So here’s a quick list of things that are very normal for a Kannada/Tamil/Telugu Brahmin family. This might be the case for Brahmins from other regions as well but I can only speak to what I know. Many of these practices are still followed in today’s day and age in Urban and Rural India. Now these are just put here in no specific order. I could add more as I recollect or am reminded of them.
- Leave your footwear outside. Don’t wear them inside the house.
- Wash your face, hands and legs when you get home. Do the same when you go to other people’s homes(basically help them also stay clean).
- Have a full bath (including hair) on: birthday, every haircut or visit to doctor/hospital, after returning from a cremation/grieving family.
- Don’t touch anybody.
- Don’t touch anything that’s not yours.
- Don’t touch anything unless absolutely required.
- When in the market, don’t touch something if you’re not sure of buying it.
- Don’t spit in public places and open areas.
- Don’t clean your nose in public places and open areas
- Don’t piss standing up(for men).
- Wash you hands and legs before and after a piss/poop
- Greet people with a Namaskaara 🙏🏾
- Don’t enter the kitchen if you haven’t showered.
- Don’t touch any stored food items with damp hands or wet spoons or wet ladle.
- Strict quarantine with separate room, utensils, mattress and clothes for sick/ill people at home.
- Clear indication with neem leaves outside home where anyone is seriously ill or recovering.
- Wash before prayers. Take a bath if possible.
- Strict quarantine for women at home during their periods.
- Don’t let anyone else come and lift newborn infant in first month. Similarly, don’t ask to hold another person’s infant in it’s first month.
- Don’t touch a bed that you don’t sleep in. Especially, don’t get on a bed that a married couple uses (unless you are their child and you aren’t yet married).
- Don’t wear wet or damp clothes.
- Don’t carry wet or damp clothes while traveling.
- Don’t use another person’s comb or towel.
- Drink water without touching the glass… by pouring it into your mouth or trapping it with cupped hands instead of sipping at the glass/utensil.
- Don’t share cutlery after you’ve started eating.
- Don’t share food from your plate after you’ve started eating and similarly, don’t take it from another person’s plate after they’ve started eating. Kids whose milk teeth haven’t yet started falling off, are exempted from this rule.
- Don’t wear unwashed clothes.
- After touching fermented or pickled foods, wash and dry your hand before touching any other food items.
- After touching food items with gluten(boiled rice, dal, etc), wash your hands before touching anything else.
Definitely controversial and almost dead practices:
- If dirty people come home, restrict them to outer visiting room. Note… If you are restricted in the first visiting room by the host, it does not mean than you are seen as “dirty”.
- Wash the floor and surfaces that visitors have touched when they came to your house. Even if they are relatives. If you have been the visitor, accept that the house will be cleaned after you leave. Don’t take it personally. It is only in rare cases like a teacher or royalty’s visit that the place they visited and items they touched/used are actually worshipped.
- Always keep a separate set of clean washed bed upholstery for visitors to use. Host family should avoid using this same set as much as possible.
- When traveling, carry your own bedding.
kskspeaking 