Loneliest job in the world

[veeru_rocks]

http://blogs.hindustantimes.com/she-baba/2009/04/23/the-loneliest-job-in-the-world/#more-105 The loneliest job in the world?No comments With Tamil Nadu possibly poised to be the decision-making state for who will rule India after the General Election, 2009, a strange case of North-South resonance comes back to haunt me from my recent trip to the Kaveri Delta… “Who would want to be a traditional Vedic priest in Tamil Nadu today? Neither the politics nor the egalitarian Dravidian culture that has evolved since the late 1960s support this profession based on old concepts of division of labour. And Brahmins are less than two percent of Tamil Nadu’s population. Of the 234 MLAs in the Tamil Nadu assembly, only two are Brahmins: J. Jayalalitha (of Andipatti constituency, Theni District) and S.V. Shekhar of Mylapore (a Brahmin stronghold in central Chennai)… So only the small community of Tamil Brahmins left in Tamil Nadu provides irregular employment to a local Vedic priest, when domestic pujas for birth, marriage, new house and death ceremonies need him to officiate. Even in the temple town of Kumbakonam with its ancient Brahmin community, this fetches at best about Rs 7,000 a month or, in a really lucky season, Rs 15,000 at most…†Such thoughts jostled in my head as I looked in wonderment at C. Gurumoorthy, 30, a slender, pale-skinned young man whom I’d met by sheer chance (’dumb reporter’s luck’, I call it) at the 90-year-old Rama Mandiram Patashala in Kumbakonam. Magic of mantras: Despite the opportunities afforded by general education, C. Gurumoorthy chose the rigour and poverty of being a traditional Vedic priest in the Kaveri Delta. (Photo by Satish Bate) Gurumoorthy deliberately chose to follow his ancestral profession, scorned since decades as “North Indian†by the neo-Dravidians. He was born in Mannargudi, another temple town, 60 km from Kumbakonam. His father held a modern ’secular’ post as a roadways inspector with the highways department and was transferred all over the state, with job security and a pension to count on. As a boy, Gurumoorthy fared well in regular school and had every prospect of becoming an engineer, lawyer or IAS officer. But every day on the way to school, he was drawn by the sound of the Saman from a Veda patashala. Gurumoorthy himself belonged to the shaka (sect) of Sama Vedi Brahmins ancestrally affiliated to this Veda, of the four Vedas. After his Ten Plus Two, he could bear it no longer and told his parents what he really, really wished to do. Incredibly, his father agreed. There was no incitement to take to a ‘paying line’. Instead, the father, whose own father, C. Vigneswara Sastri, had been a scholar of great repute, seemed to find absolution for his own choice of job through his son. Why did Gurumoorthy make this bizarre choice when he absolutely need not have? “The sound called me. And as a modern Indian, I felt there was still a purpose to being a Vedic priest, whose function is basically to serve society,†said Gurumoorthy to me in a gentle, diffident tone. Looking at his calm, clear eyes, I could only nod, wanting the story to go on. Gurumoorthy then entered ‘gurukulavasam‘ (in-house apprenticeship) with his family priest, a Sama Vedi himself, and “just learnt†with him for five years until the age of 23! This means at the age that you and I would normally have been clearing undergrad and grad school, Gurumoorthy was living in some Amar Chitra Katha scenario by choice. Thereafter he applied to join a proper Vedic patashala. Pandit Rama Sarma ® introduced me to Gurumoorthy (L). (Photo by Satish Bate) “That’s an eight-year-course,†explained Pandit N. Rama Sarma, Secretary of the Vedic Patashala Schools Society, Kanchipuram, who retired from a senior position in a nationalized bank and is the current administrator of the Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt. He was the person who made Gurumoorthy and me acquainted. “Patashalas once thrived across Tamil Nadu. But with the land ceiling and reforms in the 1950s, a lot of zamindars lost their land. The patrons went, so the priests went. So did a lot of patashala lands. Tenant farmers were no longer obliged to give 40% of the yield to the patashalas. So an entire sub-culture of priests was stranded with no skills to earn a living with. Many sank into abject poverty,†he told me by way of background. It was the late, revered Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati, then Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram, who went about reviving the patashala tradition in the 1960s, co-opting private donors. Shadowed by history: Life in the pathashala is a long, intense journey. (Photo by Satish Bate) Like madrasas for poor Muslim boys, such patashalas in Tamil Nadu provided indigent Brahmin boys stranded by history and with a stomach for tough practice, with an option. In this case, it has become a stipend of Rs 500 a month, food, shelter, clothes and free medical care. There were once over a 1,000 patashalas in South India alone. Today there are barely ten scattered in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. (The Sama Veda chants are now taught only in South India). Inside the main hall of the 90-year-old Rama Mandiram pathashala, Kumbakonam. (Photo by Satish Bate) Kumbakonam itself has just a few left. The oldest, the Raja Veda Kavya Patashala, is 400 years old, with 240 pupils. And of the 200 boys I saw at the Rama Mandiram Patashala for instance, on a day of great bustle since it was ‘pariksha‘ (exam) day, the littlest boys were as young as eight, too shy to talk, though bright-eyed and curious. “The course is very rigorous. Eight hours a day of lessons for eight years with only two holidays a year. A frightening examination at the end, where any line from the entire body of the Vedas can be flung at you for recitation and explanation,†said G. Venkatesan, 29, another Vedic priest, who was listening in as Gurumoorthy and I chatted… with me trying to achieve the care and quiet needed to coax a wild fawn in the forest to take food from my fingers. “It takes 45 hours of non-stop chanting to do a proper ‘paaraayanam‘ (Vedic chanting)â€, disclosed Gurumoorthy after I assured him that I really was interested to know and had absolutely no intention of shouting slogans at him. 45 hours? “To give the scholars stamina, day-old rice with buttermilk is the prescribed patashala breakfast. The rest of their diet is equally austere,†said Pandit Sarma. “Chanting produces great heat in the body, so priests are prone to ulcers,†he went on matter-of-factly. “So a regular dose of ghee is a must, to save their stomach linings.†Gurumoorthy earns Rs 7,000 a month and is repaying a loan on his bike. (Photo by Satish Bate) After all that, to earn Rs 7,000 a month and struggle to pay the loan on the cell phone and bike without which Gurumoorthy can’t function? And also support his wife and baby daughter, Ramapriya? “Luckily we like village life. We can manage,†said Gurumoorthy, who stays in yet another temple settlement nearby, Thiruvidaimarudoor. And he smiled, with great calm and sweetness. Politics left Gurumoorthy untouched, for he expected no mercy from either the DMK, the AIADMK or the ‘Centre’, far and remote in Delhi. “It’s UNESCO that declared ‘Vedic Chanting’ an ‘Intangible World Heritage,’ he said. “I’m happy they seem to know about it.†So would he kindly chant a little of the Saman, which is the Rig Veda set to music? Gurumoorthy drew a quiet breath and began to chant in a strong, musical voice, quite unlike his shy, low-pitched conversational tone. Barely a minute into it, his eyes closed and he slid away somewhere within. The mantras had opened to admit him and he was joined to their ancient rhythm. The strong, hard-edged Sanskrit syllables danced their stately, measured tread up from the human gut, out into the ether to seize the ear of Divinity, attempting to pull down its head, compel it to look down with compassion on puny, brave humanity… Clearly Gurumoorthy had accessed a realm of riches in his head that could be got only after he burnt himself up like a cube of camphor. Hopelessly impractical? Emotionally honest? YOU figure The Curious Case of C. Gurumoorthy. Back in Delhi, he seems unreal to me. PS: The video clips here come from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA). They were generously shared by Sudha Gopalakrishnan who led the team that spent a back-breaking ten days hunting up the almost-extinct patashalas featured here and prepared the candidacy of ‘Vedic Chanting’ for UNESCO in 2002. The DVD cover reads: “India presents…†So the clips you saw were the ones seen and honoured by an international panel at UNESCO, which in 2003 added Vedic Chanting to its list of the world’s treasures.

