the Gandhi family have had Syrian Christian personal assistants or secretaries. Though dutiful in service, there have been visionaries too like Dr Verghese Kurien, the spearhead of India’s white revolution. And John Mathai’s son Ravi J. Mathai was the founder member of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad).
An unsung hero in the Indian sports arena is the late Ravi Mammen of MRF (owned by the Kandathil family), who created the Pace Foundation in 1987 to train and develop young fast bowlers. With out-of-the box strategising in the 1980s—its sponsorship of motorsports in particular—MRF was able to establish itself as a market leader. Yes, as Dominic says, “They have excelled in every sphere. They have even done excellent work as teachers in the field of education.”
Not that there aren’t areas for improvement. Dominic laments, “In the field of arts, theatre, music and letters, we don’t find too many. To do that, perhaps one needs to have rich cultural resources from an ancient environment. But who here now knows the Syriac culture? No Syrian Christian speaks Syriac.” A grievance many in the community acknowledge. The willingness to sacrifice bits of self-identity in order to better assimilate into the whole. As an anti-scriptural pithyism perhaps purports to illustrate: a Syrian will marry a tribal princess and readily shed his clothes to become the chief when she inherits the throne.

Water rationing in floods!

We all live in uncertainty. Nobody actually knows what is going to happen next. We are all just trailing along like a school of fish with no leader, no direction and no purpose.
Any few months ago, the drinking water levels in my state became dangerously low. This is ironic as we are living in a tropical country with way too much abundance of rainfall. There is lush greenery everywhere, even in the gutter of the roof.
Then there was talk of looking at alternative ways of harvesting drinking water like ground water drilling. Then the politicians moved in saying that it is not the supply but the distribution. The management unit grumbled that their earlier suggestion to build adequate infrastructure was not heeded, hence the shortage.
The Meteorological Men moved in to warn that the worst of the dry weather to yet to come with the ever-changing weather patterns.
Just as soon as they said that, the following day, down came the rain in vengeance like in Noah's story. Before you know it, the state had more water than it bargained for. Water not only in their pipes but everywhere, their porch, bedroom, carpet and cars.
Then, nobody talks of water shortage. The discussion moves on to drainage system, uncoordinated development, lack of environmental impact assessment reports and so on.
Water shortage now seem like a bad word. Nobody wants to be reminded of the days of cleaning the fine dry muddy sand which just would not go away from the flood victims' household, the persistent grainy feeling that stays in their sole of the feet and the damaged household items. http://christopherteh.com/blog/2012/06/selangor-water/

Life made complicated

This 1977 Woody Allen film is the typical story in typical Woody Allen style of a typical insecure nervous guy Alvy Singer @ Max (Woody Allen), a comedian, monologuing about his frustrating life and his break-up with his girlfriend, Annie Hall.
He starts talking about his childhood life living under a roller coaster and his perennially squabbling parents and his weird Jewish relatives.

 Max, after 2 failed marriages, try to make it with a struggling singer, Annie (Diane Keaton). The two are equally pathologically pessimistic on everything. They find a psychoanalytical explanation to their every dissatisfaction. Even I would get irritated with his constant each others' squealing and whining if I were in their shoes.
He makes everything look complicated and so does she.
After living together for some time in New York, he manages to give her confidence to sing and jump start her flogging singing career. Then they got bored with each other. After some soul searching in California, they go separate ways.
She then lives in with a guy in California but that also did not work out after some time. Life goes on.
Max stages his first play based on his life story.
Max and Annie bump into each other one day. They had coffee and some casual talk, and head on separate ways, both happy with such an arrangement.
I remember watching Woody Allen long ago in RRF as the disgruntled insecure loser narrating his life failures and since he has made many such depressing movies. In a way, he is just laughing at the modern life style. I guess, in real life too, he must be weird - with the same spectacle frame over the years and the inappropriate behaviour with his step daughter!

DNA - Does Not Answer (all questions)

Where a local bookstore thought Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species' should be placed? In the fiction section! 

It sometimes becomes more and more perplexing when you start asking questions about life. One question will lead to another and pretty soon you will caught in a dreaded dead end with only more questions encircling your head. 

