Forced vegetarianism

 The New Year has started with travel. After returning from Kerala on January 14 - spending one night at the iconic Mascot Hotel by KTDC in the capital -- we played host to a Jain couple for 10 days beginning  end Jan.

Though it was difficult for us to abstain from non-vegetarian fare except during Lent, we took it in our stride and decided to learn some pure vegetarian, non-onion, non-tubers cooking. We bent backwards to accommodate the elderly couple we knew from our Chennai days. I provided them the Ganesha figurines to make their morning prayers. The man was not interested in the Sivakami figurine I treasured in my collection, and placed the  Ganeshas alone on a paper tissue in Mira's room. He also made it a point to turn the Masai family sculpture away to ward off evil energy in the room. 

V took physical and financial pains to take them around - Miracle Garden, Dubai Mall, the new Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi etc - while I escaped the first half because of a gig. My birthday also was marked by an eggless pista cake and some dinner at a veg restaurant nearby.

They left happy and content about a comfortable trip, blessing me before they made their way to immigration in Terminal 3. But would I have them again. God forbid. 

Much as we call it cultural exchange and tolerance, I dont like the air of superiority of vegetarians. Come on, humans are meant to be carnivores. 

Instead of meat and fish, we gulped down litres of oil and ghee under the lady's specialty cooking. 

The maid and me mopped up the water they splashed on the bathroom floor outside the tub. I sent the pillows stained with coconut oil to the laundry  -- some Indians like to apply oil on their hair after a hairwash. 

Two days after they left, me and Ash packed our bags to leave for Kenya to attend a first cousin's 50th birthday celebration.

Three weddings

... and a memorial service

In Kerala, a vacation well-spent.

BFIW 3

The reception the next night was equally grand. The couple entered through a cloudy, smoky path created by dry ice. Food flowed while dancing, gifting and photo ops went on in the background. Even by the most stringent belt tightening standards, the expenses would've crossed 25 lakh.

I departed the next day with a return gift and a box of sweets stuffed into my suitcase. After a quick trip to Gurgaon to meet a school friend I hadn't seen in 40 years, I boarded an Air India Vistara flight to Dubai. It was one helluva trip; I particularly liked the fact that i could go on a solo trip to my favorite Mughal monuments in Delhi  _ Qutb Minar, Humayun's Tomb _ on the morning of the reception! Random tourists obliged me to click photographs of myself. 

Key takeaways from being a part of a big fat wedding: they lack the grace and sophistication of a present-day Kerala Syrian Christian wedding but they are earthy and fun. They don't work with any clockwork precision and lack the organised brevity of xian weddings _ but there's food to keep people entertained, so noone has complaints. It's not the mad rush to the buffet halls we see in Kerala. There's more generosity in the hosting as I experienced in the hotel booking and food; our folks would expect us to fend for ourselves. The family bonhomie on the surface (at least) is endearing.  That people, despite the division and bigotry one sees online, are nicer, kinder and caring. 

I came back feeling happy and much loved.

BFIW 2

For the next 3 days, we had our meals sorted out. Special veg buffets on the terrace of the hotel or the feasts accompanying the sangeet on 26th night, the actual wedding on 27th or the reception on 28th night. I didn't miss my daily non-vegetarian protein intake and feasted on the paneer, chaats and Indian sweets. The sangeet had only the groom's party and i assume the bride's side had their own sangeet in another part of the city. The uncles, aunts,nephews and nieces danced along with the groom  while most of us ladies queued up for the mehndi application. I smudged one hand in no time  but despite the glitch, it brightened my palms for a few days.

On the wedding day, a beautician who came to deck up the groom's mother gave me also a touch-up _ it was no small makeover and had me looking like a kathakali artist who many layers of paint and a hairbun that betrayed my actual age. Seema looked stunning in a bright red sari while the other lady relatives turned out fancy in their best saris. By then, the whole extended family paid special attention to making me feel I was part of their family; either my Hindi was improving or their English was. I got on particularly well with Seemas mother, a retired teacher of English, and her quiet father, a college professor who didn't speak much English.

A bus transported us to the wedding venue inGhaziabad , and for a while we stood outside and danced around the groom perched on a white horse. The dancing went on for half an hour, I guess, on both sides of the road and outside the hall entrance before the bride's family  welcomed us all in great fanfare. Little plates of snacks and bright colored drinks began appearing wherever we were, and the initial excitement of a chat counter son dissipated when I realized I had to leave a lil space for the main course.

And then came the bride, in a lovely red lehenga and shielded under what looked like a flower-decked cot, raining flying kisses at the groom waiting on stage. 

The actual wedding pooja happened in the afternoon after we had our fill. The bride had changed into another outfit by then. Everyone crowded around the puja pandas, and i settled for a second row seat and closed my eyes for a while. By the time i woke up, the wedding ceremony was over. I had expected some loud chanting through a mic but it was a hushed affair and the pujari was probably the most soft spoken guy I had seen. Most embarrassingly, the relatives had all seen me dozing and thought I was bored.

The big fat Indian wedding

I flew straight to jaipur on an air arabia flight on Nov 22nd where I was eagerly and affectionately received by my brother's in laws, a retired naval officer living in an officer's campus, one of the few decent localities I found in the Pink City. The city had none of the charm that beckoned us from tourism brochures but was dusty, dirty and disorganized. But my host's bungalow had the most charming and beautiful interiors. I was meeting them for the first time in their home ground. They organized a taxi and one-day tour for me that covered Hawa mahal, Amer Fort, and a drive up Najafgarh fort from where we could observe Jal Mahal basking in the winter sun. The Palace was closed for renovation. Food was great at the restaurant we had lunch and at my host'sfor breakfast and dinner. I left the next day afternoon for Delhi in an Air India vistara flight, despite trepidations about traveling AI after the Ahmed -abad crash. A green yet polluted city welcomed me and took me in an airport taxi to RK PURAM where my friend lived. She welcomed me with aarati and sindoor, and I walked in to a house teeming with her relatives who had come from Indore and Neemach mostly. By night, many of them dispersed to other relatives' homes and it was just me and the groom's parents in the 50 year old government flat. Bro's friend Des and Farah took me out for dinner to an Assamese restaurant that served pork but no beef, so i settled for a chicken meal. 

