Dress rehearsal

We were watching TV the other day and caught that super annoying Appy-Grappy Fizz ad. S, after taking another look at them – the four boys, the girls and the bottles, had a minor meltdown about the unfairness of the genders expectations and roles – especially in the teens.

He claimed that the gaggle of giggly girls weren’t expected to do anything, but just sit around and blush and giggle while the boys posed, postured and tried to outdo each other in wit in some weird mating ritual to attract them. (I smell a story here; I should rummage a little bit in that closet!)

True enough I suppose, but I added a caveat. Told him, that this rule of just turning up and giggling was applicable to pretty, feminine girls. The not so pretty ones, the not so slim ones, the not so girly ones, had to resort to wit as well.

And as such conversations will, it degenerated to him turning to ask me “Well, were you pretty or were you funny?” (Sigh)

So I wryly thought back to my teen years – through late school, and early college, and suddenly realized how many people I know from that era were...er funny ( many of them have subsequently acquired prettiness or handsomeness, and forgotten that funniness).

When I looked back of acquaintances from that era, I remember some with good features, other’s with reasonably good figures – but I can’t for the life of me remember anyone who jaw-dropping, traffic stopping hot. That itself is rather intriguing. Yes, one goes through that gauche, gangly, acned teenage phase – but not for a decade. Probabilistically speaking, I ought to have acquired at least one hot acquaintance during that time, no?

And I had an epiphany – the clothes!

I grew up in a generation with fashion dyslexia. That's the kindest way to describe it.

I think back to the school and college years and what stands out is the terrible fashion sense, and well I suffered from it too. When I recall that hideous magenta skirt set, or that crushed crepe thingummy, I want to put my head through a wall (and this is coming from a fashion agnostic)

Many of memories of people are inextricably linked up with what they wore. If someone mentions a Mr. Sharma, to me, the first image that comes to mind is a vermillion shirt with big fat white polka dots. Or the Ms. Singh (who later became an international airline airhostess), is always associated with that bilious green sack-like, sack-material-like dress. Or even the more recent Mr. A with his brick orange shirt, with the er, brick pattern on it. Mr. A, I know for a fact has become quite trendy and has so many young girls buzzing around him, that we are planning to auction him off as a gigolo.

And it wasn’t only the designs – it was the material, the cut, the fitting, everything. I had a salwar suit in various shades of blue (which for some reason I thought was my lucky dress) which could easily have doubled up as a raincoat.

In undergrad, all the girls took to rather voluminous dresses (a couple of sizes too large- usually picked up from Fashion Street). Perhaps this was to cloak burgeoning figures, perhaps this was the modern avatar of half saris – but whatever it was, they looked terrible. I know I had this one white shirt, which reached halfway to my knees and could have easily be worn as a lab-coat. Or that other tee-shirt which was so huge, I could have worn it as a dress (this particular one was subsequently passed it off to my male cousin who is roughly twice my height and girth). Or those oh-so-ghastly checked umbrella cut skirts in towel-like materials which ended as dead-weights after a bout with the mumbai monsoons.

The best that could be said of most people’s fashion sense was that it was consistent. People stuck to their types – my friend S had a wardrobe which consisted exclusively of south cottons in shades of dark green, dark maroon, and dark rust in college. My other friend B had a penchant for knitted tops. Other classmate BP had a couple of these bandhni red shirts which were a particular favourite of his.

It took a few years of working before most of us started dressing up normally and discovering that it is okay to buy clothes from shops rather than from footpath. That clothes need to be approximately the same size as the individual wearing them. That accessories and shoes exist. That brands are brands for a reason.

I look at all the college kids today and am amazed at how well turned out they are – rebonded hair, hip, designer clothes, stunning shoes. I think we all looked so well, raw!

Ah well, the old order giveth way to the new.

Next: Much ado about Mouch ( Ever noticed how ALL boys went through growing moustaches as soon as they could and shaving it off once they hit 25?)

Dharam Sankat

So I just read a post by Mom Gone Mad where she jitterbugs to some eighties muzzic. She has infected me with an earworm yes. And also a dharam sankat which needs to be resolved NOW.

