Tag: Life

Mind in a boat .. self in a …

The boats are feeling left out in my life. ‘An explanation?’ you ask, I concede.

Regular readers already know I use the public transit into work.

What readers don’t know is that through no fault of mine, I have sidelined the aquatic altogether. The ships and ferries of the world crave for my company, but I turn a cold shoulder on them. Life can be hard I tell them, and they understand, but wither away nevertheless. Just to keep the blighters happy, I’ve decided to take a boat ride down a river.

‘What is this frivolity about boats?’, you ask. There is a reason. My commute everyday now proudly includes a car ride to the transit terminal, followed by a jolly train ride, followed by a charge to the bus stop conducted at approx 30 mph  and then a frustrating ride on the bus. When you read this, you can readily imagine the plight of the boats. I mean if I were a boat or a ferry, I’d have raged and ranted. “Pure evil” I’d say and generally spread the message around on shore while docking at the yard and such. I am not sure about the vocabulary prevalent among boats, but I can assure you I’d have used the finest to make the constabulary shrink.

I am not a hard hearted person. In fact, I am soft hearted. So, the last time I went to a bookshore, I did something noble and wise that could appease the boats without actually getting on them. I bought the book ‘3 men in a boat’, and I must tell you I am perfectly enjoying the trip down the river.

Mind in a boat .. self in a bus

Service with a smile

I wonder whether the poor thing would have a roof over its head tonight, or be let to stand outside.  California is warm now, so it should be okay. Ever since I knew the husband, I knew the car. Better yet, I’d received an appraisal about the car and therefore the husband’s tastes from a friend who had met him before I set eyes on him or the car.

I loved our Acura Integra. I loved the moon roof, and the fact that it made a noise like a whirring jumbo jet when pushed hard. Come to think of it, I never named the car, or associated a gender with it. After my long ride home on the public transit, I would find myself humming something and walking towards my car, only to find the engine start up with the same song I’d been humming a minute ago. The whole day, the tune would have slipped my mind, but the sight of the car would bring it on again.

Not a single complaint from it when we posed in front of it, or parked it in front of national park entrances for the ‘Patel shot’. If ever a car had a smiling face, it was the Acura Integra model we had.

The husband’s write-up on the car when it reached 100K is here.

Today, we sold the car. I’ll miss you Acura – thanks for the decade long journey.

Happy Women’s Day

Happy Women’s Day to all you wonderful women out there.

I have been getting lots of mails telling me people are proud of me because I cry when I am sad and laugh when something is funny. Also, my hugs are supposed to be fused with the magical healing touch. Bruises heal themselves. I wonder how I broke the cup the other day with all these abilities I possess. Maybe, I did not hug the shards of the broken cup hard enough.

Apparently, all this makes me a wonderful woman. I also eat when I am hungry – I suppose that makes me more human.

The mails I am receiving also tell me as a woman I don’t quite know my power or capacity – I agree. Once when I was around a decade old, my friend and I had a dosa eating competition to which my sister unwittingly offered to be the dosa maker. I did surprise myself, and lost by a small margin, but my dosa competitor was a year older than I was.  I don’t think the sister has learned to view the dosa tava with the same benevolence since. If I remember right, I groaned all evening clutching my stomach in a wonderful show of feminine bravery.

Which all brings me to the question, do Men have a day dedicated for them?

There is an International Men’s Day. It is celebrated on November 19th, and was started as recently as 1999 – almost a century after their Women counterparts started celebrating themselves.

Frivolous as the content of this post is, I do hope my female brethen are uplifted from the horrors of misogyny inflicted upon them by men and members of their own creed. I’d like to end this post on this note (Seneca)

Dum inter homines sumus, colamus humanitatem

As long as we are human, let us be humane

Sculpture Lessons anyone?

I don’t mean to boast, but seeing that I have many multi-million dollar talents about me, it is a hard choice to let the world sail by, thinking I am a normal person who just enjoys the way I am.

We had a class in School titled S.U.P.W meaning Socially Useful Productive Work. The term evidently evolved over the ages seeing that the youth in schools were wasting time wandering around campus, chatting and planning practical jokes. Not at all giving any sense of comfort to the Teachers who were looking upon us as the torch bearers of the next generation and all that.

