The "Thank you" tour

Had called to wish my dad on new years eve. He was almost 85 and in diapers and he was not liking his quality of life. That is to put it mildly. He wanted to see me. Having gone to India every three months the previous year on business trips and having spent at least a weekend with him on those trips made it appear that we were meeting "regularly". 

Since last June my roles changed and India trips were not on the agenda. So it was understanable my dad felt that way. Also my mom reminded me that there were some "vendudhals" that were not done. The family astrologer had requested that we (San and me) go together to visit the family deity in Gunaseelam soon. San and me haven't been to India together since 2019! So we decided to do a bunch of things all at once and on an impulse bought short notice tickets to fly to India for two weeks. 

Given the girls are both in college we picked a time when they will be busy with classes, to go to India. 14 days from start to finish, 3 days for the US to India travel and back.. do as much as possible in 11 days within India! 

We are coming up on our 25th wedding anniversary in 3 months. We wanted to get blessings from my parents, inlaws, family, all the gods we know and all the gods we don't know and any higher powers that be on this trip. We are not Ambanis, but think of this as our pre-anniversary celebration! 

It is a miracle that we did everything we wanted to and made it back without any sickness.  Will blog about this trip over next few weeks. Thanked the gods in every temple we visited, for giving me San in this life.

If my life had a jingle it will be "Sundar, brought to you by Sangeetha!". Somehow this girl I had just met, took a huge chance on me knowing I was a basketcase, and decided to make something of a life for both of us.

Did pray for all my family and friends as well, every chance I got. 

Jr. called me to say "don't over pray or the gods will get bored!".  That didn't stop me!

Jotting down our trip stops in this post, as a memory marker to write subsequent posts.. Eventually will link all of them here.. 

Day 1 (in India) : Land in Mumbai and within 3 hours visit Mahalakshmi, Siddhi Vinayak

Day 2: Chedda Nagar Murugan temple Abhishegam (highlight 1)

Day 3: spent shopping and eating out!

Day 4: fly to Chennai

Day 5: Kapaleeshwar temple, valeeswarar, Saradhambal temple, Vembadi vinayagar

Day 6 : train to Rameshwaram

Day 7: Ramanadhaswamy temple and bath in the 22 wells (trip highlight 2), Ramar padam, Panchamukha Hanuman temple, Lakshmana theertham, Thiruppulaani, Uttarakosamangai and off to Madurai

Day 8: Meenakshi Amman temple, Koodal Azhagar, Noopura gangai, Pazhamudhir Solai temple, Kalazhaghar, Thiruparangundram, Thiruperundhurai Aavudaiyaar kovil, Pudukkottai Bhuvaneshwari amman temple and off to Trichy

Day 9: Sreeranganathar, Jambulingeshwarar, Gunaseelam Perumal (this was the 3rd and biggest trip highlight), Thirupaanjali Siva-Yaman temple, Thiruvellarai temple, Uttamar kovil and off to Tanjore with a stop at the Palace museum and Brighadeeswara temple (Tanjavoor Periya kovil) and off by train to Thrissur

Day 10 : Vadakkumnathan temple, Thiruvambady Krishna temple, then to Guruvayoor temple, Maamiyur Shiva Vishnu temple then drive to Cochin and fly back to Mumbai

Day 11 : Santoshi Maa temple in Chembur and a movie with San in the evening (Fighter.. meh!)

Day 12 : Juma Hanuman temple, Saradhambaal temple, Lakshmi Narasimhar temple (Ahobila mutt's) all in Chembur followed by two back to back movies (my in-laws live right next to a movie theater complex.. we can walk down and it is there!! and the theaters are mostly empty!).. DUNE 2 and Laapata Ladies which we loved.

Day 13 : pack and Visit Jio world Plaza and take off early the following morning from Mumbai to SFO with a layover in BLR

Hopefully have mentioned all the major places where we stopped. 

We fell at my parents feet for blessings and my dad who seems to be floating in space and time and he blessed us saying "now that you are married, may you have a child.. a boy!". My mom smiled and said "let it go".. she knows my take on the "boy child" blessing. I usually burn people to ashes (or try to) with my gaze when folks in India make this an issue with not having boys.  My dad is past all that. So it was easy to let it go. All that yoga has really helped. We made it to see him, even if for a few hours to wish him for his 85th birthday. It was a short and sweet flying visit. 

