Wedding Diaries- Part 4

You know how some wise person said all that people care about a wedding are the pictures.. (And the getting married. But that comes second really!)
The hassle about picking the right location, theme or not theme, if theme then choose decoration.. (oh wait, my writing sounds like code now. That is definitely not a good sign. Should. write. more. often), from picking the right saree/outfit to choosing the matching mojari (aka sherwani sandals) - every step of the process is simply a coin dropped into the bucket of "the pictures should be good" and what will my Instagram 
followers think".

Knowing this on some level, I figured that what really mattered in the long run was finding the right photographer and finding the right clothes.


First the clothes.
I had about 2 weeks to shop. I wanted to be there for the shopping, and one might say I brought it upon myself.... but the two sarees I let someone else pick were such utter disasters that if I didn't want to look like a cross between Godzilla and Christmas lights, I better pick my clothes myself! The downside to that was walking up and down the streets of T.Nagar trying to find good sarees.

Apparently, the minute you breathe the words "wedding" or "bride" people see you  like this:

Plus, saree shopping required a bunch of tricky constraints to be met. You want a good silk material and potentially some sequin work or whatever, but not so much that it would be unwearable in the Tamil Nadu heat. But then again, it should meet the grandeur scale expectations, which in many people's minds translates to social status - so if you wore something a tad simpler they would think you were begging in the streets of Dharavi or something. With my natural instincts primed to pick sarees that would go well in board rooms of conservative East Coast banks, it was more than an ordeal for me narrowing the right one. And what with inadvertently mentioning the word "wedding" in the stores, the store guy would insist I try on each saree I even vaguely considered. But that's not it.

I don't know which bride had the brilliant idea of color-coordinating clothes with the groom. (Of course, it was the bride's idea, however much the nerd-looking-sarcasm-spewing-feminist-inside-me complains!) But that has spawned off a whole other set of shopping difficulties. Love a purple saree? No, can't do- a purple sherwani would look like the groom came straight from Bombay circus. Found a beautiful bottle green? But that doesn't go with the rest of the theme. And then there were the traditional no-nos of white or black, apparently Indians like the gray areas a lot more (trying so hard not to make an India-bashing joke here).
So finally after spending endless hours in endless stores and clogging practically all of the T-mobile international data bandwidth with saree pictures, I had a good mind to call it all off and walk in with a T-shirt and good ole denims. Ha, I wish...

With all that effort going in, one would think I would have escaped the Bridezilla fate and come out stunning on D-Day. I say it again "Ha, I wish".

(To be contd.)

The Wedding Diaries- Part 3

Ya I know  it's been a millenium since my last post. You see, right now I am part of a scientific experiment at my job where they keep loading me with more work and every two hours they check if they have managed to kill me yet. And every time, I go "Surpriiiise, I am still alive!!"
So in order to keep my sanity, I thought I should go back to blogging. So, here goes....

(Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.)
 
Long story short, at some point everyone involved agreed that the wedding was going to happen. (I will get to the whole reason-arrange-marriage thing at the end.) By this time, I thought the "difficult" part was mostly over. Everyone was on board, after all. If this were a cartoon , this is the point where the devil would be lurking in the corner saying "You wish" and grinning evilly.

Yes. Wedding prep.

I knew that entire wars have been fought over wedding details and the carcasses were enough to send Asoka to Buddhism, so I thought I shouldn't be too involved. In fact, I started out with the naive idea that I didn't care too much about this stuff and I would not worry about making the choices. (After all, I got to make the biggest choice aka the groom) And things would have gone on fine......

But once I saw a sample invitation that came in dirty violet with golden tassles and yellow-green text, I realized I did care about this stuff on some level. I did want the pretty invitations and beautiful text- an invitation that was elegant, minimalistic and somehow had a tinge of wedding-grandness at the same time. To quote Meryl Streep....

Turned out I was.

After a few whatsapp and gmail threads with loads of pictures, I realized one thing- the perfect ones were either too expensive or just too high maintenance. The ones that appeared to be in my league were either "good-but-not-my-type", "meh" or "really terrible, I cannot believe I am even considering this. I must be getting desperate". In the end, I just realized you have gotta pick one anyway and hope that it would work out in the long run.
Yes, yes. I am still talking about the invitations. Not. The. Groom.