Which of the following songs deserves to be crowned as the MOST played, brayed, used and abused song of the nineties?

The nominations are
1. Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for you - Glenn Madeiros
2. Careless Whispers - George Michael
3. Last Christmas - Wham
4. The Lady in Red - Chris de Burgh

Think back to those school and college parties. Think of all the, puppy eyed, tooth-brush moustached knights serenading blushing polka-dotted damsels. Think of those mardana zanana dances at someone’s house.

Cast your vote now! (Give reasons why)

All you post 2000 kids. Go away.

Edited to add: Please also give details about which songs you serenaded/were serenaded with. Thank you.

Avalon

Statutory warning: Slightly self indulgent post ahead.

When I was about eight or nine, my parents got me the Children's Britannica encyclopaedia. I had already started my love affair with books and one of my favourite haunts at that point was the school library ( I was abroad at that time - so enormous school, grounds, libraries and the works) - sitting on the bean bag in the kids section and getting lost in some Enid Blyton or the other.

The encyclopaedia was quite intimidating early on - twenty glossy, crimson, hardbound books embossed with gold lettering and thus, were relegated to the highest shelf in the library where I could look at them but could avoid reading them. Then for some reason I decided I wanted to do a (self-motivated) project on France I clambered up on to the showcase using the lower shelves as foot holds and took out "P" to search for Paris and instead I found the other Paris (of Troy) thus starting off the other great love affair of my life- that of all things mythological.

Something about the whole Trojan War fired my imagination – a whole world full of gods and goddesses – colourful, flamboyant, manipulative, and magical – completely unlike the rather passive awareness of the Christianity which I had been exposed to at that time (did not have too much awareness to the Hindu pantheon beyond my mother's evening diya ritual).

And I devoured every single (extremely sanitized) article in sight in the encyclopaedia – the cross references, flipping through each page trying to find something I had missed. Looking at Roman mythology but slightly contemptuously (after all, it was but a copy of the Greeks, but with different names). I had favourites – Athena, Odysseus, and Artemis – and the ones I didn’t like – Aphrodite, Pan.

And eventually moving on to Egyptian (Isis and Osiris), Norse (Freya, Thor and others), Indian and my eternal obsession with Celtic and Arthurian legends – especially of the Avalon and the Lady of the lake. (Incidentally, my first choice for a blog name WAS Avalon – which was also my chat alter ego for many years. Unfortunately it was not available). The idea of a mystical, mythical island hidden to most, the tales of Morgan le Faye and the complicated relationship with her half brother Arthur, Nimue and Merlin - has just captivated me for so many years – much more than the legends of the knights.

What I find most fascinating about these is the fact that while they are so geographically distant – there are such recurring themes amongst all of them. The Gods of elements (which I suppose one could argue was inevitable – since the elements were what people were exposed to) but then you take the Gods like Pan, Loki and maybe a Narad - the mischief mongering theme? The ambivalent relationship between the king of Gods and his siblings and father? Athena and Saraswati- both goddesses of wisdom in a sense, would have an appropriately equal importance in their respective pantheons I think. The constant death-rebirth theme (Osiris, Persephone – and most interestingly the Jesus as well).

Maybe consciously or unconsciously all follow the Jungian archetypes – the hero’s journey, the patriarch, the maiden, the earth mother within the main and sub texts as well.

I suspect this mythological hangover from my childhood has also led to the curiosity about theology in young adulthood – whether it’s Hinduism or Christianity (never got any decent books on Islam though) and even medieval history. It’s a strange paradox therefore that I got terrible grades in more contemporary history which we had to study.

Some random trivia to end this post - most of the days of the week are named after these mythological Gods. Saturday, Sunday, Monday are easy but what about Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday?

P.S. Disclaimer: I have NOT researched this article. It has been written from whatever minuscule knowledge I have garnered over the years – and I have forgotten much more than I remember. This is not an academic treatise but rather, online musing about a topic which has enthralled me for many years. Any inaccuracies please excuse!
P.P.S. I might continue this post with Hindu mythology - some of the sub texts, symbology and rituals are very, VERY interesting.

