Sometimes there is a personal agenda associated with blogging. You impress a wide-range of audience with strong sense of humor, maintain a neutral stand, and gain traction on writing funnily about fairly innocuous topics. Then over time, you begin to interlace your personal agenda with humorous posts and subtly slide in your POV. Over time the humor takes a vacation and the posts are unabashed personal agenda promotors. Krish Ashok's latest post falls into the last category. Here is why I disagree with the post
Firstly, if you do not believe in a system - investing a lot of money, time and effort in participating through the excruciatingly painful steps of the system is the first thing you'd like to avoid. However, if you did not have these "internal organs" (of the reproductive kind) and as a result of that you were forced to particpate in the system, several points made in the post appear self-contradictory. Apparently a vedic priest was hired to conduct a marriage per Rg Vedic procedure and he recited mantras from Rg Veda that he uses to conduct any marriage. This appears to be a great sin on part of the priest. For the first time in an employer-employee relationship, employee doing exactly what he was hired to do is considered bad. Purely because Employer had expectations A and hired employee who only performs to capability B. "Gotra" is a matter of simple communication to employee that capability B is not required. Saying "Manusha gothra" like stuff everytime employee performs capability B is not even in the repartee-chappathi category. By the same logic, Nathaswaram vidhwan attending the marriage and playing Nathaswaram should have been very shocking. Cooks coming and cooking food must have been terribly offensive.
Secondly, contemporary wisdom always asks us to "consider the source". Asking a barber if you need a hair-cut is probably not the wisest thing to do. And since this is the central topic of Krish's post - I am hoping this is not ad hominum. Here is a person who is doing an inter-caste marriage and judging by his stated belief system and his remarks around his caste/extended family - this has not gone down well with eitherr in his immediate family or extended family circle. There seems to be this self-stated system (caste, smarthism, iyerhood whatever you may call it) that is opposed to his choices/opinions. This person has 2 options. (a) He can state categorically that the system is correct and pass good remarks about the system. (b) He can make disparaging remarks about the system and point out every possible negative aspect about the system. Doing (a) means the person's decisions/opinions and choices are wrong (person has opinions -> system says his opinions are wrong -> person says system is correct -> person says his choices are wrong). Doing (b) - means person's choice, opinions and decisions are correct. Take a guess as to whether this said person will align with option (a) or option (b). Impartial observations is probably a rare commodity here. Social commentary expressing personal opinions is useful and welcome. The vedic system could be flawed and incorrect independent of Krish Ashok's observations. The point here is about the flaws inherent in the process of the observation rather than the observation itself.
Thirdly, the hint of TPT. Conducting an inter-caste marriage is not a big deal now. I may be sticking my neck out here by saying this - but I am guessing not believing in brahminical rituals is probably not the most revolutionary thing done in the 21st century. While thar-perumai is always welcome and tolerable to an extent, much like anything else, overdoing it is a bit boring. We have had Ramanuja to Subramanya Bharathiar to Rammohan Roy who have "kann'la veral vittu nondified" the system. Not sure if the level of challenge Krish in today's world faced is even comparable to the challenges faced during times of these people. Inability to resist the ego masturbation of "look - how rationalist and 'murpokku sindhanai vaadhi i am " is the reason this post unimpressed me. There have been more people who have done this better, with less advertisement, and without betraying "my culture is so poor let me make fun of it and treat it with scant respect but remember.. my wife's Nair customs and rituals need to be treated with respect". This is too much 'sound' for not so great achievements.
Lastly, on throwing in things like "sanskrit pronunciation" is like pretending to have expertise in the system to comment about the system. Sure, there are many priests who do their job in a less than satisfactory way. Just like cooks who over-cookify potatoes, nathaswaram vidhwans who miss a sruthi or two, software engineers who browse facebook and twitter in their office computers during work time, citizens who spit on the road, employees working for companies which subtly violate visa regulations, students who answer a couple of questions incorrectly in plus 2 exams - vedic priests do make mistakes. They do mispronounce sanskrit words. Especially when you have a nosy groom around doing a ball-by-ball 'complaintary' at them when he shouldn't have hired them to start with. They are as flawed as Hawkeye, krish-ashok, kandasamy, munnusami etc. Normal human beings who selectively expect 100% perfection on stuff is a kind of futility that one shouldn't even waste time writing about.