Anyway, after that fire was put out came the invitation text. I am sure I drove the printing guy crazy with my grammar nazi-ness by having 4 reprints of the prototype. In my defense, I could obviously not have my name spelled "suchira"  (with the 's' in lowercase') or Irvine spelled "Inwine". Seriously!

Then came the menus. As a food lover, I thought I should have a say in this even though everyone insisted I wouldn't be getting to eat much of it.
So I was trying really hard to include items that different sections of guests would appreciate (or at least to serve the principle that nobody should go home hungry!) But then our original caterer bailed out because our mandap wala said "No buffet" (I know, what is up with THAT!?! That too in a place with a characteristically Western name - Salem.) So we had to settle for a South Indian caterer who promised to make Naans and some paneer thing (I forget what), but from the minute I saw his menu written in Tamil, I knew he was one of the types to spell Gobhi as Gopi and my expectations spiralled down. 
I still had to ensure there was at least a mix of dishes in the menu and that the chef  didn't put anything that was technically correct but practically incriminating like fake meat. Not that that helped. On D-Day most of his dishes reminded me of hostel food anyway. 
Of course I had to repeat the charade again for 2 more receptions- and also ensure that they didn't all look the same. If someone is thinking I should have written a script for generating menus - I agree. I don't know why it didn't occur to me then.

You know just writing this out is tiring. And that's not even midway. We still had the theme and decorations, clothes and all that other stuff to go..

(To be contd.)

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Oh, the reason for not liking arranged marriage. I am thinking I will make it one of those things like the face of this lady:

We'll keep mentioning it, but probably never reveal it.. :D
So, for now, That's all folks!

The Wedding Diaries- Part 2

Whew. Part 2 is finally here...

I have a confession to make. I have never been a fan of marriage. Sometime when I was in 3rd or 4th grade, I decided never to get married. The idea of spending one's entire life with a stranger simply freaked me out. This was perhaps because of the kind of marriages I saw then. (They were all "arranged marriages". Dating was a word unheard of in our circles, and "love marriage" was a term used with tones worse than "murder" and "embezzlement".) Most marriages involved two people meeting once (ONCE!) and talking for about half an hour before deciding to get engaged. At the time, this sounded too scary- with half an hour of conversation, I wouldn't even be able to say if someone would make a good friend or not, how was I to decide whether I could live with them? What if the person I met didn't like Enid Blyton? Or didn't know what treacle tart was? (By the way, I have never actually tasted treacle tart in my life. It just sounded delicious when Blyton wrote about it. So did apple pie and fresh strawberries and cream. In fact, I think Enid Blyton is partly to blame for my sweet tooth and general love of food. The rest is probably genetics. Oh wait, I digress.) I think my worst fear then was that I would get married to someone who liked DragonBallZ. (Little did I know my worst fear would come true!!)

Anyway, my biggest qualm with marriages (or "arranged marriages") was that I couldn't commit to marrying someone I didn't know well enough. I knew most people around me were OK with doing that, but I wasn't. And the Sujatha short stories of women who got married to intellectually incompatible men didn't help. (Mom, I hate to admit it, but you were partly right all along. The books WERE to blame!) Nor did the K.Balachander notions of "love"- by which he often meant "connecting with" a person, not stalking them after seeing them once in a city bus. (Aside, I am sorry that no other Tamil director ever picked that idea up. Tamil heroes still think stalking a woman till she relents is ok, and Tamil movie love is still mostly about "eye candy", not compatibility.) Anyway, I didn't think I could live very happily if my husband didn't "get me" and the chances of finding someone who did, didn't seem very high.

Of course, as I grew up, I expanded my definitions of the marriage process. More people talked about having things in common and talking/meeting multiple times before getting engaged, so it wasn't half as bleak. But during that time, my expectations grew as well. By the time I was 20, while I no longer cared about having the same favorite authors, I did care about sharing common goals (do we really want to buy a house before 30?)  and values (are we put on Earth with a higher purpose?), conflict resolution (can we find a good method to decide who does the dishes?) and most of all, about understanding the way each other thinks. Which, to me, meant an even lower probability of finding Mr.Right over a few conversations.


