The Day I Saw God

May be the title should read as the evening.....For it was on an evening....one june evening in 1969 to be precise..when i saw the mother for first time in Jillellamudi..

I was about to celebrate my twelfth birthday soon...and enjoying my summer holidays at that time in Guntur, with my favourite cousins...and was supposed to join my parents later,when they travel to Penukonda (ananthapurDt) as dad was transferred there...But still there was lot of time before that and as i said before, i was having a whale of time in Guntur....

I hazily remember that there had been a lot of talk in the house about taking a trip to Jillellamudi (uncle and aunt are related to the mother).. though it never seemed to materialize.. and ofcource we kids never bothered...But one day Apparao mamayyagaru and Sarusatha called for a taxi and we were bundled in to it and started for the two hour long trip to Jillellamudi......I could remember how we got inordinately delayed, right at the Radhakrishna theater over some mechanical trouble...I think we waited for nearly one and half hrs before the car could start, and reached jillellamudi at about four or five in the evening...

In those days...Why? even now jillellamudi was such a peaceful place but going to it was tortuous.....Those seven miles from Bapatla seemed to be like seven hills ..the roads were that bad... We turned right, at the seventh milestone and motored in along the two or odd kilometers to jillellamudi, across the naked fields that had already been harvested and waiting for the first rains... we reached the big building that was called Adaranaalayam..I curiously watched as my aunt and uncle relaxed, talking to the few of their relatives, and other followers there...I think we were taken to Hymalayam too..before going up to the tiny penthouse on the third story of the building to see mother..

We were ushered in to a small room...and i could not describe the silence in there...It was a tense...exciting...throbbing kind of silence..as if the breathing is put on a hold....Not the drab, soundless gloomy silence..forgive me for being unable to put the feeling in to words...Mother sat on her bed...Visitors went up , bowed at her feet and sat back...I too sat back with my cousins and watched her...Dressed in an olive green silk sari with a red border, looking on with a calm face..she was a spell binding personality... I mean...put her in any place on this world ,without all this building up of the atmosphere,.. and still everyone would be staring at her...Though, personally she was not bothered and received people naturally..If they are known to her, she would give a happy smile and greet..Many strangers used to come to see her..and she would give them a considerate look...and was ready to talk if they so desired..

When you meet a stranger, you could look in to their eyes and know and read whatever the language they speak...usually it is impersonal..sometimes curious,sometimes indifferent,interested.annoyed, admiring,wondering,hating according to case......But when mother looked at you ,you can hardly read anything. of that sort...It was as if you are not a stranger..as if she knew you...She looked at you once or twice and carried on with other things.

On that evening someone presented her with a basket of ripe mangoes and she called in everybody present and gave a fruit to each one..I myself received one..later in the evening, she retired to the lovely open terraces of the building and all of us gathered around her bed and she sat talking to the few people ..

We spent nearly ten days there,..and i am sorry to say, we kids were immersed in ourselves playing, fighting, and chatting...We hardly paid any attention to the mother....Ofcource at all times we used to go and have darshan and even sat with her for sometime, and thought highly of her..But the age being such we concentrated more on games than on anything else..that it surprised me myself very much when, on the last day of our trip,as we sat before her and the fact suddenly realised on me that i may not see mother again once i go away...a slight feeling of sorrow started nibbling me and just then mother beckoned me to come to her...She used to have an uncanny sense of knowing other"s feelings...I went up and -did"nt know why- ,began crying..and really cried my heart out...Mother took me into her arms and soothed me affectionately...Oh.The sheer grace and game of lord....Why should i cry to part with a distantly related woman? and why should she, a rather busy woman, take some silly young girl to her heart and console her?...

Thus began a long relationship.....It saw some highs and lows, some offs and ons, some tantrums, -entirely on my part-,when i thought she was not caring for me,.. when something did not happen to my taste,---So,just because you believe in god he is bound to do as you bid?.--- but she always stood by me steadfast,showering her grace...it passed all those stages...and now if you asked me to show god i would be able to...

some links on mother
http://www.motherofall.org/
http://www.viswajanani.org/index.htm

On The Perils Of Reading

Everybody says reading is a good habit, an art by itself, a great pastime, a door towards knowledge,it must be inculcated in children from very young days, blah, blah blah........Personally i am not very sure... My expierience tells me otherwise....Though one sentence is ofcource correct...about it opening the doors to knowledge...(information,might be a better word here).....Only i wonder if knowledge is such a good thing?....and what kind of knowledge?.....These days, i am coming to the conclusion that the surest way to happiness is through ignorance....

