December 21, 2011
Bright, sunny day. I ventured out to attend a wedding. The Subramaniam Hall is around a kilometer away from home. It is part of the old and famous Trivandrum club campus. A taxi was shuttling between Rema aunty's house and the venue, so we managed a ride. I was extra careful with a bigger than usual cotton padding and two underwears.
We arrived at the hall 10 minutes before the groom's reception. An equal mix of smiling faces and purposeful faces had already gathered. Since most of the hosts knew about my condition, I was ushered to a chair quickly. Few concerned, customary inquiries about my weight loss were made. We were seated two rows from the dais.
A resplendent 'mandapam' had been erected. An arrangement of shiny pots played the role of pillars. Golden curtains in the backdrop. Glorious setting. More resplendent silk from the hundreds of sarees jostling about, glaring under the arclights. And enough gold on display too.
Wires criss-crossing the floor. Some dangerously taut. Some snaking up from the floor. I counted half a dozen incidents of tripping. The trip and check from falling is invariably followed by an angry frown at the culprit wire as if it can be brow beaten, literally.
'Sopana sangeetham' by the same artists at Tara's wedding provided the musical background here as well. Since the bride this time wasn't my sister, I could relax and enjoy the music.
First round of feast at 10:45. After the traditional initial hesitation, Achan and I decided to eat. Seats at the head of the last row. "Who are the caterers?" Achan asked a young man carrying a bucket full of rice, ready like a sprinter at the starting line. As soon as all the seats in our row are taken, his duty would commence. "Oottupura," he replied barely breaking his glance towards the end of the row where the last men standing were lowering themselves onto the plastic chairs.
To the right side of the traditional banana leaf of the feast, I found some new additions. A cashew nut, a fig and a date!
The curries were fantastic. Mindful of my blood sugar warnings, I skipped the ultra delectable pine-apple curry.
A potato kurma with the perfect umami taste.
A cauliflower curry that wasn't appealing to the eyes but felt great on the tongue. (I'll skip a dirty simile here).
Dozen other curries and pickles splashed a range of colors on the green leaf.
When the rice-servers came around, I squinted, twisted my nose and used my palm to indicate how minuscule a quantity of rice I needed. The same was repeated for two of the three 'payasams'. I skipped the wheat payasam that was served second but tasted it from Achan's leaf. Like clockwork the first round of feasting was wound up in 17 minutes. On schedule for the wedding ceremony. None of the customary Indian tardiness when it comes to managing a wedding feast for a thousand guests.
The most important ritual of the wedding i.e. tying of the sacred thread had already been performed two days back at the Guruvayoor temple. So today was exchange of garlands and necklaces. There was a Caucasian family attending. I presume they were from the groom's side since he is studying in Germany. The husband was suited up and busy recording the event on his hand-held. The wife and the little daughter wore churidaars and the young son had a kurta on. Right before the core ceremony, owing to the couple of dozen people constituting the close family thronging the dais, it looked like the Germans were going to be treated only to the memory of an array of assorted Indian asses in brilliant sarees and dhotis. Luckily better sense prevailed and the family also was invited onto the dais.
The hall was houseful by the time we returned from the feast, so we watched the proceedings standing by the side wall and mostly on the closed circuit TV nearby. Since it was a working day, the crowd managed to stay just under one thousand. Seeing the happily smiling couple, decked up in splendor, posing for the numerous cameras, for a moment I wondered at what point in my life I had become physically turned off about subjecting myself to this ritual!
As soon as the bride and groom stood up, a predictable rush for the round 2 of the feast commenced. We quickly planted ourselves on chairs to prevent being carried back into the dining area in the numerous streams of humanity forcing in that direction. Memories of Dadar railway station at Mumbai rush hour.
After the dining area absorbed the hurrying and the hungry, we slowly walked out of the hall. It wasn't too hot, so I felt adventurous enough to walk all the way back home. I also hoped to burn off some of the feastly calories. Took us half an hour and most of the time I carried myself very carefully, with eyes on the ground like the nowadays extinct species of shy college girls.
Two men were trimming the grass around the raised area outside the police headquarters where the word "Dheerasmritibhoomi" (Valiant Memorial Ground) is spelled out in Malayalam with white pebbles. Well,one man was trimming the other was leaning onto the wall and excavating the trimmings from yesterday's dinner that were lodged in his molars.
The Aalthara temple was closed but that didn't stop three school girls in their white and green uniforms from offering prayers to the doors.
It was past peak time at the tea stall outside Narayanan Nair's petty shop. Still a few men hung around with half drunk steaming glasses of chocolate colored tea.
Signs of abundance at the 'Haritha' vegetable vendor despite the dwindling supply of veggies from Tamil Nadu.
After reaching home, we made lemon juice from the lemons that are given away as part of the wedding feast. Every time I drink lemon juice, I remember Aju, the founder of Heritage India restaurant at Stafford, because of the peculiar way in which he would ask all customers if they wished to have any "laa-yim juice". Some words get associated with some people forever in our minds. I cannot look at a bumble bee, like the yellow headed, shiny black one that buzzed about the garden this morning, without remembering Melissa, the blonde barber at the Aggieland barbershop who told me that her name meant bumblebee.
In the latest issue of Wired magazine, Jonah Lehrer has written a good article titled, "Trials and Errors: Why Science is Failing Us". He cites a wonderful example of back pain diagnosis to explain the correlation is causation fallacy. Few decades ago when MRI machines were not around, doctors had only the knowledge that the human back was too complicated a collection of bones, tissues and muscles. So when a patient complained of back pain (as 80% people will do at some point in their lives), doctors would advise bed rest for a few weeks. During the resting period, the body usually healed itself. Then came the MRI machines. The scans showed problematic discs. So the correlation was made between back pains and discs, disc slips etc and surgeries and cures were imparted. Correlation was mistaken, as usual, as causation! Nobody bothered to check if there were people with disc problems who never had back pains. Only after such a research, decades later, was it found that there were a whopping number of folks who had no backpain but trouble with their discs as revealed by the scans. Turns out discs rarely have to do with back pain. So we are back to the bed rest solution.
I was reminded of this correlation is causation fallacy while reading yet another article about electronic gadgets and their addiction triggering short temper, irritation and attention disorders among today's kids. Electronic gadgets, in my opinion, have been made an easy scapegoat!
The environment kids grow up in today is starkly different from the one of the previous generations and not just because of the gadgets. Their environment is now far less physically dangerous and far more media stimulated. Other significant factors like less time parents get to spent with them, the lack of interaction with nature, the relatively easy academic standards that are tested, the peer pressure, the shrinking social interaction, the focus on the superficial 'status' symbols, food habits, medicines etc rarely find mention or consideration in the analysis of kid's behavior. There are enough in the older generation, unfamiliar themselves with these gadgets, who are pleased to lay all the blame on the gadgets. After all, simplistic causation is our obsession and as long as we are not the cause of trouble, jolly good!
Finished Bimal Mitra's wonderful novel this morning. The characters Tarak Sen, Alakesh Chattopadhyaya and Parul Bala, the daughter of Hari Mukhthiyar have been scorched into my memory. Achan has recommended that I read Ashupurna Devi's novels that have been translated into Malayalam.
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