SUPW

Ed Note: Now that I have a figured out how to beautify the template, I have been suffering from an acute-change-the-look itch the whole day, which I have been (wo)manfully repressing.

Instead, I will recycle a post.

I don’t think anyone ever read this particular one – it was written after a blogging hiatus sometime in Aug 2007. One of those drearily-lowering-periods-when-I-had-no-readers (Sobs!). So why not air it again –(this time hopefully to loud and tumultuous applause).

No particular reason to chose this one, but damn it I am blogcked. I have some fifteen ideas in my head jostling each other which refuse to come out on paper. Bah.

I was cleaning my cupboard the other day and came across an old SUPW project. A self-analysis that was written when I was in the ninth or tenth – hugely entertaining reading for me at any rate. But more on that later.

SUPW as a subject has always fascinated me – insofar as I can’t see ANY conceivable reason for its existence. I googled for the full form- turns out it is “Socially Useful and Productive Work”.

If my memory serves me right, there was absolutely nothing , which was even remotely productive that actually did take place. Some flirting, a lot of paper airplanes and of course some destructive stuff - chairs, tube lights and the odd classmate (though one could argue that the last mentioned was a productive excercise )

Towards the end of the year, there would be some harebrained assignment like knitting shawls (which in my case, unfailingly ended up as tea cosys (cosies?)) or making organdy flowers (which was upwardly delegated to the mother three days before due date). This er ..produce was graded, sent back home, displayed for maybe two days before falling behind some cupboard never to be seen again.

Occasionally you had projects like self-analysis (though how the self analysis of a fourteen year old is socially useful beats me).

I remember trying to bribe a friend to write my project. I also recall sessions where we got together in recess to ‘analyze’ each other viz.swapping candid insults in the name of homework - which would eventually end up in a couple of the boys rolling on the floor hitting each other with a handy desk or two.

In eight or ninth there was this other programme called EREWHON that I vaguely remember was similar to SUPW, only more painful, which I seem to have mercifully blanked out. The only remnant of it is an old grainy photograph of all of us as scrawny preteens with the course coordinator (a snap which looks like a bunch of street urchins with a social worker).

And of course the “Moral Science” lesson in 11th and 12th (anyone who has done time in a convent will remember that). Incidentally, the nun who taught us this, used to read Mills and Boons hidden in a notebook.

I wonder whether anyone does out more moral, socially useful or erewhony after these classes. If my classmates are examples, then I strongly doubt it - most have questionable morals, and are fairly asocial and useless ( which is their saving grace, and the reason we all remain great friends even now)

Do they still teach these in schools.?

Baby Fish

Once upon a time there were two little girls. One had just joined the class in the middle of the term after her father had been transferred there. The other had been there since the beginning of the term. They used to sit on consecutive benches, until a budding romance of the new girls bench mate led to a change in the seating arrangement and the two ended up sitting together –inadvertently leading to the beginning of a very, very long relationship.

The new, new girl had just lost her younger brother a few months earlier. The other girl had lost her father a few years before. Both were voracious readers. The former was a quiet, deeply grieving, painfully shy, dreamer and with an unexpected streak of mischief. The other was a gregarious, giggly, outgoing girl – the class topper- monitor material. People would look at the pair and wonder what it that they saw in each other.

They spent the following two years doing most of the things preteen and early teen girls do – one had her first romance, and the other provided the alibis/ bodyguard/simply-guard. They exchanged copious pre-internet IM scribbles in the Julius Caesar text book. Invented fictitious boyfriends. Studied together. Made up games on the spot. Had sleepovers every other night. Gossiped about girls. Gawked at boys. Wrote very bad poetry singly and jointly. Wrote diaries. Read each other’s diaries. One wept about the lack of boyfriend at sweet sixteen. The other (slightly misandrist) girl consoled her by playing tabla on her fainted head. They squabbled and were rude to each other. They went to the temple to pray for the 10 standard results together. Adopted the other’s families. They constantly made fun of each other.

Somehow managed to finish the tenth standard and joined another school together. Spent another two years being inseparable though both would have vehemently denied any such accusation. Squabbled some more. Wrote some more bad poetry. Made smugly superior remarks about girls who read mills and boons. Made some more friends. Lost a few old ones.