I think, this fine art of reading is also a hereditary sort of thing...My maternal grandmother was said to have been a voracious reader...She was said to have used to preserve the paper bags that came with provisions and read them....My mother inherited that...I remember her devouring weeklies,novels,classics,in the short free time she could catch between her busy household duties of presiding over a brood of five temperamental kids,.. attending on a demanding husband,...( she had to run after dad with a towel as he went for his bath...He was so royal in his habits that he could not be bothered with trivial details like carrying a towel for the bath)..and to round it off, looking after an extremely fierce dog....

I myself took to this pastime as a duck takes to water...and do"nt take this as bragging...For i now regret it and wish i had"nt.....As a girl of eight,(student of third class,) i used to read the serials of ANDHRA PRABHA and PATHRIKA...I can still remember some instances of them...Dad used to be proud of this and he egged me on further by subscribing to the M>S>co pocket books,,,..and i lost my self in the excitement of the adventures of ALLARi GOPI -_ADBHUTHA YATRA, Alladdin"s lamp, and umpteen others, so much so that the class books seemed tame in comparison to the thrills provided by the fiction....Needless to say, the studies suffered.....

And there was no looking back to this spree of reading...As i grew up , i , seriously followed the current serials in the popular magazines,graduated to novels,---yaddanapudi, koduri,dwivedula, latha--- to classics,---chalam, viwanatha,sarath,-- veered to mystery and made mincemeat of detective yugandhar, parasuram, narsan,enjoyed the breezy puranam sitha, rachakonda viswanatha sastry,ravuri,....

When introduced to the english literature,i made it a hobby to exhaust the entire works of specific authors,.... Dickens, Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle,chase,earlier Harold Robbins, Sheldon's,..what not.... i impartially read everything,.. fiction, philosophy,mystery,and hunting too,---Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson-- though i never saw a real gun in all the 48 yrs of my life, and tigers and cheetahs only in zoos.... ..

And i can not say if i am any the better, having read so much...Except for the sheer enjoyment i derived from reading, i did not seem to have developed as a person, and only got bad eyes to show as a result ...Not only that,...i do"nt think all this stood me in good stead for the forthcoming eventualities of life ...I have a suspicion that excessive reading made a person flighty...I generally saw that people who read a great deal of philosophy mistook themselves to be very virtuous--..I knew a man who read a lot on medicine and thought he was a virtual doctor....he used to gather patients from his place and personally took them to specialists...He used to show off and talk knowledgeably with them before those patients and interrupted them often with his own prognosis,...till the poor docs, unable to bear it any longer, stopped him with a polite word or two...

So, when i had a daughter, i took that extra care to see my daughter never indulged in this addiction and saw to it that she strictly read nothing more than the stories in her text books ... sometimes, she exhibited such an unholy appreciation of them that it bothered me with vague apprehension....Thankfully Anasuya had never shown any inclination towards it... Sometimes she got carried away by her friends and attempted to read some of the best sellers,but fortunately got tired very soon .. It delighted me when she yawned after ten pages of Da Vinci Code and wondered why the author made such long descriptions....I was secretly pleased when she read few episodes of Kenneth Anderson,pronounced them as very good, but gave a wide berth to other episodes... ....

She studied well, and has become an earthier person than me, i am glad to say...

usha

I don"t really remember when Usha got into our class....Might be in seventh? or was it in eighth?...must have been in mid seventies...not very sure....No wonder, since i rarely paid any attention to the goings on in the classs....I was always a backbencher, had the reputation of a shirker,skipped school at least one day a week, and studied only those subjects that interested me and managed to scrape through others, and cleared my tenth with a liitle help from the government of andhrapradesh in form of moderation marks,with a precarious,36/ in maths.....

Usha Padmanabham was a newcomer,..turned up in the middle of the academic year,as her father ,-an L.I.C employee-got posted to Bandar on transfer...., They were tamil brahmins,, had little knowledge of telugu,and her parents were worried over whether she could cope up with this mid term joining ,and by the fact that she was new to studying in telugu medium.......Usha always sat in the side front row,strategically placed to be in full view of the teachers, as she tried to grapple with the studies........A thin girl with two long upturned plaits in ribbons, and two big bright almond shaped eyes in a good humoured face..


Later i was surprised to see Usha on our own street...They were staying in rented portions in the area, quite near to our own house..........Once or twice i visited her at home,and I could recollect her father as having been a thin ,short,energetic man,who spoke rapidly and also quite loudly and flitted in and out of the house wrapped up in a towel if it was mornings ....(.must have been doing his pooja) and lungis in the evenings.....Her mother, a large woman with the same good natured face of Usha used to give us a big smile and just that.........since she could not manage even one word of telugu......

