For Us Marriages Are Made By The Stars In Heaven!

So I went to a cousin’s wedding yesterday and missed the main part too! Well, first I woke up a bit late, then I was too caught up in trying to tie my saree properly and then I was stuck in traffic for 45 minutes… not my fault! The mangal-sutra tying ceremony got over some 10 minutes before I reached.

It’s the marriage season and I am tired of hearing, who is getting married to whom, who is getting engaged or who is looking for a suitable alliance for their kid!

You end up meeting relatives who were present at the last wedding in the family and not recognize them. It’s very frustrating when they come to you and say,” remember me?” Now tell me how am I supposed to remember this person when he forgot to introduce himself/herself last time we met? Is it really my fault that you came to know from others that I am so and so’s daughter and they didn’t tell me who you are?

And then there are groups of aunts and uncles, cracking not-so-funny jokes about, who is gonna get hooked next! And teasing every poor 20 something year olds about it!

I once got this sms about how elders keep teasing you in a wedding that you are next. So the next time you go to a funeral you rag them by saying, you’re next!

Here’s a brief account of how marriages happen in highly conservative south-Indian communities.

To start with the stars play a more important part than the boy and the girl who are about to get married. Horoscopes are everything. It’s the alpha and omega of establishing an alliance. Exchanging of horoscopes with relatives and friends, having a huge data-base, collecting it from a few web-sites, sharing references are the routine. The families work harder at making a match than the boy and the girl!

Everything starts with exchanging of horoscopes and if there is sufficient match in both the horoscopes, then there will be a second round of exchanging of photographs. If they like your face too, then it’s a hit combo!

There is a session where boy sees the girl at her place. If he is in the US of A (which is a fact in most cases), boy’s family sees the girl, while girl has to make do with the guy’s pic till the week before their marriage!

Or boy and girl meet for five minutes in the balcony with the family eavesdropping and if it’s a bit open-minded family they get to talk in the other room with some amount of privacy and poor things know if it isn’t this guy or girl; it will be someone else whom they will get to meet for five minutes.

If they think they can deal with each other, they give their consent and the so-called engagement ceremony which doesn’t even have a ring ceremony, takes place anywhere between 5 days to 6 months.

And the marriage takes place anywhere between 2months to 1 year. 2 months because come on you can’t prepare for a wedding in less than two months!

And so they are stuck with each other ever after… happily or otherwise!

Trust me I am not at all exaggerating!

Once decided no one breaks the alliance. It’s a shame to the family and blah! But I feel it’s because the couple hardly know each other to reach the point of breaking up the alliance!

I mean I am not against arranged marriage, but you at least need the freedom to choose your partner, spend time with him/ her and decide whether you really want to marry that person.

I don’t know when these kids who act like programmed robots are gonna take things I their hands!

I just hope my stars don’t let me down…

Raindrops Are Falling On My Head....

It's raining, it's pouring!!

Woke up to see that it was raining cats and dogs outside. This after days of unusually high temperatures (atleast unusual for B'lore). Been wishing for rain so many times the last few days and here it is finally! It's an absolutely bee-u-tiful , hard, cold downpour! :D

I'm usually pretty wary of rain. I'd rather enjoy rain from the cozy indoors with some hot soul food and coffee. But today? Today, standing there in the balcony with my head half out, letting the rain semi-drench me, listening to the kids in raincoats and umbrella's sing 'pitter patter raindrops' as they sploshed playfully through the puddles, I felt like dancing and singing in the rain myself! It's a wonderful feeling!

Ok, just fixed myself a mug of coffee. Time to stop gushing and get some work done.

*Sigh*

Coffee, the sound of rain outside, and a blissful drop in the temperatures....I'm in heaven!! :)

*Wander's away humming 'Raindrops are falling on my head....'*

(Images from here)

Ten Things You Can Do On A Boring Day...

Things were just not going my way. I was down with a bad cold and fever and still am. So couldn’t go for my usual swimming. The damned library was closed the day before and so there were no books to keep me occupied! There were no cds to watch and I was done giving tuitions since the exams are over so I am jobless once again.

All this meant I was gonna be wasting a precious day of my life. Nothing new. Whenever I am faced with such a situation, only one thought comes to my mind… how many people would have died to live one more day of their life! And here I am sitting and wasting it.

I studied for an hour or so, imagine that! Thankfully, the medicines put me in a semi-coma state and I slept for 4 hours straight!

I woke and once again was faced with the same dilemma. I had to do something. At 6 I was ready to make one more trip to the library and determined to get a book this time. And then I remembered I had bought glass paint a few months ago and it was high time I experimented. I went down to the shop first and bought 3 pieces of glass. Then went to library and to my disappointment, the librarian had still hadn’t managed to get a copy of the second book of the trilogy I was reading and so I picked up another set of trilogy, so that I wouldn’t have top wait for the copies.