The next day morning, there was a spillover puja from the previous day's haldi ceremony. The pandit gathered the groom and his parents near him while the rest of us sat behind and most chattered away loudly defying the loud chants from the poojari who would occasionally hand out various things for the groom or his ps to hold or put into the fire. He had a sense of humor and cracked some jokes in Hindi which I didn't understand by everyone else laughed. He kindly let me do an aarati or circling a plate of consecrated stuff around the fire in the end like every other relative.

Soon after the ceremony, we shifted to a hotel in a Punjabi colony. The reception sported paper clippings of Modi wishing Sikhs on their auspicious day.

Delhi days again

One of my favourite memories from my Delhi days in the 1990s was a young couple in their kitchen cubicle - the wife making rotis and curry after office and the husband keeping her company, talking to her in Hindi but keeping an eye out for the three young ladies in the adjoining room. I say room because that rented place in Katwaria Sarai belonging to a Jat gentleman -- who had a family and buffaloes living on the ground floor -- was the most rudimentary of architectural designs.  There were four rooms on the first floor with kitchens and washrooms adjoining them. The working ladies and the couple had their rooms adjoining each other, so they soon got friendly. The husband was a good singer and he would occasionally look at our room and sing "mere samnewali khidki mein ek chand ka tukda rehta hein (There is a piece of moon living in the window in front)".  I assumed he referred to my roommate who was pretty but later the couple told us that it was a tribute to all of us girls.

Whatever, the bond grew and by the time I left in less than an year's time, we had got so close that they looked dejected when they came to bid me farewell at the New Delhi railway station. Though I did not return to Delhi until a decade later, our correspondence continued and we developed a bond that was strengthened by our love for English literature and love and romance in the books we read and in life in general. I discussed my real and imaginary romances  - beginning with a knight in shining armour who rescued me from being pushed into the tracks by a desperate commuter trying to board the moving train at Chengannur where I alighted after a 3-day journey -- and my steady changes in life over inland mail in the initial years and by email and much later WhatsApp. Curiously, in those years I never knew her caste or political affiliations - it never really mattered unlike these days where people's differences are more out in the open.

Some time early this year, Seema told me her only child, who had chosen to become a professional singer, had found the love of his life - a singer herself. Though I initially agreed to go, I later told her I had a few other financial and travel commitments that would make it difficult. But when she sent me the wedding invite in October I decided to go, with ample encouragement from bro. V agreed though he wasnt really aware until much later that I had booked tickets. I decided to spend a day or two sightseeing in Jaipur to make the most of the one-week Delhi trip. I was somewhat apprehensive about sharing space with right-wing strangers in the Delhi hotel they had reserved for us but when she told me I would be sharing a room with her cousin Bobby who I knew from my Delhi stint and Seem herself, I was relieved.  

To be continued

Post-partum caregivers

After two weeks in my hometown during Mira's mid-semester break, I boarded an Emirates flight from Kochi. For a change, I opted for the window seat; aisle seat is my preferred seat as it gives me better freedom of movement and less claustrophobia. 

But I had not bargained for two older ladies as companions - women who were already in winter clothing appropriate for their destinations which were so bulky that it not only inconvenienced the wearer but me the neighbour. Its layered material encroached into my space while her feet in newfound shoes stole part of my leg space. 

Once I had finished admiring the skies and the land below, I turned to study the lady next to me. I surmised she was heading to meet her offspring most probably to help with her pregnancy. My sarcasm towards the kin of the new breed of Kerala immigrants to the West did not prevent me from helping her with her food tray. Her battle with the chettinad chicken biriyani further limited my space - she held akimbo the foil on her left hand as she attacked the chicken. A forlorn fork fell to the ground; I advised her to fetch it later as I didnt want her tripping the whole tray on me.

Once we had finished our meals, I decided to corroborate my findings. And boy! wasnt I right?!!. She was en route to Ireland to take care of her pregnant daughter whose due date was two days later. And her companion's daughter had given birth a day earlier. I only got her native place wrong. She hailed from Nagercoil and her friend from a town near Kochi; the latter seemed a little more flight savvy and English literate (enough to follow the cabin crew's queries). She had travelled all the way to Kochi airport instead of Trv airport to have a flight companion.

"This jacket is too hot," she told me as she removed it after her meal, revealing her dusky figure in  a green sari. I smiled sympathetically. 

But I wasnt prepared for the tale she narrated for the rest of our four-hour journey.  Her daughter was a nurse who migrated from Saudi to Ireland. She had worked as a daily labourer to bring up her three children after her alcoholic and abusive husband passed away. And no, this wasnt her first flight journey, she had been to Qatar to visit another daughter. 

Have you been to Dubai before? No, she said, though my son lives there. He has been incommunicado for the past three years. He lives there with his wife and child but doesnt call me ever. Her eyes moistened as she talked of her son. Her daughter had promised to take care of her. 

She kept talking until the place touched down in Dubai. I wished her all the best and went my way as she waited for the wheelchair to transport her to the connecting flight.. That is a ploy not only to  avoid the long walk inside dxb airport but also to navigate English illiteracy and related bottlenecks. 

Lives of people are more complex than we take them to be.