This is also the time I realized that if I was skeptical about marriage in general, I was 100 times more skeptical about arranged marriages. I barely made friends with people, how was I going to find someone who could be much more than a friend to me? Plus, finding someone who I liked, who understood me, and who fell into the same stratum of society that I did, while coming from a family that my family would get along with and happen to run into during the process of "searching" was like trying to find prime numbers larger than a googol. And unlike mathematics, I didn't have infinite time on my hands nor did I care enough to spend that much time on a search process. But more than anything else, I didn't see this kind of search as practical in my family. I could picture exactly what would happen after I said "No" for more than 3-4 horoscope matches:
(The following conversation is imaginary and a tad hyperbolic. No offense to my mom.)

Mom: Now what was wrong with THIS boy? Why did you have to reject him? (Sounding a lot like Ambi saying "Enaku oru concrete reason venum, Nandhini").
Me: This is not going to work out ma. We are just not compatible.
Mom: What compatible? IITB and Harvard MBA. He is earning so well. You can live like a princess. And he looks so good also, ajanubahu-va, fair-a Hindi actor maadhiri dhaane irukkan.  
Me: It's not about being fair ma. He doesn't like reading and his idea of trying new cuisines is molagootal. I don't even know what to talk to him about. We just won't gel. 
Mom: What gel, paste and all..  Last time the boy's profile said he likes reading and you still rejected him.
Me: Amma, that guy was too mature. We had similar interests, but there was no chemistry. We would make good friends, but that's about it.
Mom: What chemistry, physics and all, talking like Vijay TV anchors! Are you going to participate in Maanada Mayilaada after marriage? Why do you need chemistry?
Me: I don't know how to explain it, amma. The spark wasn't there. We had a lot in common. Maybe too much in common.
Mom: Now you are talking like KamalaHassan only. It feels like you are saying something, but nobody can understand what you mean. See our pakkathu flat Ananya. She married the first boy her parents found and now her son is going to preschool in Boston. I think all your reading is spoiling you.
...

Which brings me to a different point altogether. "Chemistry". Also called the "seeing someone that way". I cannot imagine ever explaining that to anyone, definitely not my family. I have interacted with many men with whom I have a lot in common, yet I couldn't possibly consider getting married to any of them. However, in the arranged marriage process, I was bound to run into a few "perfectly fine" people whom I would have to refuse , and provide explanations to my family about; all the while feeling a little guilty and wondering if I was letting good opportunities slip through my fingers. It sounded too stressful to me.

But beyond all of this, I had one big reason why an "arranged marriage" would never work for me. It was the same reason I didn't think "dating" would work for me either...

(To be continued..) 

P.S: The title has been changed from "The Marriage Diaries" to "The Wedding Diaries" after someone pointed it out. I started out the series hoping to write about the "marriage" but it's only been a few months and the series is mostly in the wedding territory, so changed.

The Wedding Diaries- Part 1

I have been married for more than a month now- technically, a month and 13 days. That is, a month and 13 days when I started this post, not when I posted it. By the time I posted it I had been married 2 months and 21 days. Procrastination and all that....

For a long time, I thought I would refrain from writing about my marriage. I do not really agree with the line of thinking that marriage is the most important event in your life, just as I never agreed with our teachers' vehement insistence that "Class XII is the turning point of your life" (TBH, every year of school, teachers said THAT year was the most important school year. Much like mankind in general deludes itself into believing we are at the turning point of human civilization, our generation makes a tryst with destiny and so forth. Anyway, I digress. As usual.) My point was - I don't need to really dedicate a post (or a series thereof) to marriage.

But, then again, just as Jon Stewart gets constantly tempted to mock Fox News,  Rajkumar Hirani cannot resist adding father-daughter senti, Kamal cannot stop mentioning rape* and making fun of Tambrahms (or using "Pallaandu Pallaandu in his songs! :-/ ), Nolan cannot help hiring Michael Cain even after he becomes a tottering old man, and Krish Ashok has to fall back on TR any time he cannot think of anything else** and ... oh, well, I got lost along the list, didn't I? I meant to say that writers and artists tend to go weak in their knees when they see obvious material, and I am no exception! Even though I think marriage isn't all that big a deal, there was so much involved that had to be written down for eternity (or until whenever the Google servers last), that I couldn't resist.

