The topic is, அரைத்து அரைத்து பிளித்துப்போன மாவு!
Our TB community has changed beyond recognition during my life span of 75 years itself. In those olden days the TB men sported a kudumi (at least many of them) wore Pancha Kaccham and angavastram only and reluctantly used to wear a loose white shirt of special type which I don't see at all nowadays. They could do sandhyaavandanam thrice daily, without much difficulty because brahmins enjoyed society's respect and if necessary maadhyaahnikam could be performed in the office itself ( for those who lived away from office and could not go home during lunch interval, etc. Food for the noon used to be sent through brahmin men (no other caste) to such office people. In old Travancore state, in which I was born and spent my first ten years, offices and schools used to allow brahmin men to come late on Amaavaasya and other Tarpanam days and we boys were allowed to go to the local temple for eating the meals in the morning specially for brahmin boys in the local Subrahmanyaswamy Temple of great repute. These are only a few sample statements to show the changes that have come on our community as a whole.
TB females were, in effect, second class humans as described in our various Dharmasastras and as also exemplified by the controversial Gita verse which includes women in the paapayoni category. Education for girls was, at best, what their male elders like father, paternal & maternal uncles, or other educated males elder to them in the joint family, deigned fit to teach them at home and school education was taboo for brahmin girls! Females were also prohibited from even reading the scriptures or learning them. They were considered unfit to perform any religious rite by themselves, barring certain select few (like Rishi Panchami, Arasapradakshinam on amaasomavaarams, Sraaddham for the deceased husband under special circumstances, etc.)
You can see how radically and irreversibly our TB community has changed! We now are catching firm hold of the elephant's tail of which a few யானைவால் ரோமம் (hairs — like performing grandiose upanayanams to our boys and just forgetting everything else on the danduneer on the next day itself, youth getting nostalgic home coming by catching hold of Sandhyaavandanam, sometimes Tarpanam, temple-going, etc.) are firmly gripped but the elephant itself has gone back to its forest! Our girls are all very highly educated and are beating our boys in getting lucrative jobs and more lucrative salaries etc. In fact most IT households are seen to be headed by the young wife rather than by the husband who, today, is at best a factotum who is not abused if the wife is cultured and the husband earns well enough to compete with the wife's income!
When our community has gone so utterly and unrecognisably different from what it was even 70 years ago, it is rank foolishness to think of bringing about 'social control' of any type whatsoever. IC & IR marriages are here to stay and most of our true Tamil Brahmin culture of the past has become dead as a Dodo. We have no way other than getting on with life. If Tamil Brahmin culture or numbers is to become extinct it shall happen. Trying to resurrect interred dead (bodies) practices will look horrendous and abominable, besides being highly unsuitable for the times.