It was not as if Usha had no prior knowledge of telugu, since she could speak it well, though with a heavy accent and few faux pa,where she freely mixed up genders, and tenses....and cared not for whether she was speaking in first person or second person... She came prepared,-I think was trained beforehand- managed to clear subjects comfortably --science, social studies, maths-had no trouble with english and hindi,but quite predictably, met her waterloo in telugu...and her nemesis was none other than our redoubtable Lillee teacher....

Lillee teacher was already retired,serving on extension and it appeared quite plain that she should have rested...I personally thought she looked over seventy ,tired, as she hummed and hawed,,,and as irritable as only very old people can be and it fell to Usha" lot to train under her......It used to be very funny to watch Usha as she stood up with a resolute shake of her head -ribbons and all--to submit her notes and assignments to Lillee teacher... Madame screwed up her eyes and went through the papers with a grim expression..Then she threw them down in disgust, demanded a rivision,, and wailed to the world how long she had to keep dealing with these stupid girls, and called Usha an arava gadidha..Which, in plain telugu meant a tamil donkey...The class watched in half sympathy and half amusement..for everybody knew old Lillee teacher was never stingy with her expressions and liberally used them as she chose.........Usha never batted an eye lid. She calmly picked up her notes, went back to her bench, sat down and carried on in the same good humour...

In time we completed our tenth..,Usha gradually picked up telugu and in junior college opted for telugu literature...Her parents decided to continue at Bandar without trying for transfers,..I on my part , went away from bandar and the last time i heard of her,she did her B.Ed in Telugu,and was working in a reputed school ,as a telugu teacher...=D>

Where Is The Mid-day Moon?

I have been pleading with my husband to take me to a movie,,since...one and half months..(yeah...that long)...,You see,..he promised to take me to see one atleast once in a month in a fit of magnanimity when anasuya went away for her M.S.and i found myself quite alone and twiddling my thumbs......Now he is whiling away with lame excuses...It is admirable...the ingenuity with which finds reasons to justify himself..." let"s go on week days,..sundays and saturdays are too crowded"..." On week days ofcource he has his work and could not free himself....Ofcource, i don"t grumble..Those days are over...passe.... when one felt really enthused to watch a movie,..for fun..for it"s own sake...for the excitement it offered...for the pleasure of watching our favourite stars and directors.....for satisfying our own creative faculties with critical observations....Nowadays we watch films just to kill time...

Yeah...those were the days....As kids we waited for the big day...since ours was not a very much film going family,,,we had to wait for some big occasions like the coming of relatives or term holidays to gather courage to ask dad"s permission or until the elders themselves felt like having a day out to go for a movie...or conspire with the aunts and cousins to beef up our pleas.... And what a commotion on that day.... One wanted to watch everything from the beginning..and i used to feel very bad if i missed any portion of it..

When arunathai and Nirmala took charge, there used to be so much hullabaloo....no less suspense ridden than the movies themselves....The permission from those great authorities above,.. always came in at the last minute...there was the worry over whether we could get rickshaws in time...It seemed as if all of the rickshaw men were in league just to keep us from going to the theater..Either none would come forth or there were simply none on road to be called for...which till then looked like to be crawling with them...or those that we did get, asked exorbitant fares...My wily aunts...bless them....they wont be cowed down...they packed in as many of us as they can and beat the rickshaw wallas at their own game and saved on the extra vehicle...

Then there was the other great worry over whether we can get tickets....We could.. thank god..and there is ample time too before the show could begin...Next step is the selection the seats..( they were not the A/c halls of today, you see ).one searched for seats that had fans over them and the usual haggling over who should sit where...Invariably there are going to be taller people at the front rows and one had to strain ,peep,bend at impossible angles to watch the film,,...and it goes to our credit that we did all that with a degree of commitment ,never found otherwise for anything else...

Then started the mandatory "edukondala swami'ekkaadunnavayya" and next,"namo venkatesa'namo thirumalesa"...I have never seen any theater in andhra pradesh those days which started the show without those two songs....We lost ourselves in pleasurable anticipation.....First the lights would be dimmed and switched off...The screen would come alive with a picture of lord Venkateswara, ANDHRULA AARADHYA DIVAM,as they say....next came a big cross mark admonishing the viewers to keep silent...other warnings not to put our legs up in the rows in front...not to smoke....and at the very next instant came a slide of beedi katta ,recommending us to always smoke THAAPI BEEDIS...THIS THEATER IS SERVICED BY so and so firm....

