Friday, May 4, 2007

pelli chupulu -confessions of a confused housewife


PELLI CHUPULU... the occassion when a prospective bridegroom comes to visit the prospective bride.-.Peculiar to Indians themselves....I mean, in Islamic countries there is no prior meeting concept,while in most christian countries,arranged matches are rare or not like ours at least....-..Is the most important event in a girl"s life,and is as joyous and happy, as depicted in our films, though the scale of grandeur may vary widely.....at least when it goes on to succeed..

I have attended so many of them,....of my numerous cousins,relatives,even one of my aunt"s.....i remember that quite distinctly......all of us kids,who happened to be no more than 7 or 8 yrs were unceremoniuosly shooed out of the house..(what could they do? we were too many and too noisy.)...to wait at the parapets of the opposite house till the guests went home....we sat there watching the lighted windows, gnashing teeth,muttering invectives, and fretted at having been kept out of all the fun.we were let in at the fag end of the party...to be introduced to the guests.. and as had been tutored, we tried hard to be polite, saying our namasthes, for which fine behaviour, we were later given badaam kheer and kaju as consolation gifts...Then we went and watched the bride as she preened around in a beautiful hakoba sari.(lent by another aunt) and wondered how our aunt who used to be so casual always, and ran around with two plaits,and long skirts (she was just sixteen) got transformed to be so pretty and demure...

In fact, that is the best part for a girl ...The making up ..A woman would love nothing more than getting decked up, and a great deal of preparation went into it, .with all the ladies of the house gathering round the bride-to-be and offering suggessions.....If it is not a large family, then all the neighbourhood aunties and the inevitable friends helped....A hot debate ensues on the mode of the make up...With some argueing in favour of letting hair loose and the MOD look ,saying MEN would like it ,while some prefer the sarees and jhumkis as safe bet and pleasing to both the boy and his parents...After all sari is the most beautiful attire..A girl looks like a girl in saris.... This is ofcource an unending topic....

Next comes the tough question of deciding which color suits the girl best...light shades or dark?...All the clothes would be pulled out of closets and critically inspected.....Alas, nothing really seems satisfactory.....If the occassion is an anticipated one,ofcource everything is prepared beforehand well in advance...But in case it is an unexpected one with little time, like my own...Then all hell is let loose.Girls go into a tizzy and tire just by thinking of it.


In our house the norm was white saris..mostly.......Somebody said,Mother(jillellamudi) made the girls in her tutelage,wear white for these occassions ..so we too wore white... and I still carry this conviction..White does look so soothing and beautiful...

Then there are the welcoming formalities...Believeing in the adage that FIRST IMPRESSION IS THE BEST IMPRESSION, both families put on their best show,as they get to know each other,retracing the backlinks,exchanging family histories, and all the while sizing up each other....
.There are the watchful aunts and cousins who can accurately predict which way the meeting is going on just by looking at the girl and boy...one of mine, used to brag she can draw the cardiograph of the boy much better than any cardiologist....she says a smitten groom would bloom like a flower in the rain and it shows in his face. He becomes all animated and starts talking dime a dozen..In the other case, he retreats in to a shell and answers in monosyllables...I don"t think she is quite accurate there.I have heard an exasperated mother complaining that her son goes all bubbly and chirpy with every family he saw and on return said he never liked them at all...

Yeah..I have seen and heard of so many of these quite enjoyable meetings and some not so enjoyable.The most bizarre ones i attended was one of our distant relations....I really don"t know why,i, a chit of a girl at that time,have been invited to it...We were seated in a veranda of the bride"s house ,very much in the open and everyone of their neighbours,front, back,this side, that side had a royal view and view they did....The poor boy and girl had a most uneasy time and i felt sorry for them...

The funniest one i have heard was of my granny and grandpa in 1916...she was not even ten,when gotten up from her bed, a only child of her parents,wore a little skirt and a VELVET COAT for the occassion and was asked to read from a nursery text book -to test her intellectual skills-.While the groom was sixteen,still grappling with his s.s.l.c.,and it was already a second marriage for him..His first wife, a neighbour"s girl succumbed to typhoid,even before coming to her marital home as a girl of 11 or may be 12...It was said grandpa really mourned for her. He gave every child of his ,her nametag,and till his death,performed her annual ceremonies ,all for a girl who died just three months after the wedding......Who says romance is not for us,normal human beings..And how enduring was that wedded love? Coming back to my own granny,i really wonder what my grandpa thought about it..I mean,there is a vast difference between 10 and 16 than between, say,20 and 26...But they had a successful marriage, had seven kids,and led a happy life till he lost her too in his late fifties...

Predictably,our films have made most of this event and some of the most hilarious scenes figured around it. Can anybody forget the pellichupulu ,shot in one sole song sequence in MAVICHIGURU?..sculpted by a sensitive director like s.v.Krishnareddy,it was a lesson in filmmaking..Another memorable one was in SAMSARAM OKA CHADARANGAM,,where three generations of women of the house end up singing the same song at individual meetings..And the entire film PELLI SANDADI? PELLI PUSTAKAM?...


So, we have become sort of pro at organising and participating these meets, and i waited for the day when i could proudly present my daughter in white chiffon ( i was even on the point of ordering one)and jhumkis that it came as a bit of let down for me,..when we could not be present at our own daughter"s pellichupulu....She was in u.s ,at a dormitory...no supportive aunts and cousins to cheer her ...The groom turned up in his three fourths and the girl received him in her jeans.

5 comments:

Sami AR said...

Interesting post. Depicts the changing times, probably - three fourths and jean being the highlight!! :)

And seems like u have become a serious blogger, congratulations!!

ratna said...

:)Thanks, sami

ratna said...

yes, i have become a serious blogger and now people are avoiding me like plague

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

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