Grateful to all the higher powers for giving us two wonderful kids and did make it a point to say thanks. 

We do not know when we will visit India.. it might not happen anytime soon given work trajectories and kids getting busier in college. 

There is a saying "you don't get to see god when you want to.. you get to see them if they want to see you!" 

If I had to look for a highlight photo of this trip.. this is it.. Photo on the left is the first ever portrait we took together at a JC Penny a few months after we were married. Photo on right taken by San's mama at Murugan temple in Mumbai.. San gets prettier by the day (she wore the same Sari after ~25 years to make the point)

There are almost 1400 photos and videos in total to cull through and write about. For once I did't even take my SLR on the trip. Everything on the iPhone where photos were allowed.  Will get to it..

More on the mystery of how women choose men?

If you have been reading this blog long enough... posted "this" way back in 2007. Little has changed except said Ferrari is now married and we dont see too many photos of his wife in white salwars.. that is a sidebar discussion.

Back to the main theme.. do women choose men because they resemble some early version of their dad.. A version they have of their dad when they were toddlers and consider that the "best possible version of a guy"?

The research is still ongoing. This morning, I went to pick up FIL who arrived from India at SFO. It was hilarious to see him walk out in the same shirt I was wearing. So had to take this picture after coming home!

Yes, my shirt is faded thanks to all the chemicals in the Cupertino water and his shirt still retained a lot of the original color.. but we look like two people who could have played Benjamin Button!

His memory is not that good now. We both got the shirts gifted by my co-brothers dad in Australia a good 8 years ago. It is absolutely cozy and is one of my favorite airplane and rainy day shirts. Apparently FIL likes it for the same reason!

This is scary ladies!

The 'Just Married, Please Excuse' Contest

There is a contest on the web to share one's Just Married experience!

Got it through Dipali's blog and it great to read the other entries.

Most of the regulars in this blog have read my post on my marriage to San.

Reposting that "Chocolate vs. Vanilla" entry to be part of this contest..

Chocolate vs. Vanilla

It was a thursday morning. He remembered the day so vividly. "Was it really a thursday?" , he said to himself and went to a website to check. He could not believe it. It was indeed a thursday.

His father had told him that at precisely 10:27 AM on that fateful morning, his life was about to change. "Bah!" was his response, at least in thought, because he was so tongue tied at the moment. He had a million thoughts crossing his mind, and all at once he would erase them all and go into a deep silence, overwhelmed by what was happening to him, all around him.

God, Why did I come back? was the only question where all those thoughts settled.

Just a few days back, he had boarded a plane to India, in hopes of giving his old grandfather a last view of his face! His grandfather, the one person who he loved more than anyone else, was losing his eyesight. Grandpa was requesting that his grandson visit him once, before going into some surgery which had a small chance of success.

He was, in reality, being lured to come back to India, so they could all make him do their bidding. As a collective group his family had decided that the only way they don't loose their darling, was to bring him back home, at any pretext.

He landed in India only to find out that grandpas vision was not in any immediate danger. He was happy, and sad. He knew what that meant. They were going to cajole, convince, or in the event none of that worked, force him to get married!

He told all his relatives that his idea of marriage had changed. He had his own plans. His earlier attempts at trusting his family in finding him a girl ended with disastrous consequences. He had lost all faith in the arranged marriage system. Not to mention that there was this girl who was really getting into his head back in the States.

A year back he had visited India for two weeks. He was becoming more "Americanized" as they all put it! His grand father had come home jubilant one evening "Guess who I ran into at the Vethalai Kadai(Pan shop)? My old friend Ambi!! Apparently he is looking for a match for his grand daughter. He had her horoscope in his bag. I always have a copy of this horoscope in my bag. We went right to the astrologer and guess what the astrologer said? There are 10/10 matches. This IS the girl for our boy!". The whole house was celebrating, except for him.

