Who am I kidding, it probably IS something close to that. I was not as terrified with the idea of being married as the wedding itself.I have known S long enough and knew that, as much as my mother hoped and prayed for it, he didn’t expect me to turn into a new domestic goddess version of myself post- wedding. Not too much was going to change with us. But the wedding itself, gosh! I was really nervous about all that attention, the pressure to look good  and terrified of being caught on camera doing something clumsy/stupid ! Remember all those tamil movies where the bride can’t light the lamp at first go or her sari catches on fire and everybody predicts doom or a mishap? That ladies and gentlemen was my biggest fear!

Other than that, the wedding was a lot more fun than I expected it to be. It was awesome that so many of my favorite people including cousins and aunts and uncles from the US made it to the wedding! The shopping sure was fun and it was so awesome to be back at Gops with Kindu, Utts and AB. We would pretend to exercise in the mottai madi in the morning, and as we came down, freshly squeezed juice, oats, the clothes for the day will all be laid out by Perimma/amma. I am so jealous of the pampering that Utts and AB receive, that it motivates me to move back home so much more than all the other reasons I had. I could really get used to the luxury.

The time spent at the two houses post wedding was interesting to say the least. I didn’t pretend to be the kudumba kuthuvilakku my mom wanted me to be, but overall I think I did well in the good-girl behaviour ratings It was so weird and annoying to note the tone of respect everyone from my Athais and perimas to my mom adopted while speaking to S, and I got a “veetu maaplai la” explanation every time I protested. Why no one give me any new respect? It was also so amusing when our maid checked S out and came and told me “Aiya nalla irukaru” . She was the one keeping tabs on whether I wore my thaali everyday and when I switched from the thread to the kodi!!!!

The visa people probably never had a happier recipient of a 221g form. I was so thrilled that I got to stay through some portion of margazhi, and also at home with the luxury treatment for a longer time! Except for the cancellation of a much-anticipated Angkor trip, I did have a great time. We went to Udaipur instead, I got to gorge on Gangotree panipuri, and of course eat at everyplace Ampa and Deeber had lined up for me. And then the blasted passport came back and I had to leave 5 kutcheris don’t make a Margazhi, but I am glad I got to catch some of my favorites in action. Will put up kutcheri reviews soon.As it is this post has taken so long, and I also have to leave for home from work now

And that dear readers was what I did while I was gone Wish you all a wonderful 2012 and hope it brings us all a lot of luck, love and happiness!

The scraps to riches story is really inspiring, impressive and something I am proud to say I saw happening and I would have definitely felt a million times worse if the library had gone to dust. But the transition of an old, charming world of nooks and corners stuffed with shelves of books, the cool dampness in the inside rooms, the wonderfully enticing smell of books and paper, the grumpy old men with ledgers and the thrills of search, stumble and discovery  set my huzun quotient dial to maximum.

My dad’s generation saw their contributions to Palani’s dream of starting a library out of an old-paper business turn into a tiny cubby filled with shelves heaving under the weight of books. My mom saw her library membership become the most coveted possession for many in the house. B900, it wasn’t just any number. It was a pass code into a luxurious world of the published wonders. But it was also a number, thanks to my dad mostly, tagged with a lot of late returns and fines

A trip to the library, though it was only 5min walk from home, was an event for me!  I would accompany my mother, armed with the  “library bag”, with a vague list in head. 2-3 books for me,2 books for Kindu, book or two for Amma and then an allotted quota of comics. I don’t know why, maybe because of the chill of the steel, maybe because of the dampness of the books, or even because of the hot sun in the short walk there, but entering the library  always felt like entering a cool dark cave. The library was always dimly lit, some of the inside rooms didn’t even have sunlight hit them. It was a labyrinth where if you knew your way around there was no stopping you from finding treasures. There was no formal cataloguing, a vague sorting by genres and alphabetical listing. New hardbounds in the front next to rows and rows of DOS guides , the classics in the middle room, the banned shelves of M&Bs and anything else my mom deemed as trash, the barely visited(much to my regret now) tamil shelves, the rows of Just William books, the entire collection of Hardy boys and Nancy Drews, Enid Blytons, Roal Dahls- there was never a book I couldn’t find at Easwari, or at least that Palani couldn’t help me find.  My mom was unfortunately an indulgently black-marked regular. Palani would always throw a mock fuss before he gave out a new book to my mother. But secretly I think those were just roles we played, to keep the proceedings interesting.

