It's Genetic.

(From Business Today (India))

Byline: Nitya Varadarajan

Tis story begins with a man who was king, knight, and merchant prince rolled into one. Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar (1881-1948) was a banker, industrialist, educationist (he founded Annamalai University) and patron of the arts. Legend has it that he once owned 85,000 acres of land in Burma. That's in the realm of the possible: the man belonged to the Nagarathar sub-sect of the Chettiar community and most Nagarathars of his age were free spirits who roamed parts of South Asia accumulating untold wealth. India was ruled by the British in those days, but Nagarathars were into secular, not political pursuits; the British found them smart and trustworthy; so, aided by the British the Nagarathars found it easy to scour other British colonies in the region for trading opportunities. History has it that the Nagarathars-the name means townsfolk in Tamil and implies that this sub-sect of Chettiars wasn't exactly into farming-came from the coastal village of Kaveripoompattinam, which submerged, Atlantis-like into the Bay of Bengal. The community moved to the hinterland, from the Chola kingdom to the Pandya kingdom, before finally settling down in the arid region of Karaikudi, in some 75 villages now known as Chettinad. India's current Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, is a Nagarathar. Better still, he is a descendant of Annamalai Chettiar.

Nagarathars (and other Chettiars) were, and are, punctilious about their books, and are famed ...