The next day, the boy got to see a photograph of the girl. She was leaning back on a Maruthi 800 car. He instantly thought of Pythogoras, similar triangles etc. and figured that the girl must be at least 4 to 6 inches taller than him and ten to twenty pounds heavier too.. "This is my destiny?" he thought. The whole family backed the astrologer!!! The girls mom and uncle came to meet him later that day and told his dad, "Your son is extremely outgoing and intelligent. He has a great future. But our daughter looks a lot healthier than him by comparison. So this match will not work out". The family was dejected, more because their little lad was right, and he knew "similar triangles". "No fooling this boy!", they realized.

A week later, a real visit to another 10/10 match. He looked at the girl, the girl looked at him and they felt like they were auditioning for the roles of "long lost siblings". There was no "spark". There was an invisible wall between them with an unheard of dielectric constant. Definitely no chance of sparking!

Then out of the blue, his aunt told them of a colleagues daughter. He remembered that girl. She used to be cute. He told his mom, "why not that girl?".. the prompt response was "we showed both your horoscopes to the astrologer and he said she will go mad within 3 years of marrying you!".

He was thinking of finding and killing that astrologer and saving a few girls from going mad in the future!

More pictures followed in the last days of the trip. He figured out quickly that the higher the matching on the 10 point scale (Pathu poruththam), the more the prospective girl looked like....a boy! Maybe they were subliminally suggesting that he become gay? Was it that his mother rejected all the good looking ones? Was he destined to marry someone he did not like? Did these people who claimed to love him so dearly, even understand what his definition of a good looking, good natured girl was?

The trip came to an end. He went back to the USA. He put marriage out of his mind and started wrapping up his studies. There was no way that an arranged marriage was going to work. He better be open to "falling in love", he told himself! A year later, here he was, duped by a fake cataract operation. It was "Operation Marriage" that he had come to witness.

Two days of lectures, threats, yelling, screaming, not by his dad or mom but pretty much the entire extended family! Subtle threats alternated with blatant threats, brainwashing, his responsibility to the family, his siblings, pressure tactics that would make CIA interrogaters look like high school bullies, it was intolerable. At times he felt like he had come to a house where someone had died. The people sitting all around him with expressions of anger, denial, grief, made him realize that someone had indeed died. The older version of himself. The last three long years, had driven him so far away from his older self that he found himself at odds with his family on almost every view point.

It was decided though, that at 10:27 that morning, as all the stars had divined to his dad, that he would be in front of the Dakshinamoorthy statue in the Kapaleeshwar temple! He knew he was going to meet some girl that his parents had selected. He also knew that he was never leaving Indian soil without getting married. The only thought on his mind was to somehow buy some time! He needed to clear his head, drink lots of coffee, think it over, be ready to get married. Be mentally prepared to live with someone.. live with anyone for that matter. What was he going to do? Get married and take some girl back to the US with him to that one bedroom apartment of his? It was not ready for him to go back to that apartment, leave alone a stranger!

There was no point in thinking anymore. Time was running out. It was 10:15 already and instinctively he bent down and touched the foot stone at the entrance to the temple and touched his eyes. "What am I doing?" was his thought. Wasn't I angry at god just a few minutes ago in that auto-rickshaw on the way to the temple?

Kapaleeshwar temple was one of his favorite hangouts. A place that had only happy memories for him in his life so far. It was a place synonymous with Grandpa, Pradoshams, Chasing peacocks with his baby brother, elephant fights, festivals, ... a rush of memories. Would all those be wiped out with what was about to happen? He did not know.

His father guided him to the Dakshinamoorthy idol, put some sacred ash on his forehead and said "Come with me!". There was no threat in that voice. It was a man who was near tears, almost pleading in his tone. There was no "I am your dad and I said so" tone that had been so dominant in the last few days. It was more of a "Really hoping you will do me this courtesy son. After all that I have done for you..." tone.

He followed quietly. For some reason he remembers blanking out and stepping along the borders between the giant stones that made up the floor. He was stepping, not walking, just like he would when he was a small child visiting that temple..

It was still 10:27. Must have been. They walked towards the inner sanctum and were met with a small group of people who were sitting in a circle on the floor. A grandpa, a grandma, uncle, an adolescent brother, and a girl who was giving them a blank stare! They were introduced. He did not even know her name till then!

There were some background conversations. No. There were some conversations which for some strange reason were delegated to the background in his head. His father and the grandpa said in unision "If you kids want to talk it is okay with us!".