Then proceeded to part for the first time in almost five years – one to go to Delhi and the other to Bombay. Undergrad, post grad and first couple of years of work. The physical presence was taken over by long rambling letters, the rare phone call and the intermittent visit.

Then the girl in Delhi, shifted to Mumbai. And once again the meetings started – while both were older and had their share of heartaches and real life stress, with the other’s banter they managed to capture a little fleeting window to the carefree life of childhood. They shopped for books together. They screened and validated boys (first) and then bridegroom prospects. The listened to the other crib, whine, gripe and cry about bad bosses and work. They squabbled all the time (like an old married couple said the other friends). They made fun of each other. They demanded random gifts. They gate-crashed each other’s house incessantly .

They met and vetted the person the other would eventually marry. And then they both got married – a year and a half apart. By this time, the world had woken up to the internet and text messages. So staying in touch was much more regular. Spoke at least once a week. Mailed often. Exchanged stories of settling down in new house and adjusting to marriage, in laws, new cities, and new jobs.

And then today one of them, made a transition into another life-stage and to irrevocable world of grownups. She brought a Baby Girl Fish into the world today.

Folks please say hallo to my brand new God-daughter

J – May she get a friend, such as you have been to me – because I KNOW that is the best possible wish that I can give her.

P.S. I might be slightly disoriented. Actually I AM disoriented.

P.P.S Grown up! Aiyo Rama.

P. P. P. S for the record, I nominated myself as the God-mother and informed the parents to be. Goonda promptly has passed on the task of teaching the kiddie the facts of life to me. I think that was quite cowardly of her.

Udipi Ode

There was an article the other day in Outlook on Udipi restaurants – and how they are slowly going out of business.

I was saddened by that news. It’s hard to imagine a life without the ubiquitous and unassuming Udipi restaurants. The Shanbagh and the Kamath hotels, with their charming pineapple-sweet lime garlands , the butter soft idlis-delectable dosas- mouth-watering sambhar-steaming coffee, and the impossibly quick service, that are such an intrinsic part of the cultural and epicurean landscape of any city.

For me and for many of my generation, Udipi restaurants were the favoured, and sometimes the only option, through school and college. This was before the Mochas (and money) became as common as they are today.

At that time – there were only two types of eateries. At one end of the spectrum one had the exorbitant ‘five star’s (on a shoestring pocket money budget, any half-decent-half-clean-eatery fell into this category)- These were the places one went for birthday treats or when a parent was funding.

And then there was the affordable roadside refectory - composed of grandiosely named Chink’s Ming (with their fiery red meat stakes hung upside down characterized by the cloying ajinomoto odor) or the samosa-and-wada-wala who used to produce steaming crisp samosas from a degchi filled with a speckled liquid that could euphemistically be called oil. (My classmates assured me that it was this indeterminate concoction which gave the distinct flavour to the food. I never tried it though – I’m slightly neurotic about food hygiene) and the ever-present sandwich-vendor.

Udipi restaurants managed to fill the golden median – cheap, yet clean, wholesome, yet tasty and thus, many of my food and growing up memories are inextricably linked to various Udipi restaurants across India.

Class 9 in Hyderabad, one of the first unsupervised trips to an eating place, Shanbagh Hotel – Panjagutta. A classmate got offended when a waiter looked askance at the bunch of broke-looking-kids-in-school-uniform. He proceeded to call the waiter to our table, produced a soiled Rs.10 note from his pocket and waved at him, grandly declaring that “Humare pass paisa HAI – SACHHII”

Or that poky little place in Santa Cruz where we used to go from my Aptech Class (I actually went for 2 years to Aptech sigh. Follies of youth and all that) for a desperately needed ‘Special' Ganga-Jamuna juice to neutralize the sweltering mid-noon heat. Incidentally, I have always been fascinated by the 'Ganga-Jamuna' juice and once I was lucky enough to get a 'Ganga-Jamuna-Saraswati'- I forget what the 'Saraswati' was though.

