I'm not a TAMil

One of my cousins got married recently. Since i generally don't like to attend weddings and more so if there's nobody in my age to give me company, my folks had to literally drag me on. After seeing my cousin and his wife stand with a constant smile on their faces with a sense of pity [not at his post-marital plight but i hate the idea of making the couple sit/stand before a never ending procession of people, giving the same answers to the same questions with the same expression on their faces], i wished the couple and gave my gift and settled in the back row to watch the cine music concert by Shankar Mahadevan and Mahalaxmi. SM did a great rendition of his own hit "Breathless" and a few Hindi film hits. He did a very good job of improvizing ARR's smash hit "Take it easy Urvasi". He interacted with the audience to get their feel and feedback. He said he would be doing Hindi and Tamil film numbers and polled the audience if they would like to listen to Tamil songs. Appalingly, only a very few [about 20%] answered in the affirmative. The bride's family had settled in Dubai many years back and looking at the family members, there was not a single attribute of Tamil identity. A good number of people in the audience were almost embarrassed with the Tamil tag being associated with them. I've found this to be very pronounced with the Tamil Brahmin community in Mumbai. Generally, this trait can be found amongst Brahmins albeit not being exclusive to them alone - the trait of assuming a superior liking and relation towards a pan-Hindi or anglicized culture. While it is normal and natural for people to adopt the culture of the place they live in, finding this in Chennai was a bit strange. For every individual, the mother tongue gives him/her the first kind of identity, followed by the culture he/she lives in. Every other notion of identity like religion and nation, comes after these two and they are not natural like the former, but imposed upon. That said, pragmatically, unnatural identities like nationality do serve useful purposes and might also be necessary. The balance between the two is delicate indeed.
After a while, discarding these reflections which don't serve any practical purpose, i proceeded to the more important task of preying upon the spread of Arusuvai Natrajan's dinner.....

P.S: A few months back in my work place, we received an EMail informing that we could come dressed in ethnic-wear on the eve of Deepavali (i think). It carried the note that veshti's were not allowed!