"Talk, you said?" he was thinking. Suddenly, it struck him! Talking came very naturally to him, especially in crisis situations. If ever there was a crisis, where he was required to talk, this was it! He said "yes" and surprisingly the girl said "I would like to talk".

It was not like they could go to the next room and talk. There were so many people there and the odds where that, if they bumped into Tom, Dick and Harry, Harry would have been a relative, friend or an aquaintance. It was a small world! They started walking around the temple in the hot sun. They had almost walked halfway around the temple when she said something for the first time. Earlier she had not said Hi or Hello or given a handshake. It was almost like she had refused to acknowledge his existance!

Her first words to him where:

"Are you also superstitious like your dad?"

!!!!!!!! he looked. !!!!!!!!! indeed. His eyes almost popped out. Mentally he was crossing his hands across his chest waving NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO in 24 point bold, but he was still tongue tied and mananged to blurt out a weak "no" in 8 point italized font. He was downright offended. Does this girl have a clue about what she is talking about? How dare she extrapolate me based on my dad? Just because a boy with a Ph.D. meekly follwed his dad to be in front of an idol at precisely 10:27AM on said thursday, allowed some ash to be applied on his forehead and continued on to meet a girl whose name he did not even know, doesn't mean he is superstitious! Far from it! Did she know anything about what they put him through to become so meek? Did she know that he had no idea where his passport or return tickets were?

For some strange reason, he poured his heart out to the girl over the next half hour. It was a huge temple and at the rate they were walking, would easily take 20 minutes to go around. He noticed that the girl was trying to walk with the side of her feet because the ground was too hot! He was used to it. "Looks like you are not used to walking in the hot sun" he told her, "do you want to go stand in the shade and talk?". "No! It is alright. I can keep walking" came the defiant reply.

They had already crossed the little group waiting for them once, without even acknowledging their presence. The second time, someone waved from the circle. "Need one more round of talks?" came the question. "Why should every family have an uncle who cracks such jokes?" he thought and said "Yes. Would like to talk some more".

Well, this was the deciding round of talks. He told the girl that he really had no plans to marry at this time and he had his own idea of who and how to get married, but things just weren't working out his way. "It happens" she had said. "Shit happens" he had heard. Such a simple view of things, he had thought!

So far he had talked sensibly. Not that he remembered much, except for the fact that the girl had some "keerai" stuck between her teeth and half the time his thought process would be interrupted by "Should I tell her about the greens stuck between her teeth?".

Suddenly, he asked her "What is your expectation in life?".. After those words came out of his mouth, he felt like sucking those words right back in, but it was too late. What the hell was he thinking. Did HE have expectations in life? Did they really matter? Then why the hell did he ask her something that stupid?

To his surprise, the girl actually answered! Did not think. Just answered in a matter of fact way. "I want to be happy!". At that precise moment, satan entered his tongue and he asked another equally ridiculous question "Can you elaborate?". The girl laughed for the first time. "I just want to be happy! There is nothing more to it. Be happy. That is all!"

They had reached the small group of relatives who were all standing up, ready to leave. His dad looked at him and said "Let's go". There was some strange pride in that voice which said "I knew I did right by you this time, boy!". They walked into the inner sanctum and his dad asked "Will you marry this girl?".

His brain did the "million thought juggle" again and he posed himself a quesiton. "You are against marriage at this point in your life. But that is not a choice you seem to have. If you HAD to get married, would you marry this girl?" and the answer inside his head was a resounding YES. This girl would be able to handle him. She believes in "Shit happens" and "Wants to be happy". What more can you ask for?

He looked at his dad and said "Yes".

They walked back in silence to the group that came out of the other sanctum. My grand daughter says "Yes", declared the grandpa.

His dad took it as though it was expected. Of course she was going to say "Yes" was his reaction. Was he so sure that his son would appeal to the girl? Was he so sure that the Dakshinamoorthy idol would do its job? The boy was for lack of a better word "stupefied"!