Or that small hotel in Bandra where Goonda, aghast, decided to take an impromptu SQ test minutes after I admitted that I thought oral sex meant TALKING about sex.

Or while at B-school, where the next door Udipi joint idlis formed the staple diet of all the local students after they were guilt-tripped out of their dabbas by purportedly starving hostelites. The place the waiters knew us by name and didn’t bat an eyelid when ONE idli plate was methodically divided by 8 (my friend R has been immortalized for her “Bhaiyya iske chotte chotte tukde kardo please” in her slightly anglicized accent)

Those early working years, where I and my friend B would meet up in Irla for a medu-wada, and to bitch about work, love and life.

Or at Coffee House in Camp – which was one of the first places which S took me out to in Pune where we stopped bickering and learnt about companionable silence.
Incidentally, this was also the place we went for dinner the day we got married. Probably the only couple in the universe to eat their first meal as husband and wife in an Udipi joint (with my mother, uncle, aunts and cousins for company and with me in full bridal choora. Long story, will post about it someday)

And oh so many more – of reunion and partings. Of gupshup and gossip. Of food and friends.

Ah sigh. It will be such a tragedy if they do disappear.

Bombay Diaries – 2: The secret diary of Cynic in Wonderland Aged 13 1/4th

I think I am a bit like a bear. A couple of times in a year, after an protracted time of activity I get this strong urge to go into hibernation – viz. just take off and do some R&R and space out and be incommunicado to everyone except those whom I HAVE to talk to - office folks, my mother (if anyone has managed to successfully go on, and more importantly maintain a maun-vrat with their mother, please give me tips), and sometimes the out-laws. The last one leaves me feeling more than slightly aggrieved. That is the reason when I feel the need to hibernate; I usually skulk off to Bombay where I can go peacefully into my asocial-surly-moody-space cadet mode without being disturbed or suffering annoying guilt pangs.

So anyways, I went last week but this time I wasn’t allowed to pursue my usual policy of going into a state of suspended animation – where I sleep, eat, read, ignore everyone, watch bad movies and occasionally do guilt-propelled exercise (and do NO work).

This time, the mother had an agenda for me – viz. clear out my bookcase. She for some reason has always found my tendency to buy and hoard books a nuisance, nothing moves her to fluent oratory as much as finding some book under the bed or on top of the washing machine. Sigh.

So she put an ultimatum. Either clear out the cupboard or she would clear it out (which basically meant that she would have just called the raddi-wala and told him to take away everything in sight.)

So, very reluctantly I set out to do so.

And I found a whole lot of half-remembered things from bygone eras. Letters from my friends carefully stored away inside books, letters written to my friends which I never got around to mailing, poems (aged 14 -18: serious and deadly earnest philosophies for life and living (ahem)), my friend Goonda’s poems (which I had copied meticulously for some reason. I promptly called her to recite them on phone and she had to bribe me with a gift to shut up) and Goonda + Mine ambitious literally opus – titled the GOLD (er...Gems of Literature and Dramatics. I know. I know. I was fourteen. God help me).

And I found my diaries. Slightly squashed, slightly musty, slightly dog-eared but all there for posterity.

I started writing these diaries – well when I was seven or eight at the behest of my father. I would religiously show it to him, making sure that my mother didn’t see them (I did say I was a Daddy’s girl didn’t I? Although I stopped sharing it from age ten). He would assure me (completely mendaciously) they were particularly well written and that would ensure that I continue this diary for at least three months of the year – even if it was a bland and factual “I didn’t do anything today so nothing to write”.

The early editions of this unfortunately, must have got lost when we shifted countries when I was 11. But I have the diaries from ages 13 to age of 22(which seems to be the last time I attempted it.)

So I have brought along my diary aged 13 1/4th to Pune and have been wading through it, these days. It is written in a scrawl (whatever else might have changed, my handwriting remains as bad as ever) and the text is usually accompanied by illustrations interspersed with dire threats/pathetic pleas to people to refrain from reading. Mostly addressed to my mother . She used to insist on reading the diaries when I hid and locked them. After a point I started leaving them around and she promptly lost interest. I wonder whether this mother-daughter privacy thing always happens in the early teens.

