We successfully carried out three very important events in a little over two weeks in our house. (Apparently the closest anyone came to pulling that off was my friend Loveen's family who had his sister's wedding in Tirupathi, his wedding in Vijayawada and their combined reception in Hyderabad on three consecutive days.) Being very sacred events, we spent a lot of time learning and performing religious ceremonies. A few interesting things I got to learn as a result was:
a) The proper way to take "teertham" (holy water) is to cup your palm with your thumb separating your index finger and the rest and receive the water in the bowl formed between those fingers.
b) After drinking this water it's common for people to rub their hands dry on the back of their heads. It's a very common and a very wrong thing to do. One is not supposed to rub their hands on their heads after drinking teertham.
c) While worshiping Hanuman, one is not supposed to touch his feet. Hanuman suppresses Shani (a God associated with bad omens) with his feet and thus, you don't want to inadvertently touch Shani while worshipping Hanuman.
d) After having one's Thread Ceremony, one is supposed to perform the Sandhyavandanam thrice a day. And if one spends a day and a half without performing the Sandhyavandanam, then the whole process of having had one's Thread ceremony is negated, he is removed from the ranks of the twice-born and one needs to undergo a fresh thread ceremony.
e) The reason for the Sandhyavandanam is that every morning, while the Sun tries to come up, two rakshasas try to keep him down. So you take a handful of water, utter the Gayathri Mantra and then energize this water with the power of the Gayathri and release it into the ground. When everyone (all the Brahmins I suppose) releases this water, the two rakshasas (who are immortal) are stunned and sent into a faint. The Sun then rises. We need to do this everyday so the Sun and rise everyday. So all once borns, remember to thank your twice born brethren, we keep the Sun shining :)
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Last day of "Freedom"
The family arrives tomorrow. It's been a hectic week for me. But it's nothing compared to the effort that everyone else has put it. My mom's insanely organized - and I emphasize both words. She's been planning this forever and I hope the results show up in terms of how smooth everything runs on Sunday. I hope for atleast half the planning and effort for my own wedding.
We leave for the hall tommorow afternoon, after lunch. The Mehndi function is tomorrow evening, which is pretty much an event for all the women folk to get jazzed up before the wedding. In this case we seem to blur the lines between who's allowed and who's not allowed to attend by opening it up to everyone, including males. (I think.) The next day starts early with the "Snathakam", a ritualistic preparation of the groom for the wedding. [You see there are various functions that a boy/man (some of these only for Brahmins) has throughout his life - the naming, the first feeding, the first education, the thread ceremony, the preparation of the groom, the wedding, and I suppose the 60th birthday.] Saturday evening is a visit to the temple followed by a formal welcoming of the groom's party by the bride's party (read: everyone gets new clothes!). Sunday is the actual wedding, the muhurtam is at 11:56am.
The wedding muhurtham as we observe in our family (I don't know what group of people this is common to) is when the bride and the groom put a mixture of jaggery and cumin seeds on each others heads. Incidentally this is exactly what was done at my (and my brother's) thread ceremony muhurtham as well - my parents place that same mixture on my head.
The actual wedding will have a lot of small ceremonies which are a lot of fun - the "I don't want to get married, but I'll change my mind if my Brother-in-law bribes me" trip by the groom, the washing of the groom's feet by the father of the bride as a prelude to asking him to marry his daughter, the bring being carried to the mandapam by the bride's maternal uncles, the pouring of rice on each other by the couple, showing the star Arundhati (one of my favourite names) to the bride by the groom etc.
Since this is a mixed-tradition wedding, I don't know which of these ceremonies will be in the wedding and which will be exchanged for some Tamil customs. Overall it should be a fun wedding.