"She said "What?" to me?! This girl must really see something in me that I don't", he thought, as he walked out of the temple. He could see that the girls brother was double, triple checking with his sister "are you sure?".."he is not that tall?".."are you really sure?".. "can we call mom and dad to fly in to make the rest of the arrangements?" .. he overheard the boy asking his sister as she got into their auto-rickshaw. She must have said "YES" in 24 point bold, because the brother was grinning from ear to ear as he revved up his bike and follwed the auto.

The next thirteen days saw a whirlwind of activity. An engagement, a quick treat for her friends at Saravana Bhavan, where all her friends implored him in secret to get rid of his earring before the wedding (apparently she was embarrased by it!), a marriage ceremony, wedding reception, not to mention a registered wedding, a visa interview, flying arrangements and a trip back to the USA with a bride, all in under two weeks!

So many things could have gone wrong. Somehow, all the 321,515 ducks lined up in a row and a series of events fell along so smoothly that it was beating the odds, by a wide margin! There was definitely some help from the unknown, he thought, as they were walking around the Singapore airport. It was the first time they got to talk to each other, since their marriage, where they were by themselves and they had resolved themselves to what had just happened.

They walked past an ice-cream stand and she had a big smile on her face. She asked "Do you like Chocolate?".

YES, he replied. Finally we both like something ..the same thing.. he thought. "Let me buy two chocolate ice creams. You really like Chocolate?" he beamed.

"No" came the reply. "Actually I don't. I just guessed you must like chocolate because I don't. I like only Vanilla. So far we have nothing we both like! I was just testing to see if it was still true!"

It finally dawned on him that this girl had a 0/10 match with him, yet she was already married to him and they were going to spend a long long time together. This was going to be interesting! What the hell were those astrologers thinking? What was all that stuff about 10:27 and the Dakshinamoorthy idol? Bah! Bah! Bah!

They reached the apartment and settled in over the weekend. While they unpacked, he searched for their marriage certificate in the suitcases. He had to submit photocopies to his workplace to tell them he now had a dependent on his visa!

She stood over his shoulder and said "Show me that. I never got to see our marriage certificate!"

They opened it and the first thing that struck them was the flourishing big signature in green ink at the bottom of the page

Marriage Certified by the Sub-Registrar of Mylapore

G. Dakshinamoorthy


So, it was true. Dakshinamoorthy, had indeed, got them married!

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That was the original post! Now here is an addition for the repost..

Thanks to Yashodhara for making me go back and read that post. Every memory is etched in my head forever but it is fun to have an action replay in my head!

God, the matchmaker

Sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of my wife, as she is doing something in all seriousness as part of her daily routine, there is this feeling, that is a mixture of elation, pride, thankfulness followed by a flutter that is heartfelt.

There is no valid explanation for why we ended up together, or what makes us tick as a couple or why this woman is my world. That is what makes it all the more interesting. We also have reason to believe that our match was made by the matchmaking Guru himself!

Why does one bring up ones appreciation for his wife or marriage or the matchmaker right now?

The one thing that has kept me deeply distracted from my fathers hospitalization and all the phone calls to India is the visuals and the soundtrack from Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, the latest movie starring one of my all time favorite heroes, ShahRukh Khan.

The story of a boring average man, marrying a vivacious young girl due to fate and chance, trying to win her love by living a double life that is partly his usual boring self and partly his wifes flamboyant wannabe dance partner.

If you read the reviews for this movie, the first thing you will hear is, how lame the heroine must be for not being able to distinguish between her boring husband and her flirty dance partner, essentially the same guy with only a different hairstyle and a pencil thin moustache to disguise him.

You will also read about the stupidity of the hero in trying to test his wife to see if she will chose the boring guy over the dancer because her husband loves her deeply and it is for her to see that love and realize that.

Then the reviews will go on to praise SRK for his acting, the soundtrack, the confidence with which first time heroine Anushka Sharma has acted and danced, the comedy of Phatak, etc.

What is most interesting in this movie is the realism. Okay, realism in an SRK bollywood movie is mostly seen as an oxymoron by most. So, I will have to explain, that too with a personal perspective.

Once upon a time, a young lad who came to the USA about sixteen odd years ago was a hopeless romantic. He did not even know that he was the hopeless romantic type because he had no time for girls or women till then.

