On “Theetu”, “Pelai”, “Vallamai”, “Dhuram” and such
If you were brought up in a Tam-Bram household like me, these words need no introduction. If not you might be perplexed. But if you choose to read on, you might learn a thing or two about Indian culture that you might find intriguing or amusing or both.
“Theetu” or “Pelai” is the cosmic force that descends on your family when a family member, someone in your genetic pool set dies. You can read more about this practice and how it applies to you by clicking this link. Interestingly it is tracked back to seven generations and starts with your paternal grandfathers paternal grandfathers paternal grandfather(I am reminded of Major Major Major in Joseph Hellers Catch-22). Remember in those days families weren’t necessarily nuclear, so the number of branches in each generation were numerous. So you can imagine how impactful this could get on your life if you were too follow it.
The Tam-Bram families were typically patriarchal so the “Gothram” akin to a family name, was an indicator of your unique genetic pool set and could be traced back to one of the Rishis from 1000’s of years ago who founded your dynasty. Now in the 21st century the mother’s could argue, how come the lineage is not tracked with the mother’s gene pool for after all they do more of the work in child birth and perhaps in child rearing. Possibly this could have been settled if the daughter’s were tracked to the mother’s lineage and the sons to their father’s. But when you take tradition and culture formed centuries ago we can only accept what’s passed on over generations. We can question them, but not necessarily change them. However, we may choose not to follow them.
“Theetu” the cosmic cloud over the family lasts for a period of ten days and during this period you are expected to mourn the dead and not celebrate or be engaged in religious activities. It’s possible in the good old days when joint families lived together there was some fear that perhaps it was a strange virus or bacteria that killed the person, so this period of ten day mourning could be interpreted as some period of quarantine where the family stayed away from others.
Now what’s interesting is that this period of ten days is only for folks on your paternal side. It shrinks to three days if the dying person was close relative on your maternal side. Clearly there is a huge disconnect. Why would this cosmic cloud stay longer for some and less for the rest. I can only speculate. Could it be that this cloud is a measure of your level of attachment to the departed soul. Perhaps you are supposed to be closer to your paternal relatives, as after marriage the bride leaves her family to stay with the groom. Possibly in the olden days they even relocated to a different town or village. So quite likely with passage of time the relationship with the paternal family group grew while that with your maternal family group diminished. But in modern times this logic doesn’t make any sense, for you probably spend an equal amount of time with each family group or none at all based on how advanced you are 😜.
Even more bizarre is how this applies if you are a woman, you have one set of rules before and another after marriage. Clearly this whole thing defies logic. If we are mourning the dead the days we mourn shouldn’t be defined by sastra ( rules ) but by our attachment to the person or soul. We will grieve more for some than the others. How can rules be uniformly enforced on something like this? Why would you grieve for someone you have never met in your life just because they are your “Dayadi” ( term used to refer to someone from your gene pool in the seven generation window)? Obviously there is no good physical explanation for this practice, so therefore it must be in the spiritual domain.
“Garuda Purana”, one of the scariest books I have attempted to read delves into the spirit quite a bit. It talks about how upon death the spirit is still wandering and needs to be appeased. It’s probably ranting and raving and requires a family effort to quiet it down and continue onwards on its journey without causing any damage. If you are curious you should read it, here is a link to the English translation. Even if some of this were to be true not sure how the spirit would know members of its family that it has never met and expect them to mourn for it. There are a lot of other fallacies one can identify if you dig further in this , but I will leave that for you to ponder.
Now “Valamai” the cosmic cloud that is created upon the birth of a child is even more bizarre. It applies only to male children if I am not mistaken. Go figure !! I suppose boys need to be settled down before they are accepted into the family. Once again this bizarre practice makes no sense even spiritually. Why do this when a boy is born and not if its a girl child, beats me? Every being has a spirit — boy or girl so why would you not observe the same in both cases. But to this day this practice is still followed. Somewhere along the way the purpose got lost and this custom got established. People have continued to follow it without questioning it and thereby made it a tradition.
Whilst I was growing up I encountered this quite a bit in my grand parents household. We were a large family and the seven generations rule meant a lot of births and deaths happened frequently during the year. Until the 1950’s the nuclear family was a myth so the branches were numerous. These rules and traditions were followed religiously that led to a lot of celebrations being canceled or postponed. Also when this cosmic cloud descended on the family it somehow touched more than your spirit. I remember pounds of clothing being taken from the cupboards and washed en-mass. Mind you, those were in the days before the washing machine had made it into our household. When I look back at that practice, the closer it resembles cleaning up after a pandemic where a member of the family passed away. It makes no sense to do it when the death happened miles away.
As customs go there is one other tradition that is common in the Tam Bram households, the concept of “Dhuram”. This practice is tied to a woman’s menstrual cycle and probably originated to give the woman some privacy and let her relax when she was having her periods. But somehow it also developed a religious connotation. Having her periods somehow makes the woman impure and not capable of doing prayer participating in religious practice. You can liken this again to the cosmic forces that we discussed earlier. At least this one is a physically manifested and we can understand not necessarily agree with. But over the years it got imbibed into the culture and is how we have ended up living. If our purity is in the mind a pious woman with periods praying is better than a man with impure thoughts who is praying.
Right or wrong is inconsequential and how one chooses to live is their own right. But shouldn’t we all be questioning why we do things? We should not hesitate to learn about our culture and traditions. But we should challenge what does not make sense and in the process we might learn a thing or two. It’s possible there are things I don’t still understand yet and if you know better please enlighten me.