You ask yourself, if man evolved from apes, why are there still apes around? Wouldn't the apes and other primates have an innate desire at their DNA level to climb the stairway of evolution? Is it not the basic teaching of survival to forever improve oneself? For example, when the first generation discovers or invents something after so many generations of living in the dark about the subject matter, the second and subsequent generations learnt it so easily and improve it swiftly to take to great heights.

Just about 40 years ago, a hand held device to communicate face to face appeared fictional and is labelled 'Star Trek' technology. For the first practical computer to be invented, it took forever. Once a breakthrough was made, suddenly one by one everything falls in place. The same device for keeping time, to communicate though audio and visual means, to track one's speed and pace with GPS, to check facts literally at the tip of one's finger and to earn a living!  In the lower order animal kingdom, there have been anecdotal reports of insects of one gender developing gonads of the other within the same generation just because they were at brink of extinction. Why is that some group of people just stay the same, generation after generation, singing the same song of melancholy and hopelessness? (பஞ்சகோலம்)
At the same time, you cannot understand why some living animals have been downgraded in their evolutionary chain, if indeed true. The once fearsome ferocious sabre carnivorous tooth tiger of the feline ancestors has now evolved to become a domesticated omnivorous toothless cat roaming around our homes, harmless and in fact fearful of us! Of course, it could be natural selection after adverse living conditions on planet Earth.

Thinking of his ancestors, the sabre tooth tiger?

Don't just follow your desires, use your head!

Following (1998).
 This British modern day B-noir film was made by Christopher Nolan before he build a name himself with the Batman trilogy. It was done with a shoe string budget but managed to be a blockbuster with its unique  non linear storytelling technique where the story rolls front and back confusing the audience only to understand everything at the end. It is black and white, involves crime, a beautiful blonde and a dead body, viola film noir.

It is a story about a writer (no name) who has a fetish for following people (hence the title). He follows people just to get idea for his writing.
And he breaks his own self made first rule, not to follow the same person twice.

A guy he follows (Cobb) confronts him, thinking that he is a cop. They built a relationship and they go on pilfering expedition into people's apartment. The young man develops a liking for one of his victims. He follows her to a pub and gets close to her. She tells him a sob story about her ex-boyfriend who is a mobster and pub owner who killed a man in her apartment. He keeps incriminating photos of her in his safe. She gives him the combination to the safe and our hero breaks into the safe. Unfortunately, he hits an intruder with a hammer and kills him.

The young man confronts the lady who tells him of how he was taken for a ride and Cobb is actually her lover. Cobb was just looking for a sucker to get the police confused as a lady had seen him during one of burglaries.

The young man goes over to the police and reveals everything. Unfortunately, the police puts all the blame squarely on him. Even the blonde, the femme fatale is bludgeoned to death by Cobb and the homicide is pinned on him as the same hammer was used. The forwarding address of Cobb that he gives the police turned out to be a phony. In fact, the occupant reported of loss of credit card which was traced to the young man who used it once.
Cobb mysteriously disappears. That is it!

A good film.

Another social drama

Arangetram (Tamil, Début;1973)

This K. Balachander-directed social drama was a box office success when it was released. Of course, it struck a chord again with the Brahmins (again).

It is a tear-jerking story with the usual taboos and traditions tightly held by every Brahmin. Spiced up with the demands of modern living, where children's needs go beyond just providing meals and continuing the family trade of performing religious rites for peanuts, hoping that the Gods will provide, just as He takes care of the trees and animals in the jungle, he blasted a money-spinning, award-winning publicity stunt.

As if Rama Shastry's household does not already have enough mouths to feed (a wife and 8 children), his widowed sister moves in with her teenage daughter. The eldest daughter, Lalitha (Pramila), is a carefree girl, running around the village. The second child, a son, Thiagu (a young Kamal Hassan), is a bookworm who aims to be a doctor. Then there is another sister who sings, and another, and another...

Another wave of sadness hits the family, which is already sinking into a sea of poverty—another daughter reaches menarche, thus entering marriageable age. The head of the family, Shastry, stubbornly clings to his traditional rites, yet his efforts rarely bring in any money. Love blossoms from a fellow, Thangavelu (Sivakumar), but is quickly stifled as Lalitha is admonished for accepting a gift from a young boy. The final straw comes when one of the children begins begging for food from a beggar. Lalitha resolves to take charge and assumes the role of head of the household—she begins to work.

