Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Marriage Ingredients

Just over a month ago, I flew back to the US after what was a fun-filled trip back home to India. Every time I return to Chennai on vacation, I find that I’m the center of attention within my family circles, for obvious reasons. “Krish…. Its been so long! You’ve lost so much weight… have you been eating at all?!”. To say that this trip was no exception would be an understatement; I was going to get hitched. Or as Pammi (never one to forgo an opportunity to tease) ceaselessly kept reminding me, I was attending my “life-is-over event”.

We landed in Madras on the early hours of May 1st (strongly coincident with the arrival of the hottest period of summer) to a rousing reception at the airport. Our parents had arrived nice and early to receive us at 4 am (yes, 4 am!) in the morning. This was nothing new to either of us; indeed, my parents had come to the airport to receive me during each one of my previous four trips back home at weird hours of the night. What was new, however, was the home-made gulab-jamun, an on-the-spot-welcome coffee, and the exchange of small fab-India merchandise gift bags. In any event, these scenes set the tone for the pampering (no complaints whatsoever!) that was to come during the next month or so.

To try and detail the events and experiences of the entire month in one blog would be a futile attempt. I’ll therefore restrict this piece to the wedding itself, and the days that led up to it. This in itself can be a voluminous amount of detail; even as I think about all that happened, I realize that it is quantitatively overwhelming. So rather than provide a long, drawn-out chronological account, I have settled on a slightly different approach. One that I think better captures the ‘hodge-podge’ or, as we at home like to call it, the ‘masala’ that typically goes into Indian weddings. Having made a mental list of these “ingredients”, I then simply list and tick them off one by one below as either having been an integral part of, or having not featured in our wedding. I speculate, even surmise that a reader who is only all-too-familiar with these ingredients might initially feel that such a format may be quite redundant, even boring. I can only remind such individuals that no Indian wedding (not even the most traditionally orthodox ones) is short of a few surprises… moments of humor… excitement… anomalies. So read on, and you will not be disappointed! In any event, I suppose you know you’re part of an Indian wedding, or events leading up to it when…

(1)  People all around (relatives, friends, folks you’ve never met before…) work their socks off to organize the event(s), while the bride and groom get royal treatment [After initial offers to help in preparations and proceedings fell on deaf ears, I think it’ll be safe to say that I eventually settled for basking in the limelight, standing back, and watching the action unfold]

(2)  You get to meet/ hangout with four or more generations of family members during the ceremonies… [Box well-and-truly ticked. While nephews and nieces ran amok, grandparents and granduncles/ aunts took their traditionally-allocated, front-row VIP seats at the wedding hall]

(3)  …but also meet several people whom you’ve barely spoken a word to before [At the end of the day’s ceremonies, particularly after the evening reception, our jaws started to hurt on account of having said “Hello! How are you!?” around 800 times in total, and between 500-600 times to people whom we’d never set eyes on before]

(4)  You get to see kids running riot and parents (just for once!) not bothering to stop them [As bride and groom, we were practically given press-box tickets to watch the action unfold, as Pammi’s nieces converted our wedding-hall podium into a virtual playground. To use sporting terminology, quite literally a case of the stage being set for the next generation of stars to take over]

(5)  As the groom, you get to face the ignominy of defeat when your shoes are stolen and stashed away by your sister(s)-in-law [What’s more, they get to ask you for money in return for access to your shoes. Quite the supply-and-demand game. Only here, they forgot/ didn’t know they were dealing with a spoil-sport brother-in-law-to-be who decided to enter the reception hall wearing his dad’s spare shoes. Where there is supply, there is no demand and the market ceases to function]

(6)  As the bride, you spend hours in the salon having make-up and facials done [Only here, it wasn’t just Pammi. In typically grandiose fashion, my mom had booked an entire Salon for an entire day, with food and refreshments organized in-house. We trooped in at various times of the day and got whatever we wanted done. Having never experienced a body-massage before, I must say that it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. On reflection, it was probably a colossal, capitalistic expenditure that could have easily been toned down]

(7)  The groom and bride play a game of garland-throwing [A highly entertaining, goal-scoring tie that ended two apiece]

      (8)  The odd celebrity, whom you had no idea was part of the guest-list, stops by to say hello [Chennai’s legendary dramatist and comedy script writer, ‘Crazy’ Mohan graced our particular occasion; he arrived 15 minutes before the stipulated starting-time of our evening reception. We got to spend five-ten minutes taking photos and hobnobbing with him, but wait… there was someone missing. She was still preoccupied with powdering her nose back-stage, detained by her stylists. For the rest of our time in Chennai, Pammi didn’t hide her disappointment at having missed out on meeting him]