I came home ad very excitedly set at task. I got to work made a photo frame from the design which was given in the book that came with the paints. I had fun and I should say the first experiment didn’t disappoint me at all!

Things I recommend that people do, if and when they are bored, though I am sure everyone has a way out most times:

• Do something you always wanted to try, if this is not the best time, no other time will be!
• Do something wacky or something you wouldn’t find yourself doing or think of doing normally. It will give you a kick out of life or at least a sense of achievement!
• Spend this day putting things into perspective….. Where are you heading, are you where you wanted to be a few years back, where do you see yourself in a few years (I don’t mean just career).
• This is the best day to clean your room, chucking out things you don’t need and also if you want give your room a new look, or simply rearrange the furniture, it will be a good change!
• Spend an hour or so calling people who mean something to you but whom you just didn’t manage to get in touch with in a long time… people who are far and away.
• Remove your old photos and albums, scrap books, letters, cards etc… and spend some time bringing back fond memories.
• Write a diary entry.
• If have enough money, spend a good day shopping and may be buy things you wouldn’t usually think of wearing. You never know you may even look good in them! A sort of a make over!
• Getting a hair cut helps big time if you are feeling sort of low. I am the happiest when I get a hair-cut done!
• Cook your own dinner, try a new recipe, make your self an exotic drink, shop for the ingredients and figure it out.

All in all, the above suggestions just spell out one thing… do something new, something different, it won’t hurt. It will give you some sort of thrill and if nothing at least you will realize what you are not meant for!

To Munnar And Back

The much awaited snaps of Munnar are finally here!

Jade: It all started on my visit to Bangalore last month when I mentioned to Amethyst that my dad’s planning for a trip to Munnar and I wasn’t very enthusiastic about it because I wanted company. So Amethyst said she too wanted a break and would like to join us. (Amber was in college during this conversation). And by the end of the day Amber too was coming with us!

Amber: Obviously! I mean when I returnrd from college and heard that Jade and Amethyst were going to Munnar, I had to jump onto the bandwagon. So tickets were booked and plans formulated. Me and Amethyst were to take the Friday morning train to Chennai. We would reach Chennai in the afternoon and then leave with Jade and her family for Cochin in the night. The journey to Chennai was pretty uneventful. I met a friend who was also on the way to Chennai and the rest of the time was spent in reading a book I’d picked up the day before (I never travel without books for company). Reached Chennai, reminisced how the city had changed (or not, in some cases) with Amethyst, met Jade, had lunch and then the three of us wondered what Amethyst and I could do while Jade went off to take tuitions. Ultimately, it was decided that me and Amethyst would tag along with Jade and meet the kids she seemed to talk about often.

Jade: Yes, it wasn’t a disaster I should say, in fact quite the contrary. They helped me wind up soon and wondered whether there was any hope for the girl to pass in her exams! Not that I neglected my duties just that she has turned into a bad student lately.

We are digressing here.

We got back home and Amber who was excited with the prospects of taking pictures bought two rolls of film and in some time the three girls(minus the dog) set out on the trip to Munnar.

The train journey was not very exciting. The next morning we reached Eranakullam station at 6:30 in the morning. Eranakullam and Cochin are twin cities, so don’t get confused when Amber says Cochin and I, Eranakullam.

Munnar is some 140 kms away from Eranakullam and it’s a hill station and we were supposed to drive there in the afternoon, once my dad had wound up his official work. So we checked in to this hotel called Gokulam Park Inn. (morning view from the room)

The room was well furnished with two TV sets and it had an electronic locker too! I was excited ‘cos I had never seen one before and took a pic of it. We went to have our breakfast and I had a little bit of everything and started feeling sick! Amber was happy reading in the room, so Amethyst and I set out to see the swimming pool on the third floor. The pool was sorry looking and so we came back wondering what to do. We saw the news, caught up on some sleep and soon it was time for lunch.

Amber: And so lunch we did. Lunch was an affair at Jade’s dad’s office, where he’d had a meeting. His colleagues had heard his family was with him and so we were invited to a traditional Kerala style thing that had been laid out for the delegates. Nice. Brown rice and payasam (a sweet dish made of rice and milk and a few other things). After lunch, it was off to Munnar in the rented Qualis. Mr. Badshah, Jade’s dad’s colleague had regaled us with the many interesting places in and around Munnar, and so we were especially eager to see as much as we could in the very little time we had.

Now the Qualis as you know has 3 rows of seats. The one in the front beside the driver, and 2 sets of passenger seats behind. (Am I making sense?) Anyway…for the sake of a comfortable journey I volunteered to sit in the last seat with the luggage, with Jade, her mom and Amethyst in front of me and Jade’s dad beside the driver. (finally left Eranakullam!)