We leave for the hall tommorow afternoon, after lunch. The Mehndi function is tomorrow evening, which is pretty much an event for all the women folk to get jazzed up before the wedding. In this case we seem to blur the lines between who's allowed and who's not allowed to attend by opening it up to everyone, including males. (I think.) The next day starts early with the "Snathakam", a ritualistic preparation of the groom for the wedding. [You see there are various functions that a boy/man (some of these only for Brahmins) has throughout his life - the naming, the first feeding, the first education, the thread ceremony, the preparation of the groom, the wedding, and I suppose the 60th birthday.] Saturday evening is a visit to the temple followed by a formal welcoming of the groom's party by the bride's party (read: everyone gets new clothes!). Sunday is the actual wedding, the muhurtam is at 11:56am.
The wedding muhurtham as we observe in our family (I don't know what group of people this is common to) is when the bride and the groom put a mixture of jaggery and cumin seeds on each others heads. Incidentally this is exactly what was done at my (and my brother's) thread ceremony muhurtham as well - my parents place that same mixture on my head.
The actual wedding will have a lot of small ceremonies which are a lot of fun - the "I don't want to get married, but I'll change my mind if my Brother-in-law bribes me" trip by the groom, the washing of the groom's feet by the father of the bride as a prelude to asking him to marry his daughter, the bring being carried to the mandapam by the bride's maternal uncles, the pouring of rice on each other by the couple, showing the star Arundhati (one of my favourite names) to the bride by the groom etc.
Since this is a mixed-tradition wedding, I don't know which of these ceremonies will be in the wedding and which will be exchanged for some Tamil customs. Overall it should be a fun wedding.
The big change this trip
The last trip I made to India I was amazed at the proliferation of cell phones. Seemingly everyone had one, including the vegetable vendors and auto drivers. This time the big change I noticed in Hyderabad was the vast number of public toilets!
One of the many reasons I like the US is the easy access to toilets. Even if I have to pay (which I don't) I find it reassuring that I can basically find a toilet (and usually clean ones) within walking distance of most places I find myself in, and definitely when I'm on the road. When I visited London, I had to explicitly keep a list of public toilets (maybe I didn't know where to look) like the one in the museum, and when I needed to use one, I actually changed two trains and walked to the British Museum to use one. (There's also a pay and use stall near the St. Paul's Cathedral if you're making a list.)
But in India, the situation is terrible. Maybe because people (read: Men) don't mind urinating in public, there really wasn't a need to build toilets. There were a few "Sulabh Complex" buildings that you had to be lucky to find when you needed one. But now at various parts of the city there are these public toilets maintained by the city of Hyderabad where you can pay and use their facilities. In fact you have signs posted around alerting you to their presence - "Public toilet less then 1km this way -> ." It's incredible!
One small complaint though. Toilets in India are light years behind what they need to be. BTW, I'm not really not obsessed with toilets even though my friends and I made a point of visiting every single toilet on our first trip to the US, in all the flights and airports and I wrote about it in my webpage after that. Coming back, even in the best restaurants, multiplexes, malls and other places, the toilets are pretty crappy (no pun). They're all still "wet toilets" and I haven't seen a single bathroom with good washbasins let alone toilet paper - which apparently is one US cultural import that didn't result from the call centre and IT boom. On one hand George Costanza would be very useful here in terms of knowing which the good public bathrooms are. On the other hand Jerry Seinfeld would almost never enter one of these. (Come of think of it, that's what Elaine actually did in the reverse episode).
One of the many reasons I like the US is the easy access to toilets. Even if I have to pay (which I don't) I find it reassuring that I can basically find a toilet (and usually clean ones) within walking distance of most places I find myself in, and definitely when I'm on the road. When I visited London, I had to explicitly keep a list of public toilets (maybe I didn't know where to look) like the one in the museum, and when I needed to use one, I actually changed two trains and walked to the British Museum to use one. (There's also a pay and use stall near the St. Paul's Cathedral if you're making a list.)