(9)  The groom and his would-be brother(s)-in-law start being chummy, start getting to know each other, and share a drink or two [Only here, I’d already known him for just over a decade. Although we couldn’t find a slot before the day of the wedding itself, Harish and I converted his terrace into a virtual watering-hole a couple of days after the wedding, stashing and polishing off a few cold ones. When we became close friends during undergrad, we could scarcely have imagined that 12 years on, I’d be playing Harry Potter and he Ron Weasley. Weirdly enough, Harish (a.k.a. Bala) more closely resembles Harry Potter in appearance than anyone I know! Its almost uncanny… he even bears a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead]

(10)      Although everyone puts in a shift during prep-week, there is usually one individual who runs the show, barks out orders and instructions, the “go-to person” [I’d gotten the feeling that since taking over the reigns of my grandfather’s tamil magazine (Bharathan publications), my mom’s already impressive energy-levels had gone up several notches. Nowhere was that more evident than during the days leading up to the 8th; She was the Zinedine Zidane of team KB-Nagar, dictating the pace and detail that went into the preparations. A true midfield maestro, the orchestrator. Even maestros need a strong support-cast. Zidane had Henry, Djorkaeff, Desailly, Deschamps et al. Amma had my dad, uncles and aunts, and all the rest of her family. Notably, my sister Gowri ably partnered her in midfield] 

(11)      Cliques of adults get together to play card-games, and there’s plenty of money involved [During South Indian weddings, family members traditionally gather round, spread a huge dhoti to form a make-shift table, and start playing cards. Often-at-times, a whiskey-&-soda co-accompanies, even adds fuel to such proceedings. I suppose it’s a sign of the fast-paced, frantic world that we live in these days that I saw none of that, with people being far too busy in prep work to stop, take a breather, and deal out a deck or two. The only card-games I saw/ got involved in were games of UNO orchestrated by my 12-year-old cousin Sankalp]  

(12)      There’s money involved period [A garland of currency notes… ‘nuf said!]

(13)      There’s food to feed an entire army [Other than blessing the wedding couple, lunch and dinner are the most important things on the agenda for the vast majority of people who attend. As is typical of the bride and the groom, Pammi and I had had a major say on the various items that constituted the menu, with decisions having been made well in advance. Yet we were among those that probably did the least justice to it, not least because we’d reached points of exhaustion from the ceremonies]


(14)      The rituals, a monotonous recital of mostly unfathomable manthras with a priest while sitting around a giant homam or fire, last for three days or so [There was a small fire, but no giant homam. There were rituals, but there was no elaborate schedule. There were manthras, but they (every line) were translated into layperson language. There was also Mr. Arul Mozhi, the Arya Samaj priest. Our rituals, constricted into a two-hour window on the morning of D-day (May 8th ) were a platform for Mr. Mozhi to take center-stage, and take it he did. Every recital was followed by a hilarious attempt at drawing parallels between the strength of a marital relationship, the will of the gods, and the forces of nature. To be fair, at no stage did I feel that Mr. Mozhi went out of his way to impose his philosophies on us. Yet I find it absurd that in general, Hindus proclaim their religion as catering more towards scientific rationale than any other religion, based purely on its “tolerance” and “reverence” for nature. They seem to conveniently overlook that some of the very fundamentals of Hinduism – etched in the creation of multiple, independent, non-transitional life-forms (fish, turtle, wild-boar, lion, man) all from a single all-mighty (Vishnu) – is strongly concordant with conservative/creationist rather than liberal-Darwinian/evolutionary schools of thought. Out of the corner of one eye, I noticed Pammi grinning from ear-to-ear. Out of the other, I picked out Harish eating puffed rice in the background, suppressing a yawn that would have blatantly given away his boredom. I chuckled before continuing to recite]

(15)      There’s that magic moment when you know that everyone present, 300-strong, suddenly switches on and zeroes in…. [Most of them are thinking the same thing – “there ain’t no turnin’ back now”]

  
 (16)  …while others who are absent are sorely missed [We got to spend some quality post-wedding time with them...]












(17)      The wedding couple are constantly asked to pose for the cameras [Overall, though, I got the feeling that wedding photography had definitely changed for the better. Aside from the quality and quantity of the pictures themselves, they captured many candid moments of casual conversation. We were impressed]


(18)      As an attendee with a son or daughter in their mid-20s, you face a constant barrage of enquiries about their marriage prospects [“How old is your daughter, and what is she doing currently?” “Is your son in America, a software engineer (i.e. earning $80,000 - $100,000 PA)?” Aside from the fact that such exchanges occur in the first place, I find it highly amusing that the most relevant question “Has (s)he decided/ hinted at getting married?” is often conveniently put into the back-burner]

(19)      The nights that lead up to the big day are filled with drinking sessions with your siblings and cousins...
[The crowning glory of these nights was the evening of May 6th when the youth decided we “wanted out” and threw ourselves an open-air party at Gandhinagar Club. The booze flowed]











(20) …only for that lot to disappear and have their own, private party on the evening of the wedding itself [They arrived right at the end of the evening, buzzed to a person, chanting for my mom to blow the final whistle. She obliged. A fitting way to draw the curtains on what had been an unforgettable eight days!]