To close - brahmins trying to pivot and distinguish them around the variable of 'anti-rituals' and 'anti-priest' things are now passe. Kamalagasan made a lot of money out of it and in the process made himself repetitive. Krish makes that category look extremely boring by flogging the dead horse beyond belief. Pointing out flaws in some aspect of the culture/caste/system/state/country you are a part of has lost its credibility and probably died with noisy NRIs who complained about India till the cows came home.
Firstly, if you do not believe in a system - investing a lot of money, time and effort in participating through the excruciatingly painful steps of the system is the first thing you'd like to avoid. However, if you did not have these "internal organs" (of the reproductive kind) and as a result of that you were forced to particpate in the system, several points made in the post appear self-contradictory. Apparently a vedic priest was hired to conduct a marriage per Rg Vedic procedure and he recited mantras from Rg Veda that he uses to conduct any marriage. This appears to be a great sin on part of the priest. For the first time in an employer-employee relationship, employee doing exactly what he was hired to do is considered bad. Purely because Employer had expectations A and hired employee who only performs to capability B. "Gotra" is a matter of simple communication to employee that capability B is not required. Saying "Manusha gothra" like stuff everytime employee performs capability B is not even in the repartee-chappathi category. By the same logic, Nathaswaram vidhwan attending the marriage and playing Nathaswaram should have been very shocking. Cooks coming and cooking food must have been terribly offensive.
Secondly, contemporary wisdom always asks us to "consider the source". Asking a barber if you need a hair-cut is probably not the wisest thing to do. And since this is the central topic of Krish's post - I am hoping this is not ad hominum. Here is a person who is doing an inter-caste marriage and judging by his stated belief system and his remarks around his caste/extended family - this has not gone down well with eitherr in his immediate family or extended family circle. There seems to be this self-stated system (caste, smarthism, iyerhood whatever you may call it) that is opposed to his choices/opinions. This person has 2 options. (a) He can state categorically that the system is correct and pass good remarks about the system. (b) He can make disparaging remarks about the system and point out every possible negative aspect about the system. Doing (a) means the person's decisions/opinions and choices are wrong (person has opinions -> system says his opinions are wrong -> person says system is correct -> person says his choices are wrong). Doing (b) - means person's choice, opinions and decisions are correct. Take a guess as to whether this said person will align with option (a) or option (b). Impartial observations is probably a rare commodity here. Social commentary expressing personal opinions is useful and welcome. The vedic system could be flawed and incorrect independent of Krish Ashok's observations. The point here is about the flaws inherent in the process of the observation rather than the observation itself.
Thirdly, the hint of TPT. Conducting an inter-caste marriage is not a big deal now. I may be sticking my neck out here by saying this - but I am guessing not believing in brahminical rituals is probably not the most revolutionary thing done in the 21st century. While thar-perumai is always welcome and tolerable to an extent, much like anything else, overdoing it is a bit boring. We have had Ramanuja to Subramanya Bharathiar to Rammohan Roy who have "kann'la veral vittu nondified" the system. Not sure if the level of challenge Krish in today's world faced is even comparable to the challenges faced during times of these people. Inability to resist the ego masturbation of "look - how rationalist and 'murpokku sindhanai vaadhi i am " is the reason this post unimpressed me. There have been more people who have done this better, with less advertisement, and without betraying "my culture is so poor let me make fun of it and treat it with scant respect but remember.. my wife's Nair customs and rituals need to be treated with respect". This is too much 'sound' for not so great achievements.
Lastly, on throwing in things like "sanskrit pronunciation" is like pretending to have expertise in the system to comment about the system. Sure, there are many priests who do their job in a less than satisfactory way. Just like cooks who over-cookify potatoes, nathaswaram vidhwans who miss a sruthi or two, software engineers who browse facebook and twitter in their office computers during work time, citizens who spit on the road, employees working for companies which subtly violate visa regulations, students who answer a couple of questions incorrectly in plus 2 exams - vedic priests do make mistakes. They do mispronounce sanskrit words. Especially when you have a nosy groom around doing a ball-by-ball 'complaintary' at them when he shouldn't have hired them to start with. They are as flawed as Hawkeye, krish-ashok, kandasamy, munnusami etc. Normal human beings who selectively expect 100% perfection on stuff is a kind of futility that one shouldn't even waste time writing about.
To close - brahmins trying to pivot and distinguish them around the variable of 'anti-rituals' and 'anti-priest' things are now passe. Kamalagasan made a lot of money out of it and in the process made himself repetitive. Krish makes that category look extremely boring by flogging the dead horse beyond belief. Pointing out flaws in some aspect of the culture/caste/system/state/country you are a part of has lost its credibility and probably died with noisy NRIs who complained about India till the cows came home.