But in India, the situation is terrible. Maybe because people (read: Men) don't mind urinating in public, there really wasn't a need to build toilets. There were a few "Sulabh Complex" buildings that you had to be lucky to find when you needed one. But now at various parts of the city there are these public toilets maintained by the city of Hyderabad where you can pay and use their facilities. In fact you have signs posted around alerting you to their presence - "Public toilet less then 1km this way -> ." It's incredible!
One small complaint though. Toilets in India are light years behind what they need to be. BTW, I'm not really not obsessed with toilets even though my friends and I made a point of visiting every single toilet on our first trip to the US, in all the flights and airports and I wrote about it in my webpage after that. Coming back, even in the best restaurants, multiplexes, malls and other places, the toilets are pretty crappy (no pun). They're all still "wet toilets" and I haven't seen a single bathroom with good washbasins let alone toilet paper - which apparently is one US cultural import that didn't result from the call centre and IT boom. On one hand George Costanza would be very useful here in terms of knowing which the good public bathrooms are. On the other hand Jerry Seinfeld would almost never enter one of these. (Come of think of it, that's what Elaine actually did in the reverse episode).
The Chilkur story and a Tirumala rant
So a question was asked of me about the Chilkur temple - if there are no Hundis or entrance tickets, then how do they run the temple? Turns out there is a very simple answer to that question - a trust. Obviously running the temples takes a finite amount of money, but that money is not "made" through the temple and that's what makes this temple unique.
And that uniqueness is at a threat. Apparently the Govt. of India (or A.P.) can appropriate any temple that it sees fit. I'm guessing it's some weird bastardization of "Eminent Domain." (Or maybe it's exactly Eminent Domain!) They've cast their eyes on the Chilkur temple because of its "profitability". So they're seeking to absorb it through the Endowments Department. There're a lot of protests against this move by people who want to preserve the sanctity of this temple.
Personally I oppose this takeover. We know how "great" Tirupathi has become. You can't even breathe in the air there without bribing a hundred officials. It's no longer about God or spirituality. I am for the capitalistic idea where everything is for sale, but I draw the line at temples. I'm even opposed to the idea of buying tickets to get into temples. Stand in line like everyone else. Even "VIPs" and politicians have to stand in line like everyone else. It's shameful that I can cut in line ahead of others because I have more money. So I ask that everyone stop going to the temple at Tirumala to lower the "demand" for that temple and consequently give more incentive to everyone involved to make it a "cleaner", a more honest place.
I want there to exist more alternatives to places like Tirupathi. Places like Chilkur. Where everyone (as far as I could see) stood shoulder to shoulder in their worship of God. If we can't even achieve that, I don't see that we've made much progress as a community.
And that uniqueness is at a threat. Apparently the Govt. of India (or A.P.) can appropriate any temple that it sees fit. I'm guessing it's some weird bastardization of "Eminent Domain." (Or maybe it's exactly Eminent Domain!) They've cast their eyes on the Chilkur temple because of its "profitability". So they're seeking to absorb it through the Endowments Department. There're a lot of protests against this move by people who want to preserve the sanctity of this temple.
Personally I oppose this takeover. We know how "great" Tirupathi has become. You can't even breathe in the air there without bribing a hundred officials. It's no longer about God or spirituality. I am for the capitalistic idea where everything is for sale, but I draw the line at temples. I'm even opposed to the idea of buying tickets to get into temples. Stand in line like everyone else. Even "VIPs" and politicians have to stand in line like everyone else. It's shameful that I can cut in line ahead of others because I have more money. So I ask that everyone stop going to the temple at Tirumala to lower the "demand" for that temple and consequently give more incentive to everyone involved to make it a "cleaner", a more honest place.
I want there to exist more alternatives to places like Tirupathi. Places like Chilkur. Where everyone (as far as I could see) stood shoulder to shoulder in their worship of God. If we can't even achieve that, I don't see that we've made much progress as a community.
What's not to negotiate?
