Chennai trip

We are back after our visit to Chennai. We had a very hectic but very enjoyable trip. The weather especially was very pleasant. Though we had an A/C room, we had to switch off the A/C at times.

The main purpose of the visit was attending the marriage of R, the daughter of a very close friend, K. As usual with all south Indian marriages, the marriage was a grand affair. We met many old friends and acquaintances after a very long time, some after about 35 years. But not many had difficulty in recognising us. We had met many people during the wedding of the parents of the bride. This made the function more special as this was the first in the series of marriages of the second generation, whose parents’ marriage also we had attended. We had a lot to catch up with people starting from the parents’ marriage.

This took me back to the trip we took to attend K’s wedding at Palani, the hill temple town in Tamil Nadu. We had to travel by bus as there was no direct train from Bangalore in that route those days(over 30 years ago). We had travelled with our one year old child and the bus tire burst twice on the way, leaving us stranded on the road for hours together on both occasions. With no hotels or coffee shops in sight, we had to walk some 2 kms to get some coffee and milk for our child. Finally, we reached Palani at 6.30 pm instead of 6.30am.

During this wedding, I also met P, the beautiful cousin of R, who was a 2 year old naughty child during K’s wedding. She is the mother of 2 little kids now and doesn’t look a day older than 20. I reminded her of the interesting incident that took place during K’s wedding. As I said earlier, our elder son was one year old then and somebody commented to this 2 year old, how smart the little boy was. It was too much of a blow to the ego of the 2 year old and she came running as if to hug the boy, but to our utter consternation bit his ear. I had a tough time consoling him.

At that time our younger child was already on his way and this made my astute and blessed mother-in-law to take vow that she would get the first mundan of the child to be born at Palani (What if he had turned out to be a she? – Ed). For various reasons, we couldn’t manage a trip to Palani for the next four years. Our younger son had long curly hair when he went to nursery school. Though most people trim the hair of the boys before the first mundan which has to be performed after the age of 2, strictly speaking no scissors should touch the hair before the vedic ritual of choulam (mundan). Hence we had not trimmed his hair at all until the ceremony. Once his teacher sent him home with a note, “Please cut your daughter’s hair”.

As usual, I have digressed from R’s wedding to her parents’ wedding. More about R’s wedding later.

During our Chennai trip, we also visited our 92 years old chithappa, my brother, my mother, my cousins, did some shopping at the famous Ranganathan street and Usman Road and visited our (handsome and charming) son’s India Office.