Anyways the entries are full of anecdotes from school and my opinions on class fellows and the process of discovering the world through books such as Anne Frank’s diary through the eyes of a dreamer-introvert that I was.

It’s well, for lack of a better description– quaintly grown up in some cases (“I had to stifle a laugh”. “I went to a temple which had three Goddesses, and I absolutely stuck to Saraswati because exam results are due any day”/”So and so talked for exactly 23 minutes without stopping and 15 minutes after taking a pause. I timed him”) and brutally childish (“XYZ aunty I hate her and her lunch was awful”).

I do remember some of the more memorable incidents such as the time I locked myself in the bathroom (which had two doors, one leading to the bedroom and the other to terrace.) way past the time I was allowed to read books, with “Anne of Green Gables”. I got so engrossed in the story that I completely forgot about getting out until “rudely awakened from my reverie” by my father knocking on the door and asking me whether I was reading a book. Guiltily aware that I would be in quite deep trouble if caught with a book (I was not allowed to read in the bathrooms) I quietly opened the terrace door and left the book outside hoping to retrieve it later – innocently oblivious to the fact that my parents could see the bathroom light and my shadow as I furtively left the book there. I opened the main door and went swaggering out only to be hauled by the coals by my dad and I drily end the entry with “Ma couldn’t scold me, she was laughing so hard at the irony of the situation”

There are some entries which in hindsight are beautifully insightful.

One reads “One of my friends at school is a great artist. Today in free period she started drawing on the board and she drew a man (Mr. Weepy Sing)”. Given what I recall of the aforementioned gentleman, that is not a bad description at all.

And finally my favourite entry...
“I just hope I don’t have to sit with any ninth standard boys they are so STUPID”.
More than a decade and a half later, with many experiences dealing with boys in various shapes and sizes, I still can’t quibble too much with THAT particular sentiment.

Ah. Growing DOES pain.

Que Sari Sari

I have always envied women who can wear saris effortlessly and gracefully. I have never been quite able to crack it. I can wear them. After about seven attempts and 41safety pins (a girl’s best friend), it can even look passably elegant. But if truth be told, I have never quite mastered the art and therefore, can never be one of those marvellous super women-types who just get up in the morning and glide into a sari without any fuss or tears.

My standard operating practise when confronted with a sari-wearing occasion is to

a) Avoid: Duck the occasion altogether (ah, wishful thinking)

b) Substitute: Give feeble excuses and turn up in a Salwar Kameez.

c) Sulk and comply: Throw tantrums, fret, curse, and then finally wear it (with the help of Ma or any handy female) with a martyred air and totter to whichever function. This, after turning most of the room upside down and getting into at least one spat (with the mother, – “WHY the HELL can’t you drape it properly-you have thirty years of practise?”/ “No I will NOT wear those rib-cracking-circulation-stopping blouses. I don’t care if people call it a tee-shirt. At least I don’t get asphyxiated ”/”Stick a pin there, and there and there as well, you missed that spot, OUCH!!!” or with the husband, “ hope in the next janam you are born an Indian woman and have to wear saris everyday” or the more pithy “Eff off”)

d)In a rare burst of enthusiasm, decide to drape it without any help and do so successfully. Only figure out that it has been arrayed in the mirror image of the more conventional left shouldered way after the mother goes into peals of raucous and unseemly laughter.

My first brush with the sari started somewhere in late school. Till then, I had quite successfully managed to avoid coming within lassoing distance of them despite the occasional traditional /teacher’s day scare.

Let’s forward to Class 9, Hyderabad.

Our much esteemed (!) and very I-know-which-side-my-bread-is-buttered-and-will-do-sell-my-grandmother-let-alone-these-useless-students-for-money Owner/Principal manages to get the school invited for some inter-state- competition. As a gesture of goodwill (to the rich dignitaries) and revenge (on the hapless female students), she mandates that we don costumes of the participating states and sashay down the grounds.