The students were social beings alright – why we couldn’t keep shut for five minutes even when in line! But there was a line drawn when it came to being useful. So, the educationists had to come up with making us socially useful. The problem was useful as we were, our efforts almost always weren’t productive. (Some harsh critics used the word unproductive.) That is how the authorities  decided that we have to buck up and do socially useful productive work.

I dabbled with various activities in my career, and the parental abode still bears the painful onslaught my creativity unleashed on it. You would find checkered beige coloured tables adorned with a blue tablecloth embroidered with pink, orange and red flowers. I have already remarked on the sweaters that the brother had to combat. Had my parents’ love for me been any less, these fine works of art would have jostled for space in the attic where all the inorganic trash reside in the home. But they did not – they “decorated” the house.

My diverse career in the Arts, among other things, included Sculpture. I made a statue. If we had digital cameras then, I would atleast have a picture of this eyesore. We used film prudently those days, and photographs were reserved for special occasions, and tried to cram in as many members in the vicinity as possible. Rare photographs have only 5 people in them. The long and short of it is, there are no photographs of this beauty. A pity.

My father came and saw it, and hemmed and hawed when I asked for it to be brought home. It was modeled after a lady reading. My mother even posed for me one day when I came home depressed. My statue was looking nothing like what I intended. She sat on the floor with her legs stretched out. I realise now that nobody reads like that. Do you sit with your legs outstretched, sitting at right angles with no back for support and read with your feet sticking up at right angles? No. But that is what my statue did.

I call it a cruel cut of fate, one that set me back by at least 104.3 million dollars had this masterpiece made it to the great annals of art. This goes to prove that the right place at the right time makes a world of a difference. Please read this link to see the news item about this particular statue by Monsieur Giaccometti fetching 104.3 million dollars.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704259304575043591716903152.html

Image below.

I am no connoisseur, but this eyesore would have given stiff competition to mine. If this was worth $104300000, I don’t know what mine would have fetched.

Anyway, life goes on despite these scars, and I look on the positive side as always. Anyone needing Sculpture lessons can contact me, since Monsieur Giacometti is no more.

Singing Vs Almirah Assembly

There was a point in the past week when we found ourselves assembling and lifting a huge almirah. Beads of sweat creased the forehead and the lip curled in concentration as the husband and wife duo drilled through the wood and clasped and shoved the pieces of the puzzle together. The beauty of creating something is always exhilarating even if the real genius is the guy who designed it that way. Have I gushed about Ikea before? I must have. I love that store.

Anyway, I don’t want to waste words praising somebody else in a post that the designer is never going to read. So, I shall stick to the point and go back to huffing and puffing with the almirah. I heaved and ho-ed. The floor bore it well, the bones did not. By evening, we looked like scraps of wood that could be blown away with a mighty huff and a puff.

Give any two engineers a task of moving an object into a space, and they will discuss strategy. We did too. Over coffee. Finally, we were ready. Shoulders squared, jaws set heavily, we pulled and shoved and pushed. The range of noises went like this

|———————————————————————————-|

Grunt                           heavy breathing                 undecipherable loud noises

Just as I almost placed the darn 350 pound thing on my foot, I put the thing down clumsily and burst out laughing. That rankled the husband, since it upset his sense of balance. He somehow managed to save his toe in the nick of time and grunted like a mole under a mountain.

I am not an almirah-upsetter usually, but this time I was wondering about the age-old tradition in South Indian arranged marriages. There are a number of frivolous parameters used to gauge acceptance from the girl. After the social, economic and moral angles are suitably dispensed with, they come to the girl and ask her to – hold your breath – sing! Yes sing, of all the almirah-assembling tasks in the world, they ask a girl to sing, to see if she can handle the pressures of life?! It caused my father great tension in my youth, because even if I could sing, I was showing every inclination of pelting “Now, why don’t you sing a song?” people with stones.

