Of Heavenly Marriages.

Well i am 22 now.

I am now in the final stages of my education(I may not pass out in 4 years and might get an extention, but that is a topic for a whole new blog). I am a little scared to enter the big bad world after living off my dad for all these years. Especially when my dad reminded me that he would like to have his credit card back in May when my semester gets over and i am expected to land a job. Also when my mom said she would like to get me married off in another couple of years. To a girl of her choice (same religion, caste and sub-caste, different family names and Astro Physics permitting saree wearing conservative girl from decent family. She can also be a right mixture of modern and traditional values to convince me that it is not such a bad deal after all. "See...she is a bit modern also!"). As if that didnt scare me enough she also asked me to find "suitable boys" in my college for my sister!

Some days back i attended the marriage of my cousin. Whole loads of junta landed from the "States". With their opulence. Cam-corders, Digi cams, cell phones and ipods as gifts. Make up kits for the young ladies in the family. Costly rugs and joint pain releiving vibrating magnetic devices for the old and arthritic ones. A whole suitcase full of candy and chocolates(some of them had liquor and i ate them all because the others did not like the taste :D). Assorted stationery items(BIC pens and Staedtler pen pencils). Some new born babies who are American citizens because they are born there. Huge suitcases with airline luggage tags. I couldnt believe i had so many relatives let alone so many of them in America. The women arrived a week earlier. Their husbands crash landed right on the marriage mandap because their connecting flight was delayed(your importance increases if you arrive late).

It was actually fun catching up with a lot of cousins after a very long time. They all had valuble advice on how to haul ass to the land of opputunities and each one of them took it upon himself/herself to render said advice in English. Accented English. With the appropriate slang and hand gestures. I fortunately had the added advantage of my dad standing right next to me making sure i was taking in every word like a sponge takes in water. It was also fun watching my dad trying to make conversation with them in English. Accented English again. C'mon dad it took them like just 4 years! Now was probably not the best of times to tell my dad that i have not yet booked my GRE date and have no immediate plans of doing it in the foreseeable future.

Change of location. I move onto the ladies side of the hall to say HI to a few lady cousins and also throw in some choo chweet stuff(for the babies/kids who are always carried around by their respective mother/grandmothers). All of them are simultaneously cribbing about the heavy kancheepuram pattu sarees. They just cant wait to get out of them. I would pay to see how comfortable they are in their business suits and skirts. Each fresh mom tried to cajole her flustered and confused baby/kid to say hi to me. I in turn had to say a lot of choo chweet stuff each time. Some of the kids were too young to pick up any accent. But all of them had chubby cheeks.

I move over to my mom to find out if i had stayed the appropriate amount of time and whether i could skip out. She pounces on me and starts telling me the significance of each ritual performed in the marriage. I realise that the muhurtam is the time when the bride and the groom put some sacred paste made of jaggery on each others heads and that muhurtam is not the time when the groom ties the mangalsutram. After the actual marriage there is another program called the "appaginthalu" where the bride is officially handed over to the groom. There is a lot of senti stuff involved like the bride's mother feeding her curd rice for the last time. This is when all the crying and handkerchief wringing happens. My mom was very quick to point out any discrepancies or deviations from what she perceived to be the original/actual ritual throughout the marriage. She was also very vocal in suggesting that she would allow no such mistakes in MY marriage!

The disadvantage of being a 20 something year old guy with a vehicle is that you just cant stay uninvolved in the marriage. Last minute needs are always conveyed to us with urgency and with a "the whole marriage depends on this" aura and we just have to do a perfect/rush job of it. That is how i found myself on the road at 5 am in the biting cold trying to find cow's milk and tamalapaakulu(pan leaves). I had to wake up a sleeping cow owner and watch while he milked his cow and then had to run over to mozamjahi market to get the required flowers and pan leaves. But i did manage to get back in the nick of time.

Around 3 pm i had lunch and then i left. The marriage passed off smoothly by my family standards. By now the photos must have come too. And in a couple of days the photos will be mailed to the junta far far away in a distant country. Yes they already left.