The Globaliser

This was a piece sent by Commodore SK Iyer, my one time and perhaps most respected boss and a very close friend (I dont know if I can call him that because of our chronological age difference. But I dont have any other term more apt). The piece was written by one Capt Ganesh. As a precursor, he adds "U may add/ substitute Iyengars / vermas /acharyas /john /irfaan /raos etc."

FAMILY AND OTHER GLOBALISERS

When, I wrote a book titled Towards Globalization. I did not realize at the time that this was going to be the history of my family. Last week, we celebrated the wedding of my daughter, Pallavi. A brilliant student, she had won scholarships to Oxford university and the London School of Economics. In London, she met Julio, a young man from Spain. The two decided to take up jobs in Beijing, China. Last week, they came over from Beijing to Delhi to get married. The wedding guests included 70 friends from North America, Europe and china.

That may sound totally Global, but arguably my elder son Shekhar has gone further. He too won a scholarship to Oxford University, and then taught for a year at a school in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Next, he went to Totonto, Canada, for higher studies. There he met a German girl, Franziska. They both got jobs with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC, USA. This meant that they constantly traveled on IMF business to disparate countries. Shekhar advised and went on missions to Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Kyrgystan and Laos. Franziska went to Rwanda, Tajikistan, and Russia. They interrupted these perambulations to get married in late 2003.

My younger son, Rustam, is only 15. Presumably, he will study in Australia, marry a Nigerian girl, and settle in Peru.

Readers might think that my family was born and bred in a jet plane. The truth is more prosaic. Our ancestral home is Kargudi, a humble obscure village in Tanjore district, Tamil Nadu. My earliest memories of it are as a house with no toilets, running water, or pucca road.

When we visited, we disembarked from the train at Tanjore, and then traveled 45 minutes by bullock cart to reach the ancestral home. My father was one of six children, all of whom produced many children (I myself had three siblings). So, two generations later, the size of the Kargudi extended family (including spouses) is over 200. Of these, only three still live in the village. The rest have moved across India and across the whole world, from China to Arabia to Europe to America.

This single Kargudi house has already produced 50 American residents. So, dismiss the mutterings of those who claim that globalization means westernization. It looks more like Iyer-isation, viewed from Kargudi.

What does this imply for our sense of identity? I cannot speak for the whole Kargudi clan, which ranges from rigid Tamil Brahmins to beef-eating, pizza-chomping, hip-hop dancers. But for me, the iyer-isation of the world does not mean.


'Iyer domination.' , It does not mean Iyer submergence in a global sea. It means acquiring multiple identities, and moving closer to the ideal of a brotherhood of all humanity. I remain quite at home sitting on the floor of the Kargudi house on a mat of reeds, eating from a banana leaf with my hands. I feel as much at home eating noodles in China, steak in Spain, teriyaki in Japan and couscous in Mororcco. I am a Kargudi villager, a Tamilian, a Delhi-Wallah an Indian, a Washington Redskins fan, and a citizen of the world, all at the same time, and with no sense of tension or contradiction.

When I see the Brihadeeswara Temple in Tanjore, my heart swells and I say to myself, 'This is mine.' I feel exactly the same way when I see the church of Born Jesus in Goa, or the Jewish synagogue in Cochin, or the Siddhi Sayeed mosque in Ahmedabad: these too are mine. I have strolled so often through the parks at Oxford University and along the canal in Washington, DC, that they feel part of me. As my family multiplies and intermarries, I hope one day to look at the Sagrada families cathedral in Barcelona and Rhine river in Germany and think, ' These too are mine'.

We, Iyers, have taken a step towards the vision of John Lennon:

Imagine there's no country,
It isn't hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion too…..


My father's generation was the first to leave the village, and loosen its regional shackles. My father became a chartered accountant in Lahore, and uncle become a hotel manager in Karachi, and we had an aunt in Rangoon.

My generation relaxed the shackles of religion. My elder brother married a Sikh, my younger brother marries a Christian, and I married a Parsi. The next generation has gone a step further, marrying across the globe.

Globalisation for me is not just the movement of goods and capital or even..... of Iyers…… It is step towards Lennon's vision of no country.

You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one…

… I hope one day you'll join us.
And the world will be one.

have you guessed the author of this selection.. .