Grumpy men with grunt filled vocabulary sat to enter the books into huge ledgers for check out, of course not before diligently checking  the returned books. You just had to give them the membership number. No IDs, no verification. The trade was built on a trust system. There were no cards in the book, just an oval purple rubber stamp to show that it was the property of Easwari. Regulars could get away occasionally by saying that things would be returned later.  In the end,Palani always decided the bill. His was a supremely unique method, with a strange algorithm in his head, I’m sure ,with weightage for his fondness of the customer, his mood and probably the taste of his lunch! He would lift each book, and almost sort of weigh it with his wrist before throwing it down with a thud. No word, no eye contact and at the end of the whole process, he would pronounce a number that we couldn’t refute. But dues and account balances were tolerated, again, with vague grunts. And finally,walking out of the library with a pile of books waiting to be read was one of the greatest thrills in life.

As I grew older, my mom would be the one making the trips to the library with lists from everyone in the family. Later in life, perippa even got an account to Eloor  Library that was spic and span and organized to the T. It lacked the warmth and charm of a neighbourhood library, and was also so impersonal. No Palani to admonish you, or give you a scolding or tell you that you should read Ponniyin Selvan in Tamil.

These days, while I have forgotten the charms of a cozy library and have moved on to second hands and e-books, my mom still visits Easwari almost every month. She tells me Palani still sits there, and he still refuses to give her first dibs at new books. But the library is more organized, more efficient and computers sit where the ledgers once did (that was even in my time). While my father’s generation saw  the crumbling of a lot of their charmed worlds with the change of times (Safire theatre, more recently Drive-in), it is the turn of mine to see the renovation of rabbit holes, into castles with elevators. Unfortunately efficiency and enterprise is always at the price of romantic  old-world charm!

In a country where an aural tradition is predominant, and where the music, arts and folk culture are entwined with the religions and its tales, it is not surprising that some of the best narrations of these epics are in the oral format. And growing up, I have always been fascinated and enraptured by Harikathas and discourses.  I think I owe a lot of it to two of my own personal racounters. The first being my father. He is blessed with a great gift of storytelling that has completely missed being passed on to me! While the story was definitely the medium, my dad was all about the details. It was very important to him that I know of the Ashta Vasus and 11 rudras, know the names of Bhagadatta’s elephant, Surya’s seven horses or Ravana’s father. He would quiz me on these things periodically to make sure I was paying attnetion!  The second, was my grandfather (mom’s uncle). I am the apple of his eye, and would be favored with bed-time stories whenever I visited Mandaveli. His special story was that of Kanappa Nayanaar, who to date remains my favorite.  I am also known to have tested his patience, not letting him go beyond the “mAn Oda, rAmar Oda” infinite loop in the Maarichan story!

Anantharama Dikshithar is another childhood favorite. I can still quote some of his lines from his discourses with tonal modulations and emphasis intact (gurvayoorappA..nAn..anAdhan..). So was Prema Pandurang. When Ani was pregnant with Ana,I would spend evenings with her in the only A/C room in the house, listening to Prema’s beautiful bhagavatham lectures, ostensibly for the A/C but I have to admit that the beauty and vAtsalyam of the narration moved me more.

Which brings me to the point of my strange delusion in my teenage years that interest in such things were very “maami” and uncool.  I would therefore feign a lack of interest and miss all the kathai sessions in our neighbourhood temple. But I think my parents sensed my interest nevertheless, maybe from the delight I took when Appa started one of his vedantha talks (I can see my sister rolling her eyes at me right now) or from  how despite all my jokes about wanting to give Muralidhara Swamigal a manicure, I would still listen to his Pandaripur stories along with my mother!  So my dad continued to delight in the only enthusiastic audience he ever got, and my mom never failed to read to me bits from Deivathin Kural or come back from her harikatha sessions with summaries. To her, the end goal is always the moral of the story, and she would cut through all the intersting stuff and get straight to the point which would of course totally ruin it for me!

