Book review: 'Chennaivasi'

Book: Chennaivasi
TS Tirumurti
Harper Collins
270 pages
Rs299

There’s as much plot in this novel as there is water in Chennai. But this shouldn’t bother readers who prefer beer to water and enjoy soaking themselves in nostalgia rather than chasing after suspense.

For Chennaivasi is first and foremost an exercise in nostalgia — for Chennai and its unique Tamil Brahmin (“Tam Bram”) sub-culture. That it is also a novel is a bonus.

It is obvious from the opening page that this book has been authored by someone in love with Chennai. The most evocative passages in the novel are those that lovingly recreate the sights, smells and sounds of Chennai past and present — the Madras Central Railway Station, waking up to the strains of Suprabhatham, putting together a kolu-show during Navratri, a visit to a Nadi astrologer.

Chennaivasi does a convincing job of depicting the conservative ethos of Chennai’s Tam Brams — their strange cocktail of professional modernity and personal traditionalism that makes them model employees in fields that require a high level of intelligence and a low level of independent initiative, a rare combo.

If there is one message that is drilled into every Tam Bram child growing up in Chennai, it is the all-consuming importance of obeying authority, of not using one’s own judgment to decide whether said authority is right or wrong on any given issue but simply to do as told. That way you stay out of unnecessary conflict.
In a modern setting, especially in a fraught professional or political environment, what this translates into is complete ideological discipline. It is this quality more than anything else that managements look out for when they choose to promote certain individuals up the power ladder.

Smart people don’t like to take orders from stupid people. But it takes an altogether different level of smartness to be able to spend your life taking orders from those stupider than yourself. This is the one big secret behind the success and longevity of Tam Brams in the Indian civil services (though a lifetime of such obedience can occasionally result in a TN Seshan).

The storyline of Chennaivasi can be read as a parable of the Tam Bram who defied authority. Ravi goes to America for higher studies and falls in love with Deborah, a blonde American bombshell and Jew to boot. Ravi’s orthodox father disowns him when he learns his son is determined to marry a “white girl”. Ravi and Deborah start living together in Chennai, scandalising the former’s family. Ravi’s doting mother is caught in the crossfire between father and son. Well, you know enough now to guess what happens in the end.

Tirumurti writes with a lightness of touch that works well when things are on an even keel, but doesn’t hold up so well in scenes of emotional intensity. The characters of Appa and Amma ring true to life and to type. The rest of the characters, especially Ravi and his brothers, appear to have been put together using plaster of Paris.

What is interesting is the way Ravi’s maturing into adulthood hinges on his defying the one authority figure in his life — his father.

Readers not familiar with the Chennai Tam Bram ethos might wonder what’s the big deal, in today’s day and age, in a high-earning Tam Bram boy marrying a high-earning white American girl (who’s hot too).

But Ravi’s cardinal sin, in his father’s eyes, is not so much his desire to marry outside caste and religion and nationality as ideological indiscipline – how can you, a Brahmin son, defy your Brahmin father and therefore the Brahmin way?

From the moment Ravi thinks independently, using his faculty of reason as opposed to letting tradition guide his life choices, he ceases to be a Brahmin in his father’s eyes.

There is no real arc of transformation that the novel’s ostensible protagonist, Ravi, undergoes. Rather, it is his
ultra-conservative father (also an ultra-modern professional who works as CFO in a large company) who has to make the ideological journey, from unthinking Brahminism to rational modernism before he can find peace in his heart and equilibrium in his familial relations.

If you love Chennai, or if you’re a Tam Bram, you’ll enjoy the bearable lightness of this novel.

G Sampath is an independent writer based in Delhi
sampath4office@gmail.com