South Indian Brahmin boys, have a custom of declaring their lineage prior to their names, before prostrating themselves at the feet of elders to get blessings. For those of you who are not familiar with this custom, the guy(only guys do this) bows before the elder(s) and says
Abhivadhaye (Me, descendent of) ...
1. the names of three sages - this is out of a total of 21 different combinations(?)2. His Gothram (which in effect is his sect)
3. His Sutram (which is a subsect)
4. His Veda (the one he follows - which is one of the four Vedas)
5. then his name
and finally prostrates himself to get the elders blessing.
The idea here (if my grandpa is right), is that people avoid marrying from the same Gotram, in an effort to mix the gene pool! This of course automatically implies that the female takes the Gotram of her husband when she gets married and only paternal mixing is guranteed here! In spite of some questions, I was always impressed by this system, that has been handed down successfully over thousands of years.
Today, this system is going to take on a whole new meaning. How, you ask ?
Recently my cousin opened my eyes to a new concept,that software companies in India, have introduced, called a "honeymoon package" !!! Yes, you read it right. If an employee of the company gets married to another employee within the same IT/Software company, then both of them are put on the same project, especially if one of them happens to work outside India! Hence the name, Honeymoon package. This no wonder pisses off a bunch of hardworking singles, because all of a sudden they find out that some girl/guy from some unknown project is going abroad for the next year on the project they have been busting their a**@# on, just by marrying the right person ! Apparently, it doesnt stop here.
There are companies which encourage this "keeping the family within the company" concept, by giving the newly weds a brand new car or some other expensive thing as a wedding gift!!!
Granted, youth today are not in the habit of finding out the other persons sect, subsect etc. before plunging into marriage. But imagine the after effects of the Honeymoon package deal 50 years from now ..
I asked one of my friends, who actually works in an Indian software company that has said package, to think about it. He thought for a few minutes and said "God, imagine all that inbreeding!" (Ironic, since both the guy and his wife work in the same company!)
It just cracked me up. If all these software people within the company keep marrying and their kids end up doing the same, two three generations from now we will have a very localized genepool of software, IT professionals who might just be saying
Abhivadhaye...
1. the names of the two software companies their parents have worked on
2. the sector they work on (apparently all these IT guys are grouped into vertical sectors like finance, automotive, etc. etc)
3. The account they work for within that vertical sector
4. the language they write the code in (C, C++, Java etc. which is pretty much the Veda they follow)
5. His name
and get the blessing !!
Dont be surprised if this really happens. I may not be there 50 years from now, but if this post still survives and you say..
Abhivadhaye
Infosys, Cognizant
Finance sector
Fidelity Magellan
Jaaavaaaa
Srirama sharma (Sriram is my name)
Aham Asmibho (I prostrate thee for your blessing !)
I predicted this might happen.... in 2006!!