Then,in those days there used to be a compulsory screening of INDIAN NEWS REEL...I can still rember the tune and voice of the back screen anchor who spoke telugu in a singsong hindi accent...When Gandhi or Nehru were shown in the news the viewers spontaneously broke in to an applause,clapping....ooooooh.....People still respected those leaders...

Next followed three hours of unmitigated entertainment....Usually it started with a devotional song during which the heroine or the matron ,sat before her pooja place and belted out the song ,gathering the entire family ,and characters got introduced..If not so, then at least at the end the film, the heroine sings it ...mostly calling upon gods to protect her MANGALYAM or to prove her virtue to suspecting husband and in-laws....The usual elaborate fight sequences,which i found distasteful,but my brothers enjoyed immensely....One or two catchy cabaret numbers ( a jyothilakshmi song was must) were there too to pep up the spirits of menfolk..and i cried buckets seeing the hardships the lead pair went through.....at the wiles of Suryakantham,as she teased the hapless heroine....at the scheming RAJANALA or Satyanarayana as they plotted to eliminate the hero...

The best kind of entertainment came from the folk fiction...where the heroes hopped about sporting unbelievably tight stretch pants like the medieval French, and loose rajastani tunics and short modern day crops of curly hair wigs......You will never have a clue to which race they belonged...definitely not Indian....The heroines sailed in wearing the weirdest of dresses, glittering ornaments and looked like Christmas trees..There were magic wands,hair raising adventures..rib tickling comedies,amazing feats ( as advertised )...yes..desi forms of Harry Potters and mummies...Viewers returned fully satisfied having gone through all the nine exciting emotions...

These folk fictions are best seen in touring talkies...I had seen my share of touring talkies as dad got posted to various godforsaken places in the state...Most of them had at least two of theb touring talkies to their credit..and the fun of it was just memorable...Once the hero,in raptures of love, was singing "where is the mid day moon?"obviously ,he meant the heroine...".Pagati poota chandra binbam kanipinchenu,edi?edi?"..Just then the the sheets over the theater roof sailed away in a gust of unusual wind and moon broke out smiling through.... All of the viewers burst into spontaneous laughter..

At the end of it all, there used to be jana gana mana while the tricolor fluttered on the screen and some,. nay, in fact most of the people slipped out...Dad never approved of this,so we stood up and came out only after the anthem.. with beaming faces and hungry stomaches ,..and for two days ,went remembering the scenes...Why not?..After all.movies were the only entertainment for us...No television,no parks or public places that one can visit...

Maharshi And The Murugan

Lately i have been reading RAMANASRAMA LEKHALU, a detailed treatise on Ramana Maharshi and it was such a joy....Exciting and at the same time strangely soothing...i found myself riding on a wave of bliss....only there is no ebb to this one...,


To be sure, Ramana was no stranger in the sense ,that it was not as if i have heard of him for the first time....When i was a child of ten, i caught hold of RAMANASRAMA LEKHALU,and with the naivete that comes at such an age , thought i could understand it and read it through...( To think that since i knew ABCD,i could read anything..:).The other day,during a discussion with one of my cousins a mention of this book was made.Both she and me are now at a stage and age of semi retirement,having discharged our responsibilities...and i told her that i read it long back...in my fifth class....She was surprised and with a new look of reverence on her face enquired "oh''now..did you?."..."yes.." i told her.."i remember having read how he made a drink out of the gruel brought by a poor farmer,how he made cups out of used up coconut shells,how he narrated the recipe on making a chutney of raw mangoes and bitter gourd"....She split her sides on hearing this...

Well..but ofcource i was aware of his philosophy, about his introspection of WHO AM I?, and his greatness..Had heard of him and knew HERE is pure gold..,but this is the first time i was reading of him in detail...and what a legend?...

But , this post is not about my eulogies of him...He does not need any credentials, that too from me..It is about one significant fact, a strong belief of his followers, that he was an incarnation of lord Subrahmanya ...Many citations have been made in the book in this regard,....Many instances of his followers experiencing his oneness with the lord...Though the maharshi himself was never said to have admitted to this or for that matter , to any other god either...It seems he scrupulously avoided being made a godhead and vehemently opposed to poojas or rituals performed to his person...It is only to some close devotees and at rare instances,that he allowed sharing this confidence...He was once heard to have muttered ANGE SWAMI INGE VANDHIRIKKAR..to someone who thought of making a trip to Thiruthani...

I know it is a confusing task to define god and delineate multiple gods out of the eternal one...yet,still,it is a widely held belief that he takes on many forms and avataars...Personally, i myself don"t have any problem in believing it...After all, if you believe there is only one ,---- matter,energy,or god or some other thing---and it can become supernovas,galaxies,stars,planets,water,fire,fish,animal,subbarao and kanaka rao and tom, dick and harry,..it could easily become Ram,Krishna,siva and subrahmanya also..