One fine day, he started writing poems and started dreaming with his eyes open. As a girl put it, he hit puberty at 22 and went from 16 to 22 in two weeks and still had to learn the difference between love and infatuation. That is when another girl read his poem and quoted a russian saying "good love breeds babies, bad love breeds poems". That just confused him a lot more. He started saying cliches like "Women!"

Being a Ph.D. student, any methodical attempts to systematically understand women, what they want, why they want, how they want, etc. ended up consistantly with singularities, infinite loops, moebius strips and more cliches.

At the same time another profound piece of advice from an elder cousin, "If a girl says she is interested in you, kisses you, even sleeps with you, it still doesn't mean she loves you. It just means she wanted to kiss you or sleep with you!". Hmm, with advice like that, the Ph.D. in love had its graduation date moved indefinitely.

The quest for love or at least a simpler understanding of what consituted love continued. Then came dancing! Ballroom dancing is complicated. The music and the motions are easy, it is the emotions that are difficult minefields.

Once a famous dance instructor, taught a group of dancers a very simple lesson, when we were in the UK for a dance competition. (Yes, you could get paid trips to the UK to compete in dance competitions). He asked all the men and women to line up on opposite sides of the floor. Then the women got to pick a random partner. The men held the women with a single hand hold and the women were asked to move around the men, while still in that hand hold.

He would ask the women to move close in normal hold (1 foot away), then get close within inches of each others face, make the woman move away and turn her back (3 feet away), walk behind the man and around him, etc. etc. He asked the women to describe the emotion they saw on the mens faces, that too after we switched partners a few times.

The statistic was overwhelming. The men smiled when the women drew close and showed sadness when the women went away. They were so transparent! What was really surprising was that the women also smiled when they came closer to the men and stopped smiling when they moved away.

That whole statistic might be skewed by the fact that everyone in that room was a ballroom dancer. It is like looking at a fishbowl and explaining how all fishes like the water, so take it for what it is worth.

Based on that above experiment, one should realize that irrespective of chemistry there is some emotion that comes through in dancing with a partner. To top things off, if that girl happens to be gorgeous, skimpily clad or both, you have to focus on the dancing and tone down on the emoting! That part is easy if you respect the woman. There is no "Rakhi" required!

Is there a higher probability of dance partners falling in love? Maybe, maybe not. Dancing with a person doesn't make you fall in love. Falling in love with a person might make you want to dance! That part comes from the heart. Will swear by it!

After surviving years of dancing with women, with only a few scars in my heart, I did find the one destined for me, far away from a dance floor. To this day, the Mrs. and me have not danced together, although she was my best critic.

When someone goes through an arranged marriage with another person they know very little about, barring a few simple things like

a. a smile that lights you up
b. a voice that sounds soothing
c. gorgeous
d. a dress sense that appeals to you
e. gorgeous
f. come to think of it, really gorgeous
g. shy
h. c., e., and f., all over again...

It takes some time to build that relationship, till you realize one fine day that you are indeed head over heels in love, and it is usually for none of the reasons cited above! One can only give the male perspective here, as the female perspective cannot be found, put in words or explained in any language known to man.

Somewhere in the process of building that relationship as a married man, a "family man", even a hopeless romantic gets so caught up with the daily grind that he can become the boring average person, who simply goes about doing his job, making ends meet, getting into a routine, smug in his knowledge of 1001 things you can do on a silicon wafer or 101 ways to change a diaper.

The romantic streak is still alive, but much like a candle wick sucking on that last drop of molten wax, with the flame barely visible. A flame that barely threatens your fingers and tempts you to extinguish it with a simple squeeze. It is a flame nevertheless and given some more wax it can recreate the magic of what it once was.

There is also something to be said about the tacit understanding that passes for love when two people spend a decade together. There is love in mundane things that are said or done, without being specified explicitly. There maybe some love, even in boredom and monotony.

Rab De, presented all this with an amazing realism. The thing that touched a cord was the difference between explicitly expressed love, the type where a guy gets a chance to sweep a woman off her feet, something that is unique because it is not a daily event, something on a grand scale that can make memories, lasting ones, in sharp contrast to implicit tacit love, that is unsaid, given without any expectations.

