Mami Musings

My last 2 months in Coimbatore has made a complete transformation in me. Now I can rather proudly call myself a complete Mami. I always despised my friends who called me mami but today I am not angry but proud of the achievement. I fish for gossips. I find myself telling 'ungaluku oru vishayam theriyumo.' A recent rendezvous with a few mamis (amma, periamma and amamma) gave me some insightful information about the prospective Iyer brides to be.
We all are totally aware of the fact that every iyer boy/girl or at least one iyer boy/girl in a family go to engineering college (people like me are exception) and once they are engineering graduates they fly to the states. When my parents started hunting an iyer paiyan for me it turned out to be a bit disappointing. My parents or rather my dad had a clause attached to the criteria that the guy should be employed in India and not abroad. But it turned out just the opposite. When you open tamilmatrimony.com and search for vadamal palakkad boys all we see are good looking iyer boys posing in front of the liberty statue or the tower bridge or in front of a red Ferrari (oh u know he doesn't own it) but finally my parents found a guy for me posing in front of a big red double Decker London bus. An IT consultant who extensively travels abroad on projects and also part settles in Bangalore when on bench. We didn't have much of a choice. Then the guys ratio to girls were less. Today its a different story all together. For every 2 boys there is 1 iyer-engineering-US citizen bride. So that leaves the groom's parents in a soup. 'En paiyan green card holder adhunala engetha ponna kalyanam pannika mudiyathu.' Even when they manage to find a green card holding prospective girl she puts forth some unforgivable clauses like - We will never go back to India nor will your parents come and live with us. Recently an engagement broke off because of the same reason. My question is have iyer girls forgotten the culture that was fed into us along with thaiyer chadam?? Have they forgotten the golden words taught by our parents that respect to elders is like respect to the almighty?
That's when I hear the mami in me shouting out loud 'Aiyo guruvayoorappa en kuttygal epadi irupalo, unaku than velicham.'