Grade 6

My Family and Other Globalizers

I wrote a book titled Towards Globalization in 1992. I did not realize at the time that
this was going to be the history of my family. Last year, 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. They decided to take up jobs in China, but came over from Beijing to Delhi to get
married. Their wedding guests included 70 people from North America, Europe, and
China.
That may sound as global as it gets, 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. Next, he went to Toronto, Canada, for higher studies.
There, he met a German girl, Franziska. They both got jobs in the International
Monetary Fund in Washington. They constantly travelled on IMF business to disparate
countries. Shekhar went to Sierra Leone, Seychelles, Kyrgyzstan and Laos. Franziska
went to Rwanda, Tajikistan, and Russia. They interrupted these perambulations to get
married at the end of 2003. My younger son Rustam is only 17. Presumably, he will
study in Australia, marry a Nigerian, and settle in Peru.
Some readers may think that my family was born and bred in a jet plane. The
facts are more prosaic. As the last name Aiyar signifies, my family and I belong to the
South and Indian Brahmin community. Our ancestral home is in Kargudi, a humble,
obscure village in Thanjavur District, Tamil Nadu, India. My earliest memories of it are
as a house with no toilet, running water, or even a proper road. When we visited it we
disembarked from the train at Thanjavur, and then travelled 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 one Kargudi house has already produced at least 50 American residents.
Grade 6

So, dismiss the muttering of those who claim that globalization means
westernization. It looks more like Aiyarization, 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 Brahimns to beef-eating-pizza-guzzling, hip-
hop dancers.
But for me, the Aiyarization of the world does not mean Aiyar domination. Nor
does it mean the Aiyar 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 just as much at home eating noodles in China, steak
in Spain, and cous-cous in Morocco. 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 Brihadeeshwara Temple in Thanjavur, my heart swells and I say
to myself, “This is mine.” I feel exactly the same way when I see the Church of Bom
Jesus in Goa, or the Jewish synagogue in Cochin, or the Siddi Sayed 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 Familia
Cathedral in Barcelona and Rhine River in Germany and have them be part of me.
We Aiyars 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.
Father’s generation was the first to leave the village, and loosen its regional
shackles. My father became a chartered accountant in Lahore, one of my uncles
became a hotel manager in Karachi, and we had an aunt who lived in Yangoon. My
generation then loosened the shackles of religion. My elder brother married a Sikh, my
younger brother married a Christian, and I married a Parsi. The next generation of my
children has gone a step further. They have loosened international shackles by
marrying across the globe.
Grade 6

Globalization for me is not just the movement of goods and capital, or even of
Aiyars. It is a 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.