A House Prepares (BH:D23)

August 26, 2011

"I am going to the Konjiravila Devi temple," Amma announced as soon as I woke up. I coughed hard twice to emphasis that a cold bath won't be prudent. No bath means no temple. Amma drove off with another silk & gold offering. This offering was promised by my paternal cousin sister.

This tradition of making offerings on behalf of bride and groom is very prevalent. It is assumed that the bride and groom will be devout Hindus who will have no issues visiting temples and sitting around for hours of rituals. To avoid this fate for my sis and her fiancee, Amma and Achan made it a point to ask our relatives to avoid making such offerings. If at all they wanted desparately to have their own favorite diety's divine intervention, they can route it through Achan and Amma instead of that couple. 

When Amma came back, she had the 'prasadam' (ambrosia) from the 'Ganapati homam' (ritual for the elephant god). It was a sweet mix of avil (flattened rice), pori (puffed rice), jaggery, banana and coconut. It is stuff like this that help me get over my disdain for organized religion, occasionally. 

Mohanan in action

Mohanan the gardener arrived by 10am. Armed with pruning shears and a pruning knife, he went about administering some tough love to the plants. 

The garden became a battle field.

Mohanan like Karthaveerarjuna, the legendary prince with a thousand arms. 

Green heads and limbs lay helter skelter. 

Periodically, Achan would appear like Florence Nightingale in a lungi and carry off the dead and dismembered in a coir basket to the burning pit in the backyard.

I shouldn't call it a pit. It might have been constructed according to strict Yajur Vedic measurements. In the backyard, Achan assumes the role of a Samayajulu, responsible for keeping the sacred fire burning. All the dried coconut fronds that have been accumulated go into the pyre along with the fresh greens that Mohanan was piling up in the frontyard. 

Achan playing Somayaji

The rising smoke snakes upwards in search of the Hindu heaven.

My second youngest uncle also came in the morning. "I will come everyday till the wedding," he said. He is single-handedly standing in for all the "family elders" who are supposed to conduct the marriage. "Aliya, njan shirt azhikkan ponu!" (Brother-in-law, I am going to take off my shirt) This is his standard declaration to Achan (his brother-in-law) that he is going to dive into doing chores for the day. 

Despite the preparation of the tapioca and fish curry keeping her busy in the kitchen, Amma found the time to come to the garden, give a few instructions to Mohanan and make some complaints about stuff he had already done under Achan's instructions. Even the most incompetent management consultant will not attest that Achan and Amma are doing a good job of selling the idea of married life to Tara. I think this is true about 95% of parents! 

Daughter's marriage is like a medical/engineering exam for the old parents. The performance anxiety, the peer pressure, the fear of failure, fear of memory lapses, it's all there. By fear of failure, I mean the event not going smoothly. The success or failure of the marriage is of least concern. After all, thousands of coconuts have been broken for the gods, how can the marriage fail?!

The afternoon Malayalam news on Surya TV had a report on the acute shortage of engineering professors in the state. The 9 government engineering colleges alone have 99 vacancies to fill. There is a 30% shortage of faculty in the private colleges as well. "Did you hear this?", Amma asked. "Loud and clear," I said.

Went with Amma and Mohanan to the Rose society to see if we can get some rose pots for the garden as part of Amma's 'full flower garden for the wedding' project. The roses at the Rose society were all in the just-grafted stage, so no sales for another two months. On the way back stopped by the Shalimar nursery that is right outside our housing colony. Only an old lady manager was present. Mohanan went about his business of choosing plants. Amma supervised. 

I stood outside the gate watching traffic and pedestrians go by. One man passed by digging deep into his ear with a ball point pen cap. Two boys strolled down, shoulder shoving each other from side to side. Spencers groceries was being repeatedly entered by housewives in churidars who exited with plastic bags to show they have spent! Reminded me of a scene from Shekhar Kapoor's Bandit Queen!