We took a lot of pointless pics on the way, stopped briefly at a temple dedicated to Sri Shankaracharya and then Jade managed to cajole her dad into dropping by an elephant training thingie (institute? Complex?) Mr. Badshah had told us about. While we were waiting for passes to enter the place we wandered around a tiny zoo that had been set up on the side.(the temple) (The temple)

Jade: The temple was in Kaladi, the birth place of Adi Shakaracharya, the inside of it had pictures which told the life story of Adi Shankaracharya. Dad was not very keen on stopping on the way ‘cos he wanted to reach Munnar before it was dark, but then he succumbed to our pestering and we decided to go to the Elephant training center( Amber?) in this place called Perambavur.

Before checking out the elephants doing their so called training, we entered the small zoo and clicked a few pics. We saw Sambar deer, a few ducks, monkeys, a python, spotted deer, etc.

(the 1-2 yr olds)

When we went further to the elephant training place we were told that all the adult elephants were in the jungle to haul the lumber and wouldn’t be back for two months, so we had to make do with pictures of the babies. So much for watching them at work! So we took picture on the 1 and 2 yr olds. The one in the enclosure made of bamboo is a 6 month old baby, which was taken away from its mom and brought to this place when it was just born!

( 6 months old baby elephant)

There was a small lake down a muddy road where the elephants took bath, they also had a boat ride there, but we didn’t have time for all that. So we left.

There was also this place called Iringol Kaavu, where there was a jungle in the centre of a small town. Inside the jungle was a temple and the trees in the forest were never cut (dad told us that in Kerala it was illegal to cut a tree, even if it grew in your own premise!) and in all these years no one has spotted a snake in that jungle. All this was told to us by Mr.Badshah, but we didn’t have the time to check it out.

Amber: So, in spite the disappointment of missing out on the jungle with no snakes….we carried on. Up the mountains, towards Munnar. By this time I’d gone a bit loopy in the back seat. And so was pretty much entertaining myself by singing out aloud to whatever song happened to be playing on the cd player at the moment (Actually the way I was singing, I probably entertained Jade and Amethyst too. You’ll have to ask Jade about that).

(River-Bridge)
As we neared Munnar and more and more hair-pin bends began to make an appearance, the view began to change. More and more mist shrouded valleys, and mountain ranges covered with forests and flowering trees began to appear. It was breath taking. Particularly when there was a sudden downpour, which transformed the scenary into something right out of the Jurassic park.

(Speeding through the rain)

I would’nt have been surprised if I saw a long necked dinosaur lift it’s head from amidst the foliage right then. After many miles of ‘is this Munnar’…we reached and passed Munnar. To see, the place we were staying in was supposedly some 18kms from the main Munnar town.

Jade: Yes, she did make me forget about my stomach ache by singing in to my ears from her strategic position behind me in the Qualis! So, as she said we passed some small towns and also Munnar for that matter, ‘cos our guest house was in Devikullam which was 18kms from Munnar! I can say that we took a trip to Devikullam. There were tea gardens on both sides of the road and the guest house was supposedly located in the middle of one. It was dark, the road was bad and at one spot there was a huge crater and Amber who couldn’t see it from her seat, for a second thought we are heading for the trees whenwe were trying to by-pass it!
We were told the guest house was just opposite to find Club Mahindra, so we were looking out for boards which led us there.There was one which said Club Mahindra-18kms and another later which said, Club Mahindra-1 km. How could you get lost?!! So we reached Club Mahindra and asked for directions to the Chancellor’s Resort and were told that we should have taken a diversion down the road. We back-tracked and managed to reach the Chancellor’s Resort, only to find that it was not just the opposite of Club Mahindra but on the opposite hill!

Amber: Finally after about 5 hrs of traveling, we finally trudged into ‘Chancellor Resorts’ and after being made to wait a while, were shown to ourcottage. Thereafter we explored the cottage, freshened up, ordered in (as we were ravenously hungry by then), and sadly pondered over the fact that we now had only half-a-day in Munnar to sight see. The best part about that night were the stars. I stood out on the balcony for atleast 20 minutes staring up at them. There’s nothing like stars out in the country and I felt that alone made my trip worth while.

After food, we fell asleep. The next morning I was woken up by Amethyst, who wanted me to see the sunrise. (early morning view from our cottage)

(our cottage)

(this one was very cute)

So I did, and managed to witness the sky lightening (if not the actual sun-rise) and also see how exactly the resort looked in daylight. Pictures were taken, and I managed to sketch the view from the balcony of the cottage. Plans of exploring a near-by trekking path were abandoned because all of us took too much time to get ready and because there simply wasn’t much time anyway. We were going to visit a nearby dam and then return to the hotel, pack and leave for Cochin.