Some evil star prompts the organizer to allocate a Bengali sari to me. The Bengali traditional sari – the one which is the lovely red and white (Think Parineeta) which is distinguished by the fact that it has ABSOLUTELY no pleats in front. The same all-important-pleats which allow the wearer some moving and breathing space. This one is to be worn more like a crepe bandage- viz. just rolled around the wearer. Also as with the crepe, the key focus seems to be to restrict and impede any free movement (the dainty, femininity thing l I assume).

Definitely not the ideal way to initiate a semi-tomboy into the intricacies of the garment.

Somehow I manage to shuffle, waddle, and roll myself to the parade grounds with other similarly suffering schoolmates - accompanied by distressingly forthright commentary from the boys. Once there, we are told, that we need to perambulate the ground (which incidentally are flanked by er..nubile young jawaans).

So we all waddle, shuffle and roll some more, collectively stomping over and crushing yards and yards of silk and satin. During the course of this walk, my sari which seems to have a distinct mind of its own (quite typical of Bengalis?), decides that it has enough of me and valiantly tries to part ways. Fortunately, it meets with only partial success.

The Gujurati sari next to mine, decides to emulate the attempt and is much more successful (again, quite typical of the state? Hmmmm!). About seventy percent manages to sneak away before the wearer realizes that.

I did mention that we were flanked by nubile (?) young jawans didn’t I?

Let us discreetly draw a curtain over the rest of the proceedings.

Incidentally there is still a photograph of me in that damn thing floating around in cyberspace in-spite of all my attempts to destroy it. One of my moronic friends has become the self appointed guardian of my ‘street-urchin’ (as he calls it) look for eternity. Every few years he digs the photo out, sends me a sadistic mail with the photo as an attachment. Hmm, I really need to get new friends.

After this, I firmly stayed away from saris for the next three years until the twelfth standard farewell party. This was quite uneventful, except for the fashion atrocity of wearing puffed LONG sleeved blouse (the ‘in’ (sic) style) with a Guajarati pallu.

Undergrad was relatively simple. Traditional and sari days could just be avoided – as were rose days and friendship days (do they still have them I wonder, the friendship days were particularly nauseating as I recall).

Then we come to B-school. College brochures, presentations, inter-collegiate functions, mug-shots – all in saris, all fraught with much tension. The halcyon sans-sari days seemed definitely over. But on the plus side, I meet like-minded, sari-challenged friends. (Once, after a few nights-out-battling-insane-deadline-for-an-intercollegiate-competitions, we (four females) accompanied the sari-clad-presenter without realizing that it was draped on the wrong shoulder. Fortunately a friend (male!) pointed it out before she went up onto the dais).

After that it’s been a series of saris – cousins’ weddings, engagement, marriage, pujas so on and so forth. I suppose I am better than I was, but I prefer it infinitely more, when it is worn by other people.

This sari post will not be complete, if I don’t end this with an incident with a friend.

Just after she got married, she had to go to the in-laws for the first time as a bride, for a Satyanarayan puja.There she was expected to change into an appropriate sari for the function which she did and since she didn’t have the help of any friendly, known females. She asked her husband to help her pin the sari pallu together – which he did. Only being a male, he wasn’t aware that the pallu is normally ALSO pinned to the blouse – to keep it in place. Then friend goes to the pandal and does the sashtang pranam (prostration before the idol). Gravity of course, played out its part on the thick Kancheepuram pallu.

Apparently a lot of the younger folks of her husband’s family fondly recall her as the bride whose pallu fell down.

Ah well.

Ganapati Bappa!

This post was written three years ago.As rediff refuses to display my old blog anymore, I am recycling the posts. I was also thinking about writing a post on my belief/relationship with this God, so this provides a good backdrop.Hmm. Posts every day of this week so far – just like when I first started blogging. Greetings of the season to all of you.

A return to the three century old, sprawling ancestral mansion, home to generations of family members, the birthplace of my father, now oddly forlorn, brightening up only on the two odd days of the festival, when the whole family comes back home…

A congregation of the entire clan- the elders slightly more gray and lined, the children suddenly taller, the aunts slightly plumper, the young men possessively sheparding their new brides, the new babies and their first brush with family history …

A time of relieving childhood, a time of reconnecting with the roots, a time of wistful nostalgia now always tinged with sorrow.