[fineleg]

Kumbakonam is a famous temple town in TN. Rich heritage from Chola times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbakonam

[triam]

He is both hopelessly impractically and emotionally honest I guess.

[veeru_rocks]

I can see why though....... The kind of peace one gets while in village is beyond words

[veeru_rocks]

BTW is it true that Namboodari brahmin from Kerala marry their first son with namboodaru girl but second son onwards has to be married to Nayar ( vasihya) girl ... but there is a twist husband of this vaishya girl never eats with his wife or any offspring of his own from vaishya wife.. Since the source I got this information form is anti-hindu sourse so i have reason to doubt the not eating together part.. How the hell you can sleep with a girl but eating with her makes you impure just doesn't sound logical..

[triam]

I can see why though....... The kind of peace one gets while in village is beyond words

As long as you are well off, yeah peace in villages are beyond words, but if not it is a huge struggle, and if you manage to cross the village elders right or wrong, your life in the village is done.

[veeru_rocks]

As long as you are well off' date=' yeah peace in villages are beyond words, but if not it is a huge struggle, and if you manage to cross the village elders right or wrong, your life in the village is done.[/quote'] i cross them routinely

[Guest Gunner]

BTW is it true that Namboodari brahmin from Kerala marry their first son with namboodaru girl but second son onwards has to be married to Nayar ( vasihya) girl ... but there is a twist husband of this vaishya girl never eats with his wife or any offspring of his own from vaishya wife.. Since the source I got this information form is anti-hindu sourse so i have reason to doubt the not eating together part.. How the hell you can sleep with a girl but eating with her makes you impure just doesn't sound logical..

I will answer the question for you in 2 parts, First the eating part - This would be correct. A brahmin is not permitted to eat with anyone of a caste lower than himself. Even today if you go to brahmin marraiges you will note that all the sacred thread wearing brahmin men shall eat together and then the others. Therefore logic serves that a brahmin male married to a non-brahmin female may not eat with her. However this concept of not eating with non-brahmins does not exist anymore since no brahmin will be able to eat in any public place otherwise. Secondly, marraige with a non-brahmin woman for a brahmin male is not recommended at all. It is considered a "pratiloma" or low union and would result in genetic inferiority. And it is unlikely that the Kerela brahmins allow this. Thirdly, as far as my understanding goes Nairs are not vaishya but brahmins. Disclaimer - The above is not a reflection of my belief system but part of the brahminical traditions known to all brahmins.

[veeru_rocks]

Are yaar I knwo the general tradition.. I was interested in namboodari specific traditions