( things we didn't do!)

Jade: Ain’t that funny?!! We had arrived only the night before and we were already getting ready to leave. All that because we had booked the tickets to leave the same night from Eranakullam, we could stay longer since Amber and Amethyst had already bunked 3 days of college and couldn’t afford to bunk more! Don’t know what we were thinking when we said we’ll go on a trip!
Well, Munnar is a place where you just relax and enjoy the peace and serenity. Take the ayurvedic massage packages offered by the resort and to simply rejuvenate.
The hills and the tea gardens were definitely therapeutic. We took some snaps in the morning just outside the resort and went to have breakfast in this cute restaurant named ‘The Rock Restaurant’. It had pretty windows and on the inside there actually was a rock on one side of the restaurant which oddly looked nice.

(The Rock - restaurant)

We decided to make the best of the time we had and set out to see the tea estate and the hotel desk told us there was a dam some 4 kms away. So what the heck! We skipped the tea estate as we weren’t keen on watching the tea getting processed (have already seen that and the other two weren’t interested).

(Amber tries technical shots with the digi-cam, cool huh?)

On our way to the dam we saw cinnamon plantation.We reached this dam called Anairangal, whose source is a lake made purely of rain water.

(view of the lake from the road outside the resort)

(view of the road, from the road!)

The dam was closed and the water was flowing through an underwater tunnel at that time. By now we were too used to disappointments to react. Though, we did see a family of ducks swimming in the lake. Mom and dad were having a conversation with a man who was apparently in charge.
(Tree house on the way to the dam)

(Signboard leading us to the dam. Photography was prohibited on the dam itself.)

We made our way back to the hotel; we had packed already and decided to have lunch on the way down at Adi Mali.

Amber: When I go to Munnar next, I plan on taking ample time to just wander around aimlessly!!! Ok..Now that I’ve got that off my chest, to continue, we got back in the car and headed toward Adi Mali. On the way we stopped in the Munnar town market and purchased various souvenirs. Actually Jade and her mom bought little wooden lamps, plates etc. Amethyst fell in love with a silly wooden tortoise which we persuaded her not to buy as the price on it was exorbitant and not worth the actual toy. I bought tons of homemade chocolates and atleast 3 different kinds of tea. Then it was back in the car to resume the downhill trip.

More breathtaking scenary later, when we stopped for lunch, Amethyst wasn’t feeling so great thanks to car sickness. Lunch was a dismal affair. Well, because, the place we stopped at to eat lunch was dismal.

Anyhoo! Got back into the car, resumed journey, with me again, singing along loudly to the songs and persuading others to do the same. A few hours later, about an hour or two away from Ernakullam, we realized we’d wandered off the road we came in. So stopped at a tea-shop, asked for directions and thereon arrived at the hotle in Ernakullam we’d left the previous day, an hour later than we were actually supposed to.

Jade: I was on the front seat after lunch, playing DJ, half singing, half praying. Praying because the driver had freaked us out the previous day when we almost got hit by a bus and landed in a pit. There wasn’t much improvement the next day; there were a few narrow escapes on our side as well as the others on the road! I was also busy clicking pictures of our potential victims.

We managed to reach Eranakullam safely. It was time to go back, the sky was overcast with some lightening and thundering….

Amber: At the hotel in Ernakullam we freshened up, ate, and left for the railway station. En route we got a glimpse of a part of Marine Drive. A lot of family gossip was indulged in while waiting for the train, which arrived on time. In the train, Amethyst and Jade’s mom fell asleep (Jade’s dad was’nt traveling with us as he had to go on to Coimbatore for another meeting) almost immediately. Jade and I sat up till midnight I think talking about life and love. The next morning we got off at Chennai Central and headed home. A quick visit to my grandparents followed later in the morning, after which it was time for Amethyst and me to board the afternoon train back home to Bangalore.

So was this trip or rather series of trips worthwhile? I’d say yes, definitely. It’s always fun for me, Amethyst and Jade to spend time together and I guess this was a break from routine we all needed. Plus, as Jade likes to keep saying who knows how often we’ll be meeting in the future? (Once she gets through to a management programand goes where that takes her, and I graduate and get a job and go where that takes me) I disagree with her, I think we’ll find a way to keep in touch and meet no matter where and how busy we are. : )

So there you have it. Our trip to Munnar. It’s nothing to write home about. You’ll agree with me, if you’ve actually read the whole story above and are still around to read this. But doing this collaboration with Jade to write down our memories of the trip was fun. J
Looking forward to more such trips and collaborations in the future.

With that, this is Amber and Jade signing off….