Our best and our brightest

I tracked down (I’m beginning to sound like a police sniffer dog, don’t you think?!) my History teacher at IST, Ms In den Bosch. She mailed back and tells me she still maintains a close friendship with Mr Copleston (our Geography teacher at IST) and his wife “across the years and the continents” as she puts it. (She lives in the US and he is based in Europe). I am impressed – it shows what a little commitment can do for a friendship.

It was only after I hit the ‘Send’ button on my reply that I remembered that she lives and works in Virginia – and I hadn’t mentioned, let alone condoled, the terrible Virginia Tech killings. She may have believed me thoughtless. It was oversight – my apologies.

We have lost so many of our best and our brightest in that tragedy. In today’s world of instant news and streaming video, it all seems so immediate even though I live half way across the world. How must it seem to someone who lives in the same state, who perhaps knows someone directly touched by the killings?

I hope all those affected somehow find the strength to come through what essentially was a senseless massacre.

© Sosha Srinivasan

The Original Fold

Morten mailed asking about the reference to Syrian Christians from Kerala in my second post, wondering if I was of Syrian descent.

We supposedly are. My dad once was mistaken for a Turk. I have variously been taken for an Armenian, an Arab and a Parsi – descendants of a group that migrated to India from Iran.

Legend has it that soon after the ascension of Christ, St Thomas or “Doubting” Thomas sailed to Kerala with a loyal band of disciples. There, he converted seven Brahmin families after performing a “miracle” and these families intermarried with his followers. Their descendants are known as the Syrian Christians. St Thomas then travelled overland to the city I now live in, Chennai (formerly Madras), where he was “martyred”.

I am definitely not recounting this in order to propagate notions of racial superiority of differences. Kerala is miniature melting pot with Arab, Jewish, Portuguese and even Armenian influences. As far as I’m concerned this is a 2 millenia-old legend with spotty proof at best. There is definitely nothing such as a “pure race”, though many racist groups would like us believe otherwise.

I made the reference in my post only because it was a fact. John and I do belong to the same “community” and our families met socially on a very regular basis.

When I married my husband, who happens to be a Tamil Brahmin, an uncle of mine remarked, “So you have gone back to the original fold, have you?” – a reference to the ostensible Brahmin conversion by St Thomas.

Look back even further to 4000 years ago when the Aryans migrated to India from Central Asia – the Hindu religion and the caste sytem (at the “top” of which sit the Brahmin or priest class) are direct offshoots of Aryan culture. It then follows that my hubby’s ancestors were from Central Asia and mine purportedly from neighboring West Asia.

A few years ago I followed the timeline back even further when I watched a rivetting program called “The Journey of Man” on National Geographic Channel hosted by Prof Spencer Wells.

In a nutshell, based on extensive genetic testing worldwide, it says humankind came out of Africa a mere 60,000 years ago. All of us on earth are descended from a small group of Bushmen. The different races evolved as a result of gradual physical adaptation to local climatic conditions in diverse geographic areas.

It makes so much sense. Our differences are, in truth, only skin deep and we are all members of the same family. Every reader of this post is is a distant cousin of mine – several thousand times removed, as the Brits put it! We are all siblings under the skin and there is only one “original fold”.

I strongly believe Dr Wells’ program should be translated into every language possible and screened globally for every “ethnic” group, village, or community as I feel it is a feeling of “otherness” that is at the root of most conflict world wide.

Genetic testing is still going on and you may get yourself tested if you wish to find out which route out your ancestors took!

Check it out at the Genographic Project page on the NatGeo site.

© Sosha Srinivasan