Marriages are Made in …Sri Sri Ashram Too

In Palakkad, my native place, one’s profession gets appended to his name:  Enna Kadai (Oil Merchant) Chuppamani, Pohela kadai (Tobacco merchant) Mani or Marundu Kadai (Medicine shop) Chellappa.

By this token my father should perhaps have been posthumously hailed “Pan-India love-marriage family” Samikutty. Yes, we have a boy or girl in marriage from Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, or even the United States of America. And those to join the bandwagon include brides or grooms from…. I might as well wait till the status upgrades itself from ‘going steady to ‘taken the plunge’. There can always be a slip between the cup and the lip.

In our family the trend of selecting a partner by oneself was begun - you guessed it right – by me.  I found my life partner (from within the extended family) on my way to Dhaka on an assignment when the then East Pakistan liberated itself to emerge as Bangladesh.

Years later my elder brother’s son picked up the thread; he selected a girl from UP to lead a blissful life. My sister’s son followed suit to marry a girl from Maharashtra. His sister selected a boy from Karnataka. And three or four from the next generation are all set to formally announce their decisions – again belonging various States in India.

Today we had the pleasure of attending in Sri Sri Ashram the Tamil-Maharastrian couple’s son tying the knot to an American girl; the charming couple, both doctors from a top-notch US University. 

You get to interact with various people on such occasions. I got to chat with the guy who was arranging transport for the guests from one venue to the other. It was a vast area – one place for breakfast, another for lunch, yet another for dinner.  It transpired that as a baby he had acted in a few Hindi films. One such was in BR Chopra’s Baagban. Some of you might recollect the scene where the couple Amitabh Bachhan and Hema Malini by mistake break Amitab’s glasses. When they ask his son whom they had brought up so fondly, he declines for lack of funds. Next day his son loses or spoils his shoes, and the parents lose no time to buy a new pair…

“How come you didn’t continue”? That was not my cup of tea. My parents were eager. He is well settled in the hospitality industry in Vancouver.

One takeaway from these functions these days is that nearly 65% of the guests will be seniors with walking sticks, walkers… It would not be surprising if an outsider mistakes it for someone’s 60th or 80th birthday ceremony.

Most of the guests are likely to cherish, more than the attendance at the marriage, their good luck to meet Guruji, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar ji on not just one, but two occasions when he came to bless the couple. Yes, everything is preordained.

As we returned home happy at the stay in the Ashram for nearly three days, there was another co-resident couple alighting from a cab. They rushed to us: “Mama we are happy to announce that my son is marrying a Spanish girl. Our long-time hunt for a suitable girl is over.” They were thrilled.

It’s a small world. And small is beautiful. 

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Hail BBMP – Nay, our MC – Nay, Both

“Doorstep delivery from a Government body?”  ‘No way’, you might respond. Not any longer if we go by what is now happening in SFV. A team of BBMP officials were busy helping SFVians getting E-khatha or carrying out corrections to some of the earlier ones.  They did an extra day as well. Thank you BBMP and your staff.

No less gratitude is due to the members of the MC who did an outstanding job in organizing this. Some of them, and volunteers as well whom I spotted when I was in were Sajan, Chidambaram, Vaidya, Suma ji, Kiran… 

I had no plans to visit Club House for this. I was heading for my Vitamin D walk. It suddenly struck me that when I got my E-Khatha thanks to the then MC’s effort, I had it scrutinized word for word by my friend. He had pointed a small error in the Kannada version. He suggested it was not worth correcting it as the remedy could be worse than the disease. So I left it at that. 

“Why leave a legacy of problems? Who not try to sort it out? Take care of the penny, and pounds will take care of themselves…” wisdom dawned on me. I took just the E-Khata and went to Club House. “New E-Khatha or just correction?” asked our ever-smiling Suma whose indefatigable voluntary job to SFV is matchless. “Correction,” madam. She handed me a token. It called for some wait. But the volunteers guided me to the counter, spoke to some waiting guys whose turn it was before me. They all agreed, and I would be the next. What a wonderful camaraderie, many of whom I was not even acquainted with. Who says we are far from a well-knit family?