Having read this allusion of maharshi to the lord,i was struck by this similarity in appearance in both the forms...The same standing up figure, staff in hand...the loin cloth..and the smiling face aglow with the fire of knowledge...After all,HE was GURUGUHA...isn"t he? a teacher..The only difference being maharshi was an old man while the lord murugan was a boy...

It is interesting to observe how different forms of gods come to be venerated....Sai baba"s form is invariably worshipped as an old man..Never in his youthful figure......Krishna"s upasana roopam is as a crawling child stealing butter...Shiva is worshipped as a symbol of fertility,not as an image..while skanda is always a boy...There might be a reason, a charm ,behind these appearances...or else why would they draw multitudes of people to them spell bound?..It was said,Sai baba cautioned a painter as he tried to capture him on canvas,to be careful in drawing his portrait as,---in his own words--Hum galli galli mein me rehnewale hai----And i sincerely believe there is a DEVA RAHASYAM too behind maharshi"s attire...

Padma

Padma was no girl..and for a long time i wondered why he was given a girl"s name....or whether i heard right.....It only struck my tube light brain very much later that his real name might have been padmanabham..or ..padmakar...or padmabhushan...and padma might be a pet name...I still am not sure....

I don"t remember when i saw him for the first time....As kids, we--meaning my sisters and bro and cousins-- used to visit grandpa in Bandar,,,and knew Padma was always there...In the opposite house....It was a big, handsome one storied house, standing amidst a neatly kept front yard...A beautiful NOORU VARAHALU, and RAMABANAM trees used to bloom profusely,..one at the portico and one at the side gates..There might have been one or two mandatory (for a coastal town) coconuts too... I don"t particularly remember...

Padma always sat on a bench in the front veranda closed on three sides....except in too hot days of summer...placid and silent....sometimes he was seen helping his mother in her chores...Always dressed in khaki half pants like a school boy..In fact i have never seen him in anything else...Nothing really seemed to be wrong with him at the first glance...He was already a quite grown up man when we were kids... Of medium height, and well built,perhaps he walked with a clumsy gait....Could not talk properly, i think that was the trouble with him,..and on second thoughts,he would appear slow....It is no wonder,i feel since a proverb goes in Bandar that it is a town with a temple in every street and an odd cap at every house...With me in our house and Padma at the opposite one i thought we fitted the bill rather admirably...

As we, kids ran around energetically ,up and down the stairs,we used to catch sight of him, from our balcony...and it seemed a shame to us,that he should be sitting about so silent instead of playing....Somehow , with the unerring instinct of a child we recognized the kid in him...Standing in the balcony we gestured to him ,often inviting him to join in...But he never was allowed to go outside and we could not go inside, since his family somehow never were too familiar. He stayed with a widowed mother and a brother. There was little interaction with the neighbours , limited only to attending just important functions like a marriage... though ,a married daughter of the family would come in once or twice for women"s parties...

Our communication with Padma was restricted to gestures only...Here from the balcony, we saluted...Padma took his time to reciprocate...He would watch us for sometime and slowly saluted...Then we would do a namasthe...He would namasthe..we would wave and he would wave...Then we went away laughing..Padma never seemed as if he ever laughed or even enjoyed being with us.....He continued to sit or potter about as calmly as before...This ritual would follow every time we saw him,though we had to be a bit surreptitious about it...For,we knew with an uncanny knack of survival, ,that before a childlike padma,even we kids would be at a disadvantage,if the elders mistook us and suspected we were teasing him...

For years,this peculiar kind of friendship went on with us and Padma.. just these greetings..nothing more ,nothing less..He seemed to have become a fixture ,synonymous with Bandar...Every time we got down from the rickshaws in front of our house,we looked for him,and he was always there,..placidly sitting on his bench...When i was in bandar for my high schooling, it was a part of my routine to wave(furtively) to him daily as i left for school..He waved back,or at times just watched ....

I grew up , went away from Bandar,did my college,got married and every time i went there Padma recognized and acknowledged the greeting,,as usual..slowly after a thorough inspection...But in course of time, my trips too became rare and the last time i stood and waved from the balcony,,Padma strangely kept staring at me without any response...It was as if he did not recognize me...I waved , gestured and repeatedly asked him if he was okay....He blankly kept staring at me and i had to give up and leave,as he still kept staring me with a unfathomable look...

Sometime later i heard that he passed away and was no more....I still keep remembering him and wonder how and why i do it...

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.