A statue of Sri Narayana Guru sits housed in a glass case atop a three storey building of the SNDP (Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalanasangham - Society for preservation of Sri Narayana's way of life). This building houses the organization's library as well. When it was constructed, this statue must have had Sri Narayana overlooking the Vellayambalam-Sasthamangalam road towards Sasthamangalam. But after that the new 7 storey building housing Spencers, Kuwait airways and apartments came up in front of it. So Sri Narayana's gaze is now fixed into somebody's living room.

Mohanan bought plenty of different varieties of palms and some other plants. He got to work as soon as he got home. Achan and my uncle assisting him and sharing stories. As the palms were potted and some other plants displaced, the discussion ranged from Kathakali to politics. Uncle wasn't much of a kathakali fan. His boyhood association with Kathakali was restricted to collecting the fallen glitter and other bits of costume from the previous day's performance. Achan had fond memories of going to watch all night Kathakali performances as a boy. He rattled out the names of famous artists and an incident about being terrified when he snuck into the make-up room once. In the days before wide spread electricity, the looming Kathakali figures would surely have given a scare. It seems there was an illiterate minister in Kerala some decades ago who insisted on keeping his underwear in the refrigerator. That was another story. Talk about chilling! 

By evening, carpenter Rajendran showed up. Few mirrors, bathroom shelves and door bolts needed fixing. Lot of activity going on in the house.

My cousin came after his class. He is attending a two month course on higher surveying. That course, with an 8 hour exam, must be cleared for his promotion. He showed me all the log tables they are still using. Calculators are not allowed! Even today, the government issued book for the course is a tattered volume by a James Pryde from the 1950s. Worth Rs. 8 in that era. He said they are using a theodolite from the last Maharaja's time for the lab sessions. Past must be perfected for promotion!

One good tradition about the wedding is the great food. Even the run up to the wedding means some mouthwatering snacks at home. Today's special was 'Pazhampori', fried plantain fritters. Eating it with hot tea is an experience. The piping hot pazhampori has two levels of heat. First, when the fried sweet batter coating is bitten into, hot air escapes and fills the mouth. Then the plantain itself presents some heat when bitten into. It is impossible to eat with the normal chewing action. All of us sat around going 'hoo haa hoo haa' with the fritters in our mouth, like those tribal dancing songs shown in Bollywood movies. The tribal singing went on for half an hour! Mohanan joined in giving his implements a break for a while.

He left only after sunset. He needs to return on Sunday to finish up. More visitors continued through out the evening. Pleasant conversations. Some more intriguing stories about relatives that'll form excellent source material for dramatic scripts. 

Final visitor for the night was the close family friend uncle who is a high ranking Reserve Bank office. He retires next month. He had graduated with an engineering degree from BITS-Pilani in the early 1970s. Before packing my suitcases last month in USA, when I was cleaning out the old ones, I found a list of medicines in his handwriting. He had bought them for my first trip to US in 2000. Currently, he is one of the officers in charge of the splendid back up systems that RBI maintains in different locations in the country. This network is on par with, if not better than, NASDAQ and NYSE back up systems. 

In an incredible coincidence his elder son is getting married on the same day at the same time as Tara but in the district of Kollam. He had promised Tara that he would come for her wedding no matter which city he was working in at that time. Now, in a happy twist, he will not be able to keep that promise.

After retirement, uncle is entertaining plans of starting a Mathematics and Physics coaching center here in Thiruvananthapuram. I hear him loud and clear! 

We dropped him back to RBI visiting officers quarters after dinner. It was 10:30pm. On the road that leads from Vellayambalam to the Kowdiar Palace of the royal family, the public works department was repairing some potholes. Seeing this reminded me that Onam is here. I had noticed some laborers painting the public buildings as well couple of days back. In the heat of the marriage, Onam had skipped my mind. The biggest annual event of Kerala. I will be here for it this time after 15 years!