As I waited, I showed it to Mr Ramamurthy of Oak to detect that small mistake. He read through the document back and forth and said that the only mistake he could detect was that it reflected my carpet area as 0, and its figure had crept into the next column. “Maybe you would like to correct it, having come.” 

The BBMP official confirmed the mistake and asked me to show Sale Deed to verify. I had not carried it. The lady of the house rushed in with it, and with the MC volunteers vying with one another to help me dig out the sale deed, the relevant page, etc. it was all done in a jiffy. I thanked profusely BBMP officials and MC volunteers around. 

As I stepped into the lift with the lady of the house trying to stuffl in all loose papers into the bag to be sorted out back home, I hummed the old Tamil song, Kaatu vanga ponen, Kavitai vangi vanthen - I went in for something and came out with something else.

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Singing the Walk

SFV plays a mute witness to a host of activities. Hopefully, she enjoys some as puts up with others. 

Come morning, and she watches the disorderly haste or confusion of children not to miss their school bus. Some can be seen engaged in last minute preparations for possible questions, while in the lift. The parents are fully supportive. They hold their heavy-duty backpacks, run in advance to the lift that is working, hold the lift that is otherwise loaded with morning-walk crowd, and request them to wait for a second (read: a few minutes) as their child rushes in holding half bread in hand and struggling to gobble the other half. 

Then you have rehabilitative group – those with walking stick (the writer included) or walker doing their prescribed number of steps or rounds; others in wheel-chair accompanied by their caretakers. For the caretakers this is their most awaited morning meet. 

A little later assembles the ‘babies day out’ group with young attendant-ladies gently navigating the prams to a secluded place where they could give the babies juices, or cajole them to eat what they have packed for them from home. 

From 11.30 to 12.30 it is time for the Vitamin-D club (exposing to sun rays) – ladies on one side and gents on another. That particular day I counted ten ladies – some squeezing themselves in the two iron benches that they re-arranged to suit them, others content sitting on the cement park-boundary. Their occasional outburst of laughter indicated that they were having a blast.

The menfolk – around seven of them – busied themselves discussing, inter alia, diabetes, blood pressure, their present acceptable levels, the best medicine for these (the ones they were taking, that is); the happenings around; slowly meandering into politics – the suggestion of diverting of excess Ganges water into other states, and the assertion of an ex Chief Minister, now on bail, Ganga maiyaa ka ek boond pani bhi hum Bihar se bahar jane nahi denge… That trigers one member to hum, Tohre taal mile nadi ki jal mein, nadi miley sagar mein, sagar miley konisi jal mein, koi jaane na…  At this point Sivan (all names changed) makes a grand entry into the group raising his hands high and singing Hemant Kumar’s, Muj ko tum jo mile yeh jaha mil gaye, turning the meet into a singing session. Not to be outdone, Grover ji welcomes him, “Aap jaisa koi zindagi mein aaye…I joined the melee with the number, Aaja sanam madhur chandni mein hum tum mile…

A few more impromptu initial lines and the group choose to take a walk, continuing the singing session (unmindful of other walkers watching them) – a la a delayed start of an early morning Margazhi masa Bhajan in villages in South. 

“That is a nice way to pass the time,” commented one, as he walked past. The lady who participated in Antakshari in our one-day trip a couple of years ago, asked us, “Can the ladies also join?” We hesitated, because she beat us hollow that time. I saw yet another passer-by whisper something into the ears of his friend. Could it be, “if only they sang it in a moving train, they might have collected five or ten rupees.” 

The session went on for a round or two, and it was time to depart. Achha to hum chalte hain, hummed one. Phir kab milo ge, asked the other. Jab tum kaho ge, answered the first.

Yet another said, “Chalte, chalte, yaad rakhna, kabhi alvida na kahna. The third said, Oh jaane wale ho sake to lot ke aana, as each one of us branched off to our respective towers. 

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