Mythology is popular in India now, but harikatha might still be a maami and reitred maama niche. But I am beyond such inhibitions now and embrace my maami-hood with open arms and pride! This past week, I have been listening to TSB’s Bhagavatha Sapthaham and it is deliciously good! He is a dramatic narrator and it is so awesome that he often breaks off in a tangent and breaks into a Tyagaraja krithi!   The discourse has also made me pick up Kamala Subramanian’s Bhagavatham again. Thanks to being my dad’s daughter, I had to start over as I don’t remember all the names and details from the first 200 pages I already read! The narration and concepts are utterly fascinating. Narayana’s dream and kalpa and the creation of the universe is simply mind blowing! Sorry Christopher Nolan, we beat you to the idea. Last night I was thinking about how Suka is the father of all katha narrators and it is no coincidence that he was the banner deity for all S.Ve.Sekar productions. And that really is it! For me beyond the spiritual reflections of these narrations, the attraction is the stories, the music and the lure of a good racounter!

Srirangathu Devathaigal, the title itself has a ring of nostalgia and home to it. Through a collection of  short stories, Sujatha presents a wonderful slice of life in small town TN from a bygone era of innocence. The stories are filled with very memorable characters; people I can relate to, eccentricities I have heard of and seen in family and neighbours growing up, a certain sense of abandon and carefree-ness that I crave for and an idyllic setting that I am sure is everybody’s idea of the “good-old times”!

Sujatha is wickedly funny (self-deprecating humor in an endearing way), extremely insightful, reflective , sensitive,poignant and empathetic in the right measures. He flawlessly seams in english and vernacular in the narrative, which gives the setting a certain “thinnai-discussion” feel that is incredibly appealing.  My favorite in the collection is “ஏறக்குறைய genius”, a story where Sujatha brings out the humor and sadness in the story wonderfully, and the ending is beautifully poetic! “கடவுளுக்கு கடிதம்” is an extremely poignant tale of the exasperating hopelessness and incredible strength of faith, and “பெண்  வேஷம்” and “பாம்பு” are howlarious! “சின்ன ர ” while it seemed a little out-of-place in this collection, was extremely clever and had an O.Henry feel to it.

With my reading in Tamil going very well, I have a Jeymohan collection and then hopefully an Ambai one  lined up to read. Very exciting times!

The last time I wrote a birthday post, I was at an extremely content phase in life. I had everything, or so it seemed. Great friends,the boy I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, wonderful family, an active life,lovely work environment at school,  all that beautiful music and the promise of my entire life stretching in front of me.

A lot of that still remains, but a lot has changed since then. My 26th birthday is a big blur in my head. It was one week before my defense, my mom was with me, Ani and family made my day by visiting me, but I think I ghost walked through most of it. The day I defended, I felt such incredible relief, almost like an iron being lifted of my chest. I never realised how much stress I had bottled up. And then it came pouring! I was stressed about finding a job, I had conflicting ideals in my head about career and compromise, I didn’t want to step out of my niche area of research, I had papers to finish, things to wrap up before a, then, unknown and uncertain future. 

And then within a few weeks I grew up. I had a job, a car and was living by myself in a new town. While it was incredibly overwhelming, it was also very exciting in the beginning. People at work were sweet enough, I had a new city to explore, new restaurants to try out, I signed up for a bunch of classes, paatu class to look forward to each week, I gallery hopped- SLR in tow, got to the front row in my yoga class, lost all that dissertation fat, it was all good!

 But slowly it started to fade away . I lived in denial for a long time. Sure there were bright spots. I took vacations, paatu class and yoga class is great fun, I read a lot and in general got a lot more time to indulge in the things I was interested in. But the effort it took to keep myself busy enough to not think about anything was not sustainable.  I put up a brave front to friends and family talking about my classes and job, refusing to acknowledge the depression of every weekend, the questions about weekend plans at work, the looks  I imagined I got when I said table for one, the incredible loneliness because of the lack of social life. Instead of reaching out and making an effort, my ego just pushed me in to a shell . S bore the brunt of it all as I whined and whined to him, spited him for having fun with friends, behaved like a completely needy, miserable sop, and to give him credit he put up with a lot of it. It wasn’t until he complained about how I am always cribbing that I realised what I had turned into. My sunny personality was gone. I had turned into an always polambifying case , the kind of person I always had contempt for.