Unconditional love that is as true in its abstract grandeur even though it has no voilins playing in the backdrop or firecrackers lighting up the sky. A bond that two people can share in silence, a truth that is self consistant within two souls, without the requirement for any reinforcement from anyone else.

Take heart, for there is hope for boring men, who screamed romance openly a few years ago, but have now been delegated to dishwashing duties and diaper changing and somehow don't say "I love you!" enough times in a 24 hour day, but still have that small romantic spark alive in them.

All it takes is some hair gel, sunglasses, tight fitting clothes, take a chance on your dancing and you too can be Jodi No. 1, as long as the Missus co-operates. If she likes to wear spandex, even better!

Loved this movie, and that was easy being an SRK fan. He consistanly manages to make me teary eyed when it comes to sentimental love stories and his goofiness and dancing are a treat to watch. The music is amazing. Your feet just start moving automatically. In the fourteen times I have heard "Tujh mein rab dikhta hai", got goosebumps all 14 times.

Go see it. Just take the moustache/sunglass part in the same spirit as Lois Lane takes Clark Kent/Superman! and you might come out with a smile on your face, and that flame might flicker and grow slightly bigger.

.

When a man gives a woman

This post started as a comment in Dipali's blog. It got too long and became a post here instead!

Fathers are told that the greatest deed a man gets to perform in his lifetime is to give his daughters hand in marriage. The part of the marriage ceremony where the girls father gives away the bride is called Kanya-dhan. Kanya means "virgin" and dhan means "giving" in Sanskrit. The idea of Kanya-dhan being taken literally to be girl-gifting sounds crude, and if taken in todays world, is crude!

Jambu Sastrigal, the man who performed our wedding ceremony explained the significance of Kanyadanam to my FIL during the ceremony..(I was an irritating groom who asked Why? What? for everything). He patiently explained almost every ritual that we performed. Between him and my own grandpa, they had all those rituals covered and most of them pertained to a south Indian marriage where the groom was in his early teens, the girl was still not a teenager (not a woman yet), the whole wedding set in a village setting, arranged marriage, more involvement from parents than the bride and groom, etc. etc.

The priest went on to explain "When you give anything away, you are doing Punyam (more along the lines of "if you love somebody, set them free") and there is no greater punyam than getting your daughter married!" In any case, made my FIL and my father feel elated at the prospect of doing such a great deed!

In todays context though, half the rituals do not make sense because it does not fit todays world. The whole Jaanvasam thing where the groom goes around on a horse or in a "convertible Car" all around the village was to show his face to the local crowd to see if he was already married to anyone! Something along the lines of "if there is anyone who has a problem with this marriage speak up, or forever hold your peace!" in Christian weddings. Today guys go in closed cars around a few blocks in some strange city! Local detective agencies and Google have eventually replaced the car ride today!

If you look at things in the same context, Kanyadhan itself may not mean much to youth. It might still mean something to the parents!

There is something to be said for the marriage ceremony though. The fact that you promise to take care of the person (till death do us apart, in sickness and in health , etc. etc. whatever be the words, whatever be the language .. a living one like English or an arcane one like Sanskrit), the nature of the commitment is somehow put in context when all those people sprinkle rice and flowers on you and bless you as you "get married".

To put it in a geeky nerdy way, it was almost as though a wormhole opened and somehow some deep connections were made in my brain that would take that moment in time and freeze frame it inside my head for the rest of my life. Somehow, that point in time and space has become a new origin for me and it was all because of the ambience. Some credit does go to the gorgeous bride sitting on her dads knees and the dimple on her chin as she looked down and smiled, but most of the credit goes to the ambience. The sight of a sea of people who had come to bless the union, the sound of those people and the priests wishing you well, the smell of garlands, incense, ghee, camphor, smoke.. it was a combination of all those things!

We did have a registered wedding as well with our parents and a witness, but it pales in comparison to the experience of the "kanyadanam" ceremony! Somehow I would have missed all that in the registered wedding. (San agrees!).

If you are a south Indian bride or groom tossing between a formal wedding ceremony and a registered wedding, go for the formal ceremony, if and only if you will have almost a thousand people at your wedding, both of you are willing to go through that ceremony, you have a priest who explains things in context and most importantly, you have an open mind to a great cultural experience!

It will be worth it!

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