Day 2- The flaw

You might wonder why I skipped the last five days. Well, that's what today's post is going to be about.
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In Shakespearean tragedies, the main character often has one major flaw. In some ways the entire plot is about how that flaw affects the character at different points in his life, ultimately leading to his death (thus leading to the term 'fatal flaw'). When I used to read Shakespeare in school, I often wondered why the character was never able to overcome his fatal flaw- it was so obvious to me that all his problems were a result of this flaw, that I thought it should have been obvious to him (aka the character) too.*

As I grew up, I realized that flaws do not work that way. The flaw is a flaw often because it is so much part of the person's personality that he does not even notice it or because he is not able to overcome it even if he wants to. I do not want to get into the discussion of whether this means the flaws are innate or not; just that often they are close to insurmountable. Then, as an intelligent (or reasoning) individual, it becomes our duty to look for such flaws within ourselves. Of course, this is easier said than done. The true flaws are the ones that are bound to hide beneath layers of purported reason, and usually ones we would hate to admit.

So the reason I am writing all this today is because I realized that my fundamental flaw is "losing interest after starting". 

Let me explain. I am usually passionate about new ideas, new activities, and definitely new challenges. However, at a point where the challenge seems workable, or I can see a "path to success", it ceases to become interesting to me. That does not mean that I never finish anything I start, just that often it is out of necessity or a sense of habit or commitment than out of an interest equal in magnitude to what I had when I started. Now this stuff has been obvious to me for a while now, but somehow I did not see it as my "one big flaw". However, once I started thinking about the number of things I have started but lost interest in, it became pretty obvious to me that if I were in a Shakespearean tragedy, lit students would be discussing how "losing interest quickly" led to my demise, and then would silently wonder why I did not see it myself :D

Anyhow, now that I have realized it, I have decided to basically "eat the frog" for every thing I take up. This one month challenge included. And that means, I will try to actually finish this challenge successfully :)


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*Reminds me of a recent "Flash boys" quote- "When something becomes obvious to you, you begin to think that somebody else must have already thought of this."

The man of many words

When I started out this blog, I wanted it not to be personal at all. I meant to write more about "ideas" than "emotions"; thoughts more than feelings. Of course, as time went by, a few personal posts crept in surreptitiously, but that was more inadvertent than intentional. Today, however, I want to make an exception and write about someone who had an almost life-changing influence on me. I want to make the exception for 3 reasons- first, like Wynand says "All love is making exception." and I loved this person too much. But more importantly, I might argue he is one of the biggest reasons this blog exists. In fact, he is the single most important reason I write (and read as much as I do).
Knowing him to be the simple man that he was, for some time I wondered if it would be appropriate to write about him (initially it sounded a little exhibitionist to me). But I decided to go ahead and make the exception because I always remember him as a wizard with words, as the man who introduced me to the magic of language, and it seems fitting that I use words as a tribute to him now.

The person I refer to here is my thaatha (grandfather, in Tamil, and I speak of my maternal grandfather here.) He passed away yesterday at the age of 96 (in 3 months he would have been 97).
He was a writer and an editor, who participated in India's struggle for independence, and in general a great person who, I like to believe, lived a full life. I do not want to go into the details of his achievements, partly because this article gives a good summary, but more because I feel they do not convey the real "him". (As I mentioned to some of my friends, reading that article only made me feel the way Harry Potter felt at Dumbledore's funeral. I hear the great phrases people use to describe him, but I can only remember the simple jokes he cracked even when he was terribly sick and bedridden. And like Harry does, every time I look at a book or correct a typo, I will remember him.)
Arguably, the real "anyone" is a notion each of us has based on "our" interactions with the person,  and is ironically subjective! So, let me rephrase and say I just want to write about what "I" knew of him, with no concern of whether it is indeed the truest report of reality, whatever that might mean.