I had my meltdown a few days back at the prospect of having to spend my birthday by myself. And then I snapped. I counted my blessings,felt disgusted by the extent of my self-pity and have decided to make the best of my last few months by myself and in this town! This year I plan to be content and happy! I have a lot to look forward to : I have a wedding to plan, an awesome holiday that I have always wanted, the prospect of a wonderful life with S, a new job in an awesome city. And I have all the things that have always made me happy. My wonderful family, and the best of friends who have lived and loved with me for so long! My last few months in KY are going to awesome because I will make them that

And that is the greatest thing I learnt about myself this year. If I put my mind to something I can make it happen -a license, new car and a maiden solo trip on the inter-state all within 2 weeks. The story speaks for itself.  S is so comfortable in his skin and self content that he can live through it all, act by act with little support casting and with whoever happens to drift in. Me, I need an audience! I need co-stars, make-up, costume, props and the whole rigmarole.  And that is the second lesson for me. To give in a little, and learn to be more self-content. To learn to live with less validation, confirmation and yes I will grudgingly admit, a little less materialism.

As much as I needed this purge of a post, I am also extremely self-conscious about publishing it and putting it up for all of the www to see. But I think, I need to start letting people see my weaknesses. I never let even my closest of friends see me weak and needy. I need to stop that and bust my ego a little. Of course, if you ever bring this up in real life conversations with me, I will just blame it on an Amy Tan overdose over the past weekend And what plans for the birthday, you ask? I am going to check into a spa and treat myself to the best pampering money can buy

“ chAru chandra hAsini..” 

And the first thing that struck me was, what about Kamal?

Dawn was always heralded by the call for prayer from the 1000 lights mosque. The caws of the crows waking up from their slumber on the neem tree set the bass line for the ear-piercing soprano of the keerai kaari going “ma keerai!”. Later, the dulcet tones of M.S’s Bhajagovindam and/or the practice sessions of “varungAla Nithyashri” next door, were interjected by the rose-seller. A frail old man, with his basket of roses and a leg inflicted with elephantiasis crying out “ma rose, ma roja” in perfect rhythm as though guided by a metronome : I have seen him on Third street for as long as I remember, aiding the prayers of a neighbourhood with his pink and fragrant roses.

 After the din of venting cookers, hurried breakfasts and irate fathers leaving for work, just as an eerie calm began to set in, the blood curdling Punnagavarali from the  pAmbAtti’s (snake charmer) pipe would send a thrill down my spine. With the slithering viper around his neck, the poor creature’s mouth stitched tight, he would flash a toothy ugly grin at me, sensing the mixture of trepidation and perverse thrill with which I approached him, a 25p or 50p coin in my hand!  At my grandparents’ in Mandaveli, there used to be another fascinating visitor in the mornings. The “mani-kArar” from Velliswarar koil with a very interesting kAvadi-like contraption, a long golden rod balanced on his shoulder and two golden vessels hanging at either end through long golden links, who’s chimes preceded him as he went around the neighbourhood collecting supplies for the temple. I used to be thrilled when paati let me pour the milk and rice into the respective receptacles, a rare honour considering my innate clumsiness.

When the morning cooking was done, and the Shanthis’ had left after the washing and cleaning, Krishnan would arrive ringing the bells of his chariot! I now don’t remember if that was his real name, or it was a nickname he earned, for he was the darling of the maamis of the street, not so much for the fresh vegetables he sold, but more for his smiling willingness to serve as their odd-job man. Between him and Arumugam from the Xerox shop next door, they have helped with everything from changing bulbs, climbing stools to get things down from the paran(loft) and even killing rats for us! 