If you ask me, they should have asked the fiance and fiancee to assemble an almirah and lift it and place it somewhere to see if they would be compatible. My spirit hovered over-ground and as I saw the sweaty saw dust covered couple trying to lift 300 pounds, this tradition tickled me in no small manner.

We laughed ourselves silly at the thought and suddenly the load seemed lighter to bear. The new almirah is ready and I have a new tradition for South Indian arranged marriages. How much better could it get?!

The beauty of questioning

I spend a lot of time vacillating between an agnostic secular person and a religious person, who doesn’t believe 80% of what my religion has become over the ages. Suffice it to say that the days I spend in my former state far outnumber the days I spend in the latter.

Here is my problem: I like to believe in the power of hope and if belief is what brings hope, I am all for it. On the other hand, over the ages, I can categorically state that religion has done more damage to mankind than good. The moment religion ceases to be a personal experience, I can see it wreaking havoc.

I quite like the idea of finding yourself. Easily, that is the path taken by all the “founders” of religion – be it Buddha or the Sufi saints of Islam or the Bhagavad Gita. But how does one explain “finding oneself” to the masses? That is where the problem begins. So, the explanation became finding one’s moral conscience – still good. But a few centuries later, moral conscience evolves into a set of rules written by the elitist community of the religion. Slowly, the congregation becomes more of a unifying force, one to forge your identity with, than to use as a tool to better yourself.

At my wedding, the priest was a person who was my grandfather’s friend. My grandfather was a kind-hearted, generous, loving, able teacher, caring husband/father and he was a pious man. But somehow, whenever people described him, they put his piety ahead of his other virtues. This priest came to my wedding and said he would do all it takes in his power to make sure that great man’s grand-daughter lived a fantastic life, and put us through the most grueling wedding ceremony in recent times. I didn’t understand more than a few words of what was said – there was no need for me to elongate the proceedings by asking for clarifications in between on a hot day in front of the fire, with no food in my stomach. The ceremony lasted a good 9 hours of listening to things I didn’t understand. Everyone who came to congratulate me, said the priest was excellent, he hadn’t missed a single thing – who would understand how my intestines were reacting at the time? Which religion?

What I am trying to say is, some people are ritualistic by nature – to them, rituals become religion – this isn’t orthodoxy, this is just an interpretation of their own religion. It is also show-case worthy.

I have spent my growing years chanting some prayers that my mother taught me on the way to the school in the morning, as we ran for the train. That is all I know today, and probably that is all I will ever know – who knows? Every now and then, I think that just because I am part-agnostic, I should not deny the experience of a religion to my daughter. So, I take her to the local temple. She asks a million questions along the way as usual. We are in the temple, and she looks at the statues and asks – “If Ummachi (God) made everything and gave us everything, how come he isn’t even moving?”

I savoured the question – the beauty of questioning always delights me. I am sorry that when it comes to religion so few people still have the power of questioning left in them.

A Condensed Version Please!

I would hereby like to thank James Band and the Nadaswaram party for the sore throat they have gifted me with – One that reminds me of the thumping music at the wedding every waking moment. Any attempts at ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ sound like ‘Bray Bray Black ..’ almost a month after the proceedings.

The wedding hall was filled with people – small talk filled the halls, and James Band and the nadaswaram were playing at full pitch whenever they got the opportunity to perform. People had to shout to make themselves heard to the person sitting right next to them. One would have thought that the effort would have kept people quiet. But it takes sterner stuff to get South Indians to keep quiet. As the sound of the talk increased, the nadaswaram crew made the band sound louder. Apparently, the duty of the band was to drown out the cacophony or any unceremonious sound.

Fact: The band itself may be construed for cacophony was evidently not thought about when the tradition was “made”.