Slowly I am realizing that life in India is a whole lot more flexible than I thought it was. You bargain everywhere! At first (when I was very young and then again during my first few trips to India) I thought bargaining was limited to buying vegetables and riding autos. But apparently you can try to lower the price pretty much anywhere.
JBR and I (we hung out one more time yesterday to do some massive shopping and checking out some more places in the city) went to a "wedding mall" yesterday. These wedding malls have come up all over the city since clearly wedding is big business. At this wedding mall after getting what we wanted to get, we strolled into the men's wear section. Being a pretty big mall I thought the prices printed on the clothes were pretty much set in stone. Wrong. Gold store for jewelry, ask for a discount. The only places where we didn't bargain was in restaurants.
Personally I hate bargaining (too much pride) and I also can't bargain. Maybe one those is because of the other. My dad's the best, he can finagle upto a 50% off in electronic stores, but usually around 10%. JBR's pretty good too. My brother just hasn't got the experience but he gets points for trying.
BTW, this negotiation is not limited to the simple act of buying. Needing change at a railway station I walked into a manned phone booth. I asked the guy if he could break a Rs.5 coin for me. "No," came the reply. On a hunch, I just stood there staring at him. Slowly he opened his cash box and dug around and brought out five one-rupee coins. Another incident involved the very unscrupulous people at the temple where my upanayanam was performed. Due to circumstances we couldn't get the function hall cleaned like we'd agreed to do before the event. But we were willing to hire the temple's staff to clean it. What should have been a direct affair turned into a great "good cop, bad cop" routine by the management there - a flat out refusal to let us use their staff and then slowly "giving" ground to us by "letting us talk them into" allowing the usage of the staff.
Can't we all just fix a price and move on?
JBR and I (we hung out one more time yesterday to do some massive shopping and checking out some more places in the city) went to a "wedding mall" yesterday. These wedding malls have come up all over the city since clearly wedding is big business. At this wedding mall after getting what we wanted to get, we strolled into the men's wear section. Being a pretty big mall I thought the prices printed on the clothes were pretty much set in stone. Wrong. Gold store for jewelry, ask for a discount. The only places where we didn't bargain was in restaurants.
Personally I hate bargaining (too much pride) and I also can't bargain. Maybe one those is because of the other. My dad's the best, he can finagle upto a 50% off in electronic stores, but usually around 10%. JBR's pretty good too. My brother just hasn't got the experience but he gets points for trying.
BTW, this negotiation is not limited to the simple act of buying. Needing change at a railway station I walked into a manned phone booth. I asked the guy if he could break a Rs.5 coin for me. "No," came the reply. On a hunch, I just stood there staring at him. Slowly he opened his cash box and dug around and brought out five one-rupee coins. Another incident involved the very unscrupulous people at the temple where my upanayanam was performed. Due to circumstances we couldn't get the function hall cleaned like we'd agreed to do before the event. But we were willing to hire the temple's staff to clean it. What should have been a direct affair turned into a great "good cop, bad cop" routine by the management there - a flat out refusal to let us use their staff and then slowly "giving" ground to us by "letting us talk them into" allowing the usage of the staff.
Can't we all just fix a price and move on?
Monday, March 26, 2007
The last week for marriage prep and Quick hits
It's the home stretch for my brother's wedding. By this time next week he would have been married for over 24 hours. The bride (Uma) arrived in Hyderabad today with her family. We met them at the airport in the middle of a big shopping spree. There are atleast two more such "sprees" to go to in the next couple of days. This doesn't include shopping by the bride's side and shopping by my brother and Uma when they do their hanging out. And here I was thinking we'll have time to go take a vacation as a family! (I'll be pretty free the next three days, so if you have any specific suggestions on what I should do, or see, please let me know.)
