Tambrahmus mamacus

Hattip to this blog for the taxonomy of tambrahm mamis:

http://thirtymlmusings.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/the-ascent-of-the-maami/

Escort’s’ mama: they spent a lifetime working some place and always quote the name with an ‘s’ tacked on the end. This variety will corner you and ask something of your work and instantly invert the conversation to a long treatise on how they supervised the construction of the bhakra-nangal dam single-handedly in 1967 and also for bonus how their uncle was the right hand man to visweswariah. Invariably they have attained some sort of pinnacle in their career – a field trip to Angola in 1984 they call a ‘deputation.’

Tuber-averse mama: they claim to despise anything that ever grew under the ground, garlic, onions,  ginger, potatos etc. because it would sully their stellar reputation of staunch tambrahmness. This sort is also particularly puritanical about imbibing alcohol especially the iyer variants (not so much the iyengar variants in my limited experience).

The 1960s-expat mama: this sort actually comes in all vintages. The foremost question on their mind is when you arrived in America and that’s their sole measure of you – and they presume to make a measure of you. These are actually the most judgemental of old bastards. They have a pointless way of reaching back to the 1970s for an anecdote that could very well have happened to them last week.

Temple mama: usually the spouse of the temple mami. Far from being the hapless accompaniment of the temple mami as characterized in the other survey, this breed is rather potent and is usually deeply entrenched in the bowels of temple committees and also embroiled in petty temple feuds. They usually refer to distant acquaintances by the city to which they emigrated 40 years ago like Cleveland sundaram or Minneapolis thyagarajan (these are honest-to-goodness bonafide individuals). This city prefix is a special term of deference accorded to select individuals of their peer group – the equivalent of an endowed chair in physics at Princeton.

IASbabu-mama: this one is a sad throwback to the socialist era when the best and the brightest aspired to civil service – and they say with a twinkle in their eye that they were ‘in service.’ They aren’t around much anymore but invariably carried titles like Dep. XXX or Asst. YYY. Somehow they could never quite make it to chief. They hold in disdain / contempt any other mamas who spent their careers in the private sector or heaven-forbid entrepreneurship. They sort of redeems themselves by expounding in crisp Oxford English the more subtle plot lines of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister.

Tata-mama: this sort spent their career in the next best thing in their day to having emigrated to America – a job in tata’s’ or birla’s’. They talk endlessly about their various tours in Assam or Jamshedpur (which they call postings) and affect an astonishing suaveness and elegance.

Production-mama: this sort is possessed of a different complex. Seeing you are an engineer, a rare sort in these heady days of IT and high finance, they momentarily enter your orbit only to be completely disillusioned with your value to society since you are not working directly on the factory floor.

Astrology-mama: Encounters with this sort will start with ascertaining your date / time and place of birth before they want to know your name and will proceed to tell you everything about yourself with that air of ‘don’t waste my time with the facts I know you better than you know you.’ There is always a cackle of tambrahm mamis around them at all functions who watch with bated breath to see what minor miracle of fortune-telling they are about to pull off next. They find you all the more pitiable because you are the 1st person they have encountered who is unimpressed with their unique and spectacular prowess. If they condescend to ask you about your life thus far it is only to correct your misimpression of your precise time of birth—oh you wouldn’t have missed the bus to your toefl test unless you were born at 8:07 so your doctor’s watch was 2 minutes too fast. This variety is somewhat harmless and might possibly entertain you with fanciful predictions.

As you have experienced no-doubt, these are not mutually exclusive bins. Why just last week you had an encounter with the all-too-common trifecta of templeGoing-1960sVintage-tuberAverse mama chastising you into a years dose of self-loathing for drinking beer, not being up-to-date on los angeles-balakrishnan’s latest addition to the Malibu temple and having the ill-fortune of having arrived in America only in the 90s – seriously they let in all the rif-raf while he was hibernating for 20 years.

I guess the common thread in all these mamas and mamis is an inability / unwillingness to rise above their circumstances and perhaps a blindness to the content of your character. I hope we will be different – but checking my facebook posts I see the same egocentric precursors to tambrahm mama/mamihood in many of us (including me).

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