I have already mentioned about how the south indian wedding is high on the ritual factor – read, boring. Essentially, the average guest is left with the option of staring open mouthed at the wedding proceedings in Sanskrit, while the sastrigal & groom pound at the rituals. The groom mostly looks ready to flee given the slightest chance, while the priest is holding him back with an almost sadistic pleasure and gloats over the power he exercises over the couple.
It goes like this:

Om . blah blah blah blah blah blah-yae namaha
Om . blah blah blah blah blah blah-yae namaha
*Pour ghee into fire*
Om . blah blah blah blah blah blah-yae namaha
Om . blah blah blah blah blah blah-yae namaha
*Wash your fingers*
Om . blah blah blah blah blah blah-yae namaha
Om . blah blah blah blah blah blah-yae namaha
*Pour ghee into fire*
For 6 hours.
Not to mention the fierce fire we have going, in front of which the bride and groom sit. No fans are allowed for obvious reasons near the fire. Probably, that is the reason the groom sits with his chest bared and his transparent dhoti. But it beats me why the bride is seated near the same fire with the stuffiest of silks. These traditions had no mean point I tell you – either it was a bare-all or a wrap-all.

Malai Maatral
Description:The groom and bride, in those early days, were barely teenagers when they got married. The couple were carried by the maternal uncles to exchange garlands at one point. This was a chance for people to know who the maternal uncles were and the children probably enjoyed the break by throwing garlands at each other perched on their uncles shoulders.
Fact: This should probably be done away with, considering the couple is now in the prime of their youth, with glowing muscles and a couple of hours each day at the gym/dining table as the case may be, and the uncles are complaining more often about arthritis and moaning muscles themselves.

Kannoonjal
Description:The laddoo throwing is another part of the proceeedings that could be done away with. The purpose was originally intended to introduce the important lady-folk of the family. With 20 directly-related aunts and 35 indirectly-related aunts and 45 indirectly-direct-related aunts and 55 directly-indirect-related aunts, it was important to show who was who.
Fact: Now, this is no more than a laddoo squishing, bad bowling experience, not to mention the mess created by stamping one of the infernal things and spreading the joy.

Bullock-cart symbolism:
Sometime in the 6 hours on stage, one encounters a point when something like a stick is placed over the groom’s head and the bride’s head. What this symbolizes is this: just like a bullock cart can only be pulled when both the animals contribute equally, so too is marriage. Both the groom and the bride must shoulder their reponsibilities to carry on a smooth life.

The point being this: There are so many rituals, and non-stop chanting, that the symbolic ones, or the ones that bear meaning are either missed or glossed over. The “getti melam” could be used to identify the significant ones, if they didn’t keep asking for a getti melam every 2 minutes.

Kattu Saadam:
Those days, restaurants were rare and almost non-existent between villages, and carrying food for the journey was important.
Fact: No offense to the food really – but this tradition is an absolute must to be done away with. Who wants to eat dried up idlis when you can stop at Saravana Bhavan for a steaming meal instead?! Why can’t we wrap up the proceedings the previous day and get back to our lives?
Interesting aside:
We stopped for eating at a restaurant (since we needed to drink coffee and use the restrooms anyway!), and the younger generation was absolutely thrilled to find that in the melee of leaving, we had left the idlis & the rice behind – yippee! The fathers were privately happy too, but refrained from saying anything inappropriate, lest the mothers construed it as an offense to their own cooking! The looks thrown by the mothers to the children was clearly not one to mess with.

“What is wrong with idlis?” they demanded.
We chuckled saying – “Nothing, just glad they aren’t here!”

We tucked into naan, paneer curry and 8 different types of Dosas at a suave restaurant, and left quite happily.

After so many weddings, there wasn’t one person who was able to cogently explain the symbolism and meaning behind all the rituals. The ones who did attempt invariably love their voices too much and refuse to stop explaining! Soon, one’s curiosity to understand the proceedings is fast overtaken by an urge to strangle the person “explaining”. Finally, my mother told me to look it up on the Internet – which I did, and found a whole world of satirical writings on the South Indian Wedding. (But this link gave a brief explanation) http://www.sawnet.org/weddings/tamil_vedic.html

Since, each tradition has morphed into a status symbol, the unnecessary expenditure has increased manifold. If we were to tabulate the necessary vs unnecessary expenditure, the unnecessary far outweighs the necessary. 3 day weddings are the norm – even though it is not a village where the families use this as a chance to make merry for a week.

By the way, what do we say to the colleague who asked: “So, you guys exchange vows is it?!”

Happy New Year!