Anyway:
Anyway:
- One of the places we went to shop was a big mall called Hyderabad Central. It's a five-storey building with a multiplex (PVR Cinemas) on top. There was a significant range of choices for all sorts of purchases but I was personally peeved at the service at one of the stores. The guy kept showing us clothes he wanted to show us instead of the clothes we wanted to see, and he was horrible at getting to understand what style of clothes we were looking for. Say what you will but "personal shopping" takes a lot of talent. And apparently this guy had been doing this for 10 years! I was about to give him a piece of my mind but decided that someone who was this bad after 10 years just couldn't be taught.
- The pace of life here is amazing. Everything's so relaxed. The thing that cracked me up the most was how it was impossible to find the runtime of a movie. When JBR and I went to watch a movie, we tried to plan out the whole evening to within 10 mins. (If you know me, you'll understand.) So when we found out a certain movie starts at 3:15pm, we wanted to know when it would end so we could plan our next item. It was impossible to find. No paper would mention it in their review, no local website either. The theatre itself had no mention and lastly the person selling the tickets had no idea either. Traffic too is so bad that it's impossible to stick to any timings. (I'm not just talking about peak hours, there are areas where rush hour lasts from 7am to midnight.)(Yes I realize the irony of "rush hours" and "relaxed schedules" but I'm sure you get the meaning.)
- Many of you might not know a lot about this but 14 villagers were shot during the second week of March in West Bengal. This happened right around the time I landed in India and being busy with stuff this went into my backburner. But I've been reading more about this and hope to get a small discussion on this topic soon.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
What goes around, comes around
India has virtually been eliminated from the World Cup after their loss to Sri Lanka. Make no mistake, barring a surprising loss by a motivated Bangladesh (a Test playing nation) to a team of "weekend cricketers" in Bermuda, India is out. And even if they do make it to the next level, it'll be a shame to sneak in on such an embarrassing note. While everyone's quick to blame the team for the loss, let's not forget the shockingly bad LBW decisions that were missed by the umpires. The bowlers bowled their hearts out with special mention to Ajit Agarkar. But the batsmen failed their tasks once again. How you go from scoring 413 to failing to chase 250 (regardless of the opponents) I'll never understand. Or forgive.
(A bitterly funny fact here is that two of the largest cricket playing nations have been eliminated from the World Cup at this point. Which is a huge hit for the sponsors. So there is talk that the crucial match between Bangladesh and Bermuda will be fixed by the sponsors to keep India in the Cup and hence the one Billion strong market still biting at the ads.
India is the largest cricket playing nation in the world. Calling it an obsession here is understating it. People live and die by it. The recent successes and huge TV contracts led to the players making obscene amounts of money. They're more visible in the streets and on TV in ads than the movie stars. But of course, the adulation they received is nothing compared to the brickbats they received when they lost at first to Bangladesh and now to Sri Lanka. People went as far as protesting in front of the house of a former player Venkatapathy Raju. Why? Because he's on the selection committee. In fact one of the questions that was asked of the captain Rahul Dravid was if he fears for his safety when he lands in India.
A very relevant question in light of the death, and what has now been termed a murder, of the Pakistani Cricket coach Bob Woolmer. Woolmer, a world renowned strategist was found dead in his bed. At first it was announced that he died of a heart attack, attributed to the high stress of his job. I for one took the news at face value. But almost everyone I talked to India (my family and friends) immediately started referring to it as a murder and half-jokingly make comments about "those murderous fanatics" (Pakistani players and fans). A few days later speculation turned into certainity as the police announced they would treat it like a homicide. Woolmer's wife who at first denied all "conspiracy theories" about her husband's death, soon recanted and said that she did not rule out foul play. (Me thinks she was threatened too. You say "Duh!"?)
