There’s something about Tamil Nadu and Telangana

There are some words only Shashi Tharoor is supposed to knowLike eacuteclaircissement Psammophile Murraya Koinonia Feldenkrais Odylic PendeloqueNo one uses these words while chatting Or while writing a letter Or a book They are words meant to put humans in their place and teach them humilityBut Faizan Aiki 13 from Dallas Texas whose parents are from Hyderabad knew eacuteclaircissement like a family friendBruhat Soma a 12yearold Floridian with roots in Telangana had no problem with abseilAnanya Vinay 12 from Fresno California whose parents are from Tamil Nadu knew what marocain was In 2017 she became the 13th consecutive IndianAmerican to win the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee and the 18th of the past 22 winners with an Indian heritageLetrsquos talk about Bombai Click the QR code above to join my WhatsApp group to share your Bombai stories for my bookmdashand perhaps answer some of my Bombai questionsWhen I looked into their roots two states cropped up again and again Telangana and Tamil NaduIntrigued I began looking into Indians who ruled in international chess As of May 2025 India has given the world 86 grandmasters The latest is a 19yearold prodigy called Gukesh Dommaraju who defeated the worldrsquos seventime grandmaster 34yearold Magnus Carlsen in a classical match at the Norway Chess Tournament Carlsen slammed his fist on the table and stormed outGukesh comes from Tamil NaduThere are others R Praggnanandhaa Grandmaster in 2018 at age 13 Born in ChennaiVignesh NR Indiarsquos 80th grandmaster in 2023 joining his brother Visakh NR also a Grandmaster Born in KeralaArjun Erigaisi born in Telangana Grandmaster in 2018 aged 15Letrsquos add the legend Viswanathan Anand fivetime world Chess Champion and one of the greatest and most influential chess players of all time From Chennai Tamil Nadu His patronage alone pulled hundreds of young Tamilians to chess with state supportI decided to look at a somewhat older group Indian CEOs of international corporations No prizes for guessing which two states dominateSundar Pichai CEO Google From Madurai Tamil NaduSatya Nadella CEO Microsoft TelanganaShantanu Narayen CEO Adobe TelanganaArvind Krishna CEO IBM TelanganaRevathi Advaithi CEO FlexTamil NaduVasant Narasimhan CEO NovartisWhat is it about people from Tamil Nadu and Telangana that makes them global powerhouses wherever brain power is the main powerldquoTheyrsquore all TamBramsrdquo says Doc my professor friend in NewcastleonTyne ldquoThey are products of the worldrsquos largest successful experiment in eugenics They have been bred like horses for these very skills and traits Mathematics is instinct for themrdquoThis was weedinspired nonsense and I told him so Firstly theyrsquore not TamBrams many of them speak Telugu God knows how many of them are even Brahmin We can also rule out both the education systems American and Indian All our grandmasters are Indiaeducated but our teenage spelling bee pros are USeducated and the CEOs have studied here and abroadldquoCould be because theyrsquore Dravidianrdquo Doc posited ldquoMaybe Dravidians are clever like thatrdquoThere may be something in that When the Indus Valley civilisation collapsed people spread east and south pooling finally in presentday Kerala Tamil Nadu TelanganaAndhra Pradesh and Karnataka Ethnically and linguistically they have nothing in common with the IndoAryan cultures that settled in the rest of India in later centuries Thatrsquos Indiarsquos northsouth divide right there Thank god for idli and sambar the glue that keeps India together and wholeA cognitive scientist broke down the mental superpowers common to grandmasters spelling bee winners CEOs and software coders Pattern recognition rulebased logic memory and linguistic ability longrange planning and calm disciplineSouthern states and these two in particular historically valorise knowledge Tamil culture prizes arivu knowledge and pazhakkam discipline Teluguspeaking elite from the courts of the Kakatiyas to scholars like Pingali Venkayya have historically patronised literature mathematics and linguistics They emphasised nyaya logic and Vedic learning combined with linguistic excellenceAll good but no Tamilian or Andhraite I know has ldquoVedic knowledge combined with linguistic excellencerdquoldquoIt was the Britishrdquo said Doc struggling valiantly ldquoThey poured money into building universities and centres of higher learning especially in the southrdquoChennai and Hyderabad were major colonial administrative capitals exposed to Englishmedium education missionary schools and public institutions like Madras University and Osmania UniversityldquoBut the beneficiaries of those would have been the parentsrdquo I argued ldquoHow come the geniuses are in the next generationrdquoWhich brings us finally to South Indian parents Especially those in middle and lowermiddleclass families see education as salvation They somehow make sure their children receive a highquality education in the best schools they can afford They pay for coaching and continuously exhort them to excel Children learn to respect teachers and knowledge build focus and delay gratification Over time these breed analytical discipline cultural humility and unique communication skillsTheir parents make huge personal sacrifices for their children Gukesh Dommarajursquos father an ENT surgeon shifted to parttime work so that he could accompany his son to tournaments To make up for lost income his mother a microbiologist worked extra shifts However it is this sentence from her that captures the essence of the South Indian mindldquoI would be very happy to hear that you are a great chess playerrdquo she told him once ldquobut I would be even happier to hear that you are an even greater personrdquoYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper