September 15, 2011
Today is celebrated as National Engineer's Day. Rather appropriate way to commemorate the birthday of Sir ShriVishweswaraiah, the Kingdom Brunel of India. Till he passed away at the ripe old age of 101, he was an active engineer and administrator. As the Diwan of Mysore, among other things he founded are the College of Engineering at Bangalore, State Bank of Mysore and Mysore soap factory.
The reference to soap factory reminds me, I have figured that the average bar of the average Indian soap lasts me an average of 21 days. Though this is extreme averaging, I don't think there are Black Swans in the Indian soap market. White ones possible.
Since the bathroom floors are allowed to get wet and have drains, toilet cleaning is a much easier task here.
Walking this morning through the nearly swept clean Kanakunnu Palace premises, came across the various entertainment show tents being dismantled and wrapped up. There was one called "Jyoti Dog Show". The name was also written in Tamil. The frugal nature of Tamilians is reflected in the language as well. Maybe it is the other way round. Anyways, in Tamil, Jyoti Dog Show can be read as Jyoti 'Talk' Show. This characteristic of Tamil is particularly confusing for Malayalees because of the abundance of the Malayalam alphabet. Mallus are so used to so many sounds that they insert these in any language they are speaking. Thua a Malayalee is confounded when he sees that a Tamilian called 'Sathyan' (honest/truthful) is spelled as 'Cha-thi-yan'. Chathiyan means cheat in Malayalam. Need a cheat sheet for Tamil. Truth.
Next to the dog-talk show, the tent of 'Naga rani' (snake queen) was coming unhinged. The banner displayed on the top panel showed a golden serpent with a human female head. I regret missing this one. Now I have to spend a good chunk of the day thinking if she could swallow a man whole!
Near the gate, an 'Annachi' was rhythmically snoring next to a pyramid of cauliflowers. The sign said "Ootty Mulakku Bajji" (Ootty Mulakai Pachchi in Tamil) and a chimera called 'cauliflower chilly'. There was no sign of any chilies around the cauliflower pyramid (polyhedron on second thoughts) this morning. Chilies may only be coming out after dark!
Owing to the heavy rains, I guess for most of the evenings, the dry 'well of death' with its motorcycle stuntmen must have been a wet 'pond of death'.
Rema aunty promptly showed up at 11:30 for the morning show of the wedding dvd. The frequently interrupted show is continuing downstairs as I type this upstairs. The background score of the dvd, a generous mix of royalty-fleeced film songs, devotional songs and Ravishankar (the Pandit not the gay breathing champion) instrumentals, floats upwards.
Ajith and Tara had called yesterday night when the first show was in progress.We had just seen the opening minutes.
I was making fun of all the zooming and paning of the camera when like a thunderbolt it appeared on screen.
My face!
Cropped out from some group pic!
I should have seen it coming. The last line in the wedding invitation read "With best compliments from Arun". Now through the DVD the world was to know who Arun is. The image resembled a slightly mentally ill, Atharva veda exponent, rapist Nampoothiri of questionable parentage. It stayed on screen for a full minute, floating black-magically over the sections of the house that the camera moved through in the background. I do have a future as a villain in ghostly pulp fiction 'yakshi' TV serials.
The first dvd dedicated to the wedding eve was only 40 minutes. The 'seeking the blessing' ceremony when the bride repeatedly bends down to touch the feet of innumerable elders is an excellent way to tone the abs and strengthen the back. As if to balance of the slow motion walk of the bride in the balcony, her walking back is ramped up. Plenty of friends and relatives have liked the wedding eve photo taken in the balcony with the greenery in the background. Tough to believe my little sister is 30!
Dvd disc 2 is dedicated to the events of the morning all the way till the reception of the bridegroom. This includes the bride leaving the home, ramped up make-up session, arrangements of the wedding auditorium and the guests trickling in. There is an elaborate sequence of Tara praying at home early in the morning set to the background of the popular film song "Deva Sandhya". The youtube video of the song is included at the end of the note as a reminder of my old 'ardent Navya Nair fan' days!
The third disc is basically 'the stuff'. All the major events of the day starting with the reception of the bridegroom, the wedding, the feasting and the departure of the bride. There are a couple of minutes of the live Sopana Sangeetham included. They could have left that in as the soundtrack while showing the guests enjoying the music as they waited for the wedding. Now with unrelated music playing over these visuals, the guests look like they are randomly agreeing and disagreeing with invisible forces by shaking their heads and are displaying minor masochistic tendencies by unnecessarily tapping their own thighs rhythmically. My performance at the reception including the feet washing and garlanding have been well documented by the camera.
Watching the video made me realize that Nair weddings are verbally silent affairs.
In Christian weddings there is a plenty of sermonizing, vowing and yaysaying.
In the Hindu weddings in other parts of India, there is a priest constantly babbling Sanskrit mumbo-jumbo to justify his presence and payment.
Perhaps the hushness is a carryover from the clandestine arrangements that passed for Nair marriages originally.
The groom ties the sacred thread and gives the bride a 'pudava'.
She accepts it and garlands him.
Smile. Smile. Wink (optional). Wink (optional).
Off to bed.
Not a word uttered.
If at all words are exchanged, they are drowned in the loud and vigorous drumming and piping routine called "Kettimelam".
My favorite part of the video is the feasting. Camera runs between the rows of tables and chairs quickly moving over the faces of people busy with their banana leaf to mouth momentary existence.
In the Anthony Bourdain 'No Reservations' episode on Kerala in which he dines with superstar Mammootty, Mammootty specifically says he usually doesn't allow cameras while eating because we tend to have the worst facial contortions while feeding.
Getting captured with twisted face muscles can be damaging for a reigning star like him, but commoners at a wedding feast simply don't care.
So there you can see an old grandpa from the bride's side scrapping out the fleshy bit from a muringakka (drum stick) using two of his four available teeth in the bottom jaw.
And here is an uncle, with dye-hard devotion to his youth, tongue lashing the stream of payasam that is attempting to escape his scoop via the dense hairy forest of his backhand.
An aunty straightens her necklace just before the camera reaches her.
There is a young girl, marketing herself in the split second of screen time, by pretending not to be interested in the two lumps of rice in front of her, using her pinkie to touch a bit of the spicy mango pickle to her tongue. A message so loud, so clear. Hats off, Evolution!
Another uncle who insists on wearing sunglasses inside the dining hall, his belly determining the limits of his approach to the table. In frustration, he crushes the 'pappadam' into a million pieces.
The 3-year old giddy about the discovery of a cashew nut in his payasam.
The NRI who must have attended a couple of wine tasting classes in the USA, treating 'rasam' like cabarnet savignon, testing it for nose, swirling it in the mouth and looking to the ceiling before swallowing. "Napa Valley, " he appeared to have concluded.
The couple from North India overwhelmed by the expanse of the leaf, the variety of curries, the superfast arrival of the different courses.
The camera-shy young man developing an intimate relationship with the banana in the left corner of his leaf in the 17 minutes of meal time available to him even as the decked up aunty sitting next to him treats the banana like it should be: skinned, squashed and gulped down with the payasam.
An older woman, in her best available sari, involuntarily holding up the yellow 'boli' disc, inspecting it as if it is a counterfeit currency note while the servers who are meant to immediately bury the 'boli' in 'paalpayasam' are slightly delayed negotiating with the camera crew's light-boy in the narrow alley between the green islands of delicious food.
There is no time a human is more human than while eating well. Well, even if there is, it won't be in public and on camera.
The credits of the dvd roll in right after the car carrying the couple leaves the auditorium.
After 15 years, wrote again with an ink pen. Achan bought a bottle of navy blue Brill ink and a filler from the market. He had discovered an old Jaguar pen, still in its case, gifted by someone forgotten now.
Instinctively I wrote "harishree ganapatiye namah! avignamastu" with it on a small diary. It's been ages since the words 'hari' and 'ganapati' have lost their vitality for me, but some habits in the recesses of the mind, stir spontaneously!
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