Slowly, the kitchen stove starts smoking again. Thiagu manages pre-university studies, while the singing sister takes singing lessons, all made possible by Lalitha's contributions.

In the quest to secure a medical seat for Thiagu, Lalitha is raped. It coincides with her friend's Bharatnatyam dance debut (Arangetram), hence the name. Soon afterwards, Lalitha receives a promotion to Hyderabad. There again, her boss takes advantage of her when she requests her month's pay to be advanced. To meet the growing demands from home and to be the good daughter she is, she gets involved in the flesh trade. The Shastry household is thriving. Love blossoms between Thiagu and the singer sister.

Lalitha returns home for her sister's wedding. Hold on, the bridegroom-to-be used to her as a customer! They managed to make a deal to keep it under wraps, and he promised not to visit any brothels any more. Thangavelu appears in the village again after crossing swords earlier with his father to enlist in the Army. He was presumed dead, but Lalitha keeps mum, as she had met him during her tour of duty! Wow! They make us believe that Hyderabad is such a small town that everybody who goes there manages to see Lalitha!

Pretty soon, the truth is out in the open for everyone to criticise and demonise her. Suddenly, all the sweat she toiled for the family becomes insignificant as all the family members cling to the moral high ground. She is driven out of the household, and the religious rites for the deceased are performed by Shahstri.

Lalitha is introduced into Thangavelu's family as his wife, but shortly after the wedding, the events that unfold are too much for her to handle. She descends into madness.

 

It is a film to watch, and we should be grateful to our ancestors for having taken us out of such a country. Of course, times have changed, and this is merely a dramatisation of loosely similar events. Well, here, we simply blame everything on the ruling party.

Some characters أحرف อักขระ символов გმირები

No, I am not referring to the character in Roman alphabets or in any other language. Neither am I referring to characters in a play or caricature nor to certain traits of human, physical, chemical or biological object. I am humbly referring to some characters with whom you have make small chats in a party!

Lionel Hutz from 'The Simpsons'

of the law firm “I Can’t Believe It’s A Law Firm!”

As we get further and further away from the only day that our mothers smile to see us cry (to quote AKJ Kalam), as did as our forefathers before us, we fret about the generation which about to take over the rein of leadership of the nation and world arena. Everything they do seem to be counter productive and heading to doom. Like that, a conversation came forth... Generation Y and their antics.
This guy was telling his newbies are forever trying to cut corners with their designated duties; how they are last to come and first to leave irrespective if he (the boss) is still around. He was narrating how in his days how he used to be early to rise, beat the morning traffic jam, grab a quick bite near the office, be immersed in work long before the bosses saunter in and later idle around fiddling with things appearing busy to wait for the boss to leave to call it a day, just to give a good impression to the paymasters!
Then the conversation went on to the gargantuan number of medical schools in the country superseding even that of the UK and hospital bashing reports in papers of late. For good measure, he volunteered his bad experience with the medical fraternity.
A gloomy day, he was feeling under the weather. Even his wife told him he looked run down with his face all puffed up and his jaw ached. Even before the sentence ended, he was zooming all the way to the city's premier private medical concern.  
After a laborious discussion, outpouring of symptoms, extensive battery of investigations and further discussions, a definitive diagnosis was not put forth by the front line medical personnel. Admission was advised in view myriad of mind boggling symptoms.  After further haggling, the sufferer left the scene unhappily as further discussions met dead ends.
A few calls here and there through country club contacts placed him on top of a top notch doctors' appointment list.
Review notes of the earlier meeting of the day before by the 'top notch' consultant revealed a disturbing diagnosis- hypochondriasis! All hell broke loose. A few calls here and there ensured the parties involved be reprimanded. A diagnosis like that would have bearings in his future dealings with the insurance company, with his fraternity and at any time when his character assassination is attempted! He was happy he managed to nip it the bud before bigger damage control needed to be mobilized!
How is this related to Generation Y and their work ethics, you may ask. Yes, I wonder too. The people in the front line were younger than him.  But what I know for sure, is God is not so unkind sending so many sickness all at one go.
By the way, a simple course of analgesics and antibiotics spared him of his miseries, all at time. Perhaps giving a name to his predicament and having confidence in the paternalistic man with the stethoscope went a long way to exorcise the dwelling demon in the body!
Just some characters who appear high and mighty as well as condescending and we have to put up with so as not offend the host.