Our afternoon siestas were  interrupted by the door bell thanks to door to door sales people selling everything from soaps to Eureka Forbes vacuum cleaners (remember what a rage they were thanks to the charms of  Nitish Bharadwaj? There were so many paatis and maamis who believed that he was  Krishna Bhagawan himself!) And then there were the interrupters I liked : the jingling bells of the soan-papudi man, his glass jar and the paper cones filled with flaky spangle-y melting mouthful of goodness that Haldiram’s can only aim to achieve , and the boys with the trays of butter biscuit. There were also the occasional maamis from West Mambalam and Kodambakkam who would bring in the podis, oorugas and bottled nannari juice (yummness!) from their Maami Co-operatives and would then settle onto our train sofa (remember those hideous sofas Gops folks?)  and pour their troubles to Amma and Perimma who would give them a sympathetic hear.

Evenings would bring in calls for hide-and-seek in the theru, honks of the dads returning, shruti boxes droning along as unwilling voices soared,the twilight symphony performance by the murder of crows in our tree, the jingling of the bells on the Arun icecream cart : the purveyor of those delicious “ball icecreams”, and the most magnificent of all, the late night kulfi vandi with it’s red-cloth covered ice pAnai (pot). The kulfi itself tasted like ambrosia fit for the kings. Perhaps it was the “kanda thanni” he used, or the rare guilty pleasure of it, or even the extra garnish of nostalgia, but no Kulfi I have eaten since has tasted quite like it. Evenings  also meant the familiar and eagerly anticipated jingle of the Min Bimbangal production house, and the title songs from our favorite TV shows. And finally we went to bed, counting sheep  as Sundaram bhajans from the trusty BPL Sanyo cassette player, the tap-tap of the ghurka on the road and a howling dog  in the street behind served as BGM.

The last time I was in India, jet lagged and unable to sleep, I sat through the early hours of the morning twiddling with the remote, listening to “then kinnam”on TV , when a voice calling out the spinach menu listing sounded like music to my ears. It  sounded like home!

P.S – Yes, we can mange to be pretentiously poignant and then flippant in back to back posts. We’re cool like that!

And one such majestic majestic (taking a cue from the man himself) song is Muthuswamy Dikshithar’s Kambhoji masterpiece – Sri Subrahmanyaya Namaste. TM Krishna live at Academy 2004, was one of the first recordings that Jayanth generously shared with me in 2006, and what a concert it was! A wonderful Kharaharapriya alapana followed by Rama nee samanamevarura and the glorious Kambhoji main! It was  love on first hearing for me. I went through a Sri Subrahmanyaya phase then, and never came completely out of it I think. I have since heard several renditions of the song including an Ariyakudi recording (he was the man who owned the song in his times!), but this TMK rendition remains a favorite!  And that is the case with most masterpieces that I happened to hear first in his voice including Mayamma and Meenakshi memudham dehi. I never really paid much attention to the words of the song then. The cadence in the lyrics with all the antyAkshara prAsams  was stunning, but I didn’t really dig deeper than that at that point. The gambheeram and divinity in Kamboji, the wonderful flavor brought on by the sprinkling use of Kakali Ni and ofcourse the fascinating gait of the song are what struck the most then.

In August 2009 (I have the time stamp from when I emailed the link to myself,  I’m not THAT weird ) I stumbled on this, and it completely lifted my appreciation of the kriti to a higher plane! I grew up with a mother who adored and revered the Paramacharya and read to me snippets from Deyvathin Kural and other magazine columns often. I learnt the word “Equipoise” from one such session. I really enjoy his speeches for his worldview and the wonderful grace with which he explained things and his skillful dissection of this krithi really made me re-discover it many unexpected ways. I immediately felt a strong urge to learn the Subrahmanya Bhujangam. Due to the somberi-ness that runs in my blood, I never really got to it until recently. The bhujangam metre is so wonderfully uplifting and really gives me a wonderful start to the day! When I say “GuhA devamanyam na jAne na jAne”, I can feel and share a tiny portion of the bhakthi that drove Adi Sankara and Muthuswamy Dikshithar and guided them to such beautiful works of ecstatic devotion.