My first few memories of life definitely include my thaatha picking out books for me to read. Starting with cartoon books for children and then the Oz series (he owned the entire collection), to O.Henry and "The twenty seventh wife" (a book about the origins of Mormonism and the last one he gave me)- half the books I ever read were recommended by him. Saying he was a voracious reader is like saying Stephen Hawking is a Physics PhD! He continued to ask me about what I was reading every single time I met him (except the last, when he was very sick and unable to talk much), and if it was something he hadn't read yet- a very rare occurrence- he would ask me what it was about and how good it was. His thirst for knowledge and books, even at the age of 95, leaves me mind-blown.

I remember his meticulousness and sense of organization- from the way he would cover books and write "From R.A.P. thaatha to Suchithra" on them before gifting them, to the way he kept his table in complete order even in his 90's- something I clearly did not inherit! I also remember his perfectionism taking a different form- that of the perennial editor- even when he was sick, he would correct typos on the books he was reading. He had also been the first person to criticize my writing- teaching me how a few words could express the same thing as many, but much better. Not just concise, but precise. His choice of words would be exactly that- something that I find awe-inspiring given that he never went to college and was the epitome of the self-made man!
And when a four line poem I sent to a children's magazine got published, the smile on his face spoke pages about the joy he felt- not just concise, but precise. In fact, every time I showed him something I wrote that got published somewhere, however small, he would highlight it and bookmark it- making the little girl feel like the best writer in the world.

If others had not told me about his work, I would probably have thought of him as "a simple Bharathiar researcher" tap-tapping away at his typewriter (which I was completely fascinated by!). I can only guess he took pride in his work, because I have never seen him exhibit anything but the utmost humility. In one of his last interviews to a Tamil magazine (a year ago), when asked if he thought his work had received the recognition it deserved, he just said "We did not work for recognition then. The work I did was its own reward and what I did was nothing in the face of the sacrifices so many great men before us have made". While it might sound cliched to someone who did not know him, to me it only reiterates the self-effacing modesty that glowed in him. I know it was genuine, because amidst all that he told me when I was a kid, he never spoke of himself unless specifically asked. Once, during a time in high school when I was reading a lot of Advaita, I saw him reading something on Vishishtadvaita and asked him what he thought about that branch of philosophy. With his usual unassuming manner, he just said "These are works of geniuses and what I know is so little I cannot dare to comment on it yet!" (Though many of the Advaita texts are very abstruse, he actually had extensive knowledge in that area- just that he would always be extremely humble about it!)

He did tell me a lot of other things though- anecdotes, jokes about the US in the 40's, and many lovely stories which he would narrate with so much animation that a kid could not but listen. I wish I had recorded them then- they would make wonderful bedtime tales for generations to come. These were not just the routine ones from mythology or fairy tale books- there were some peculiar stories which I never heard anywhere else! Then there were the times we saw Snow-white on the "view-master" a kind-of stereoscope from previous decades, and the time he gave me a set of star charts and instruments to identify constellations with (thus sowing seeds for the eternal star-gazer in me!). He also had a bunch of sing-along routines, and little games- things we shall fondly remember him by.

But more than any of this, the connection I felt with him was in letters. Words. Books. It was to some extent an unspoken connection- he would simply talk about how good a book was when he saw me reading it or give me one when I entered his room. It is hard to explain the depth of kinship two people can feel by reading a great piece of literature- but I can tell this bond went beyond blood or genes, forged by the melody of ink and the smell of paper. I shall remember him with every book I pick from a store, with every line of poetry I appreciate, because this was not the bond with a man who gave a fish, but with a man who taught me to fish instead.

In fact, even when I felt the utmost sorrow at his loss, I could hear him say I should learn from this as well- that every event is but an opportunity to learn and inch closer to perfection. And so, even though I am consumed by the love that only a starry-eyed granddaughter can harbor for her dearest grandparent, I bid him a goodbye trying not to regret all that I forgot to ask him, all that I forgot to say, but trying to remember all that I should learn from his life; for he was more than just a grandparent to me- he was one of my first best friends. And ever one of my best teachers.

I will sorely miss you thaatha; and though I have tried my best, I cannot find the words to express completely what I feel right now... So let me just promise you I will try to ensure that the values you lived and taught shall live on...

R.I.P. R.A.P.!