It's a really sad state of affairs in the subcontinent. The rivalry between India and Pakistan has always been intense and one that I personally have enjoyed a lot regardless of the outcomes of each game. While their World Cup victory has been more recent than ours, I've always enjoyed the fact that we've always beaten them in World Cups. Even now, the only reason the reaction following the Indian loss was more sober was because of the Pakistani loss. Nothing cheers up an Indian fan more than a Pakistani loss, probably even more than an Indian win, to the point that the sentiment has been "I don't care if you don't win the World Cup, but don't lose to Pakistan there." (I'm sure the sentiment is reflected in Pakistan.) But a sadder way in which the Indian scene is better than the Pakistani one is that they're a few degrees more obsessed with cricket than we are. While we burn effigies and destroy property, they take lives. Last World Cup a fan shot himself after Pakistan lost to India. Their coach was murdered a few days ago. Not that we're a whole lot better - a fan in Hyderabad (India) died of a heart attack the night of the loss to Sri Lanka. It was really sad to see the picture of his young widow (the guy was only 28) in the paper today, such a meaningless death.
Let me echo the sentiments of countless editorials in the papers here. It's just a game, people really need to stop taking these losses so hard, just like they need to stop worshipping all the players after every single knock of 50 runs. They're mortals, and it's a team game. So slow down and just enjoy the game.
(A bitterly funny fact here is that two of the largest cricket playing nations have been eliminated from the World Cup at this point. Which is a huge hit for the sponsors. So there is talk that the crucial match between Bangladesh and Bermuda will be fixed by the sponsors to keep India in the Cup and hence the one Billion strong market still biting at the ads.
India is the largest cricket playing nation in the world. Calling it an obsession here is understating it. People live and die by it. The recent successes and huge TV contracts led to the players making obscene amounts of money. They're more visible in the streets and on TV in ads than the movie stars. But of course, the adulation they received is nothing compared to the brickbats they received when they lost at first to Bangladesh and now to Sri Lanka. People went as far as protesting in front of the house of a former player Venkatapathy Raju. Why? Because he's on the selection committee. In fact one of the questions that was asked of the captain Rahul Dravid was if he fears for his safety when he lands in India.
A very relevant question in light of the death, and what has now been termed a murder, of the Pakistani Cricket coach Bob Woolmer. Woolmer, a world renowned strategist was found dead in his bed. At first it was announced that he died of a heart attack, attributed to the high stress of his job. I for one took the news at face value. But almost everyone I talked to India (my family and friends) immediately started referring to it as a murder and half-jokingly make comments about "those murderous fanatics" (Pakistani players and fans). A few days later speculation turned into certainity as the police announced they would treat it like a homicide. Woolmer's wife who at first denied all "conspiracy theories" about her husband's death, soon recanted and said that she did not rule out foul play. (Me thinks she was threatened too. You say "Duh!"?)
It's a really sad state of affairs in the subcontinent. The rivalry between India and Pakistan has always been intense and one that I personally have enjoyed a lot regardless of the outcomes of each game. While their World Cup victory has been more recent than ours, I've always enjoyed the fact that we've always beaten them in World Cups. Even now, the only reason the reaction following the Indian loss was more sober was because of the Pakistani loss. Nothing cheers up an Indian fan more than a Pakistani loss, probably even more than an Indian win, to the point that the sentiment has been "I don't care if you don't win the World Cup, but don't lose to Pakistan there." (I'm sure the sentiment is reflected in Pakistan.) But a sadder way in which the Indian scene is better than the Pakistani one is that they're a few degrees more obsessed with cricket than we are. While we burn effigies and destroy property, they take lives. Last World Cup a fan shot himself after Pakistan lost to India. Their coach was murdered a few days ago. Not that we're a whole lot better - a fan in Hyderabad (India) died of a heart attack the night of the loss to Sri Lanka. It was really sad to see the picture of his young widow (the guy was only 28) in the paper today, such a meaningless death.
Let me echo the sentiments of countless editorials in the papers here. It's just a game, people really need to stop taking these losses so hard, just like they need to stop worshipping all the players after every single knock of 50 runs. They're mortals, and it's a team game. So slow down and just enjoy the game.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)