… the exchanged greetings with the extended kinfolk after a gap of a year (or several)…
… a walk down the photograph gallery, a reminder of people long gone by…
…the tulsi in the courtyard right in the middle of the house….
…the old teak reclining chair of a favourite grand uncle, now poignantly empty…
…perching on other granduncles knee while he loquaciously recounts tales of fathers/uncles exploits..
…the ritualistic trip to the room where they were born…
…the decorated Ganesh pandal at the end of one of the four sides of the inside courtyard…
…bringing in the Ganesh idol amidst fanfare and cheers…
…the actual idol, with the timelessly benign face…
…the struggles with the unaccustomed dhotis and nine yards saris before the puja..
…the smells of incense and camphor…
…the soft chimes of bells and incantation of chants…
…the assorted medley of modaks and other sweets…
…visiting the neighbours’ homes and the utter conviction that ours IS the best idol..
…out shouting the neighbours kids while singing (!) the aartis at their house…
…the exhaustive search for the rumoured secret passageways in the afternoon…
…catching up on life and gossip on the outside porch…
…the dusk bringing in the visitors …
…sparklers and fireworks in the evenings….
…tracing eight generations of the family tree …
…stories of restless ancestral spectres at bedtime…
…snuggling in with three of your cousins on a bed meant for two…
…the heavenly smell of parijat flowers and dew as you wake up….
…early morning tea sipped on the window seat …
…the distant melody of an aarti playing on an old stereo somewhere..
…exploring the attics and the childhood relics of our fathers…
…another session of aartis and pujas …
…the men complaining of yet another purely vegetarian day…
…the visits to the temple and the mandatory five Ganesh idols …
…the slightly heavy heart as evening approaches ….
…the final aarti of the idol before immersion….
…the village square with twelve Ganesh idols lined up in a row ….
…a night alight with fireworks …
…our erstwhile landlord family leading the final walk to the river…
…the air rent with “Ganapati Bappa” cries….
…peering over the bridge for the very last glance ….
…the unexpected tearing up of eyes at the final immersion ….

….a time to say goodbye…

….till next year!

Mangoes and nostalgia

Ate the first aam of the season .

One whiff itself of it was enough for me to go all maudlin and sentimental and take me down a lane full of half forgotten memories

... of blissful, long, lazy, summer holidays at my grandmothers house in Goa..

..of idyllic, untainted childhood….

…of cousins and companionship ….

.... of eager anticipation of the mango season …

…of expectant, almost uncontainable excitement at seeing the truck full of mangoes coming home from the orchards in the ancestral village..

.... of a roomful of raw mangoes stacked up in hay (so that they could ripen slowly)….

.... the room pervaded with that sour-sweet heady smell of heaven...

... of furtively sneaking to the mango room in the afternoons (when all grown-ups were having their siesta), and pinching them, and tip-toeing out to the shaded verandah while my eldest (very soft-hearted) unmarried aunt, pretended not to see us..

...of hushed conferences and whispered conspiracies– who will dig out the rawest, khatta kairi ( green mangoes) ? Who would get the chili powder and salt from the kitchen ....

…of feigning outraged indignation at mango-stealing accusations, while surreptitiously wiping our hands on the back of our clothes …

...of climbing the wall and sneaking to neighbor’s house to pinch the mangoes and guavas from their trees (which were always so much sweeter, no matter, how many mangoes we had at a home)...

...of cricket played in the hot sun and glass panes broken, to come back to semi-exasperated-semi- amused scolding and cool mango shakes ...

…of beaming, satiated, sticky small cousins with golden mango pulp all over their faces ….

...of debating the relative merits of mankurad versus alphonso versus musrad...

..of seeing who could eat the maximum and eating so many ( mangoes as well as imli and cocum) that we couldn’t stand the sight of them anymore...

Those were the days before...
...we realized that mangoes were fattening and thus to be rationed ...

...before summer holidays ceased to be with college and work taking over ...


They don’t make childhood like that anymore!

Posted in April 2004, still feel like that. Second nostalgic post in a month - but its summer and i am overworked and underpaid and pining for summer holidays!