            

Friday, March 6, 2015

"India’s Daughter": Spine-chilling but highly Significant

In the last 24-48 hours, social media has been going bezerk with posts, tweets and blogs on “India’s Daughter”, the much-debated, even maligned BBC documentary that has stirred the entire world, never mind India. With the dust having somewhat settled, it is now time to take stock. Having written nothing but scientific papers during the last several (seven to be precise) years, I now feel that the opportune moment has come to break free of this ‘work-related shell'…. to come out in expression…. to ride the crest… to put what might’ve otherwise been merely fleeting thoughts into words. Have no illusions -- the aim of this piece is not to assess the quality of the documentary itself -- personally, I have to say I was a tad disappointed in the quality. Nor is the aim to elaborately sympathize with those who have suffered, and/or have been emotionally shaken (myself included) by it. Rather, the aims are to drive home the idea of why it must be aired, and its significance in exposing our delusional perceptions of India being a “progressive nation”…  

First, let us put aside the no-brainer. Even as many (including myself) found the documentary disturbing, its petrifying contents are precisely the reasons why it MUST be aired. It is saddening, although not unsurprising, that the Govt. has lacked the courage to bite what seems to be a bullet from its own making via sustained ineptitude/ negligence. Whether the lay-person chooses to watch it, or chooses to hear about its spine-chilling contents from another individual is entirely a call of personal-judgement, bound to show strong inter-individual variation. A second, irrefutable reason for why it should be aired is that it is a one-off, or more accurately, a ‘first-off’. At least to my knowledge, it the first globally recognized film that exposes the causal factors behind heinous domestic crime (more accurately, rape) in india. 

It is imperative to cast aside this myth that it should not be aired because it “shows India in a bad light”. I can only ask (beg) those taking that perspective to wake up and smell the coffee (I suppose we have traditionally been a country of tea-drinkers). The shocking reality of the patriarchal mindsets of many common Indian men may be a bitter pill to swallow, but swallowed it must be. Further, the viewer is deluded, and is clearly missing the bigger picture if he/she believes that the documentary addresses an India-centric problem. While it particularly focused on how medieval social organizations and schools of thought lay platforms for the brutal treatment and diabolical acts conducted against Indian women, the reality is that there are other, equally chilling socio-psychological causal factors behind rape and sexual harassment around the world. In other words, the film may well be considered as just one segment of a novel, global-scale venture to use Television media to understand the social and/or psychological basis behind domestic violence and crime. “Showing the US in a bad light”, Americans frequently publicize the thoughts of some of the most notorious serial killers and mass-murderers behind bars in their country. Chilling details of how seemingly hidden yet highly widespread, troublesome phenomena such as negligent or abusive parenting, deranged, anti-social childhoods, and/or forced suppression or concealment of (homo)sexuality, could all lay the foundations for propensities to commit heinous crimes are revealed to the public, via TV and newspaper interviews, books, and indeed, documentaries on criminals. That is not to say that the fine line between criminal mindset exposure and the provision of a stage for criminal glorification is never crossed; for every Ted Bundy, there is a Charles Manson! The point here is that in America, understanding the socio-psychological bases of violent domestic crime is actually an interdisciplinary science: of criminology, sociology, anthropology and behavioral psychology. In India, going by the ban imposed on “India’s Daughter”, it may well be (farcically) considered a crime in itself! To summarize, our honorable PM, ever-intent and -eager on blindly borrowing and reproducing ideas of economic policy from the US (e.g. Raeganomics -> Modinomics), seems to have turned a conveniently blind eye towards some of America's bold, scientifically captivating ventures to understand and address its domestic problems. Finally, there are those who contend that the BBC has gone on a “hate-India” propagandizing mission-of-sorts. I would ask as to where these same people were when the channel has, in the past, aired pleasurable documentaries that cast into light India’s rich cultural (“The Story of India”) and bio-diversities (“Land of the Tiger”). Daggers well-and-truly sheathed then have been pulled out all of a sudden, with people ready to caste blame instead of facing up to cold reality. 

So the question — are we progressing as a nation on the domestic front? The answer - a technically correct but psychologically undesirable NO – will spring to mind, but there is a propensity to not speak it. Just as there is a propensity to a turn a blind eye to “India’s Daughter”. Re-visit this question a decade from now. The optimist might say that the answer might be different, particularly if efforts are made to view the film, despite its disturbing content, as a ray of hope, or even a gift, from the BBC to Indians. The realist, however, would say "fat chance”.