Two of my friends Deepti Deshpande (Now Deepti Suru) and Jayasimha Rachamalla (He gets to keep his name.. plus, this is too unique a name to change anyway) tied the knot last month (not with each other, my group ain't like the one in FRIENDS) and I wanna wish them good luck and the best fortunes ahead.. After all, fortune favors the brave.. Cheers!
I have always enjoyed attending wedding receptions. I don't know what it is about a wedding reception that fascinates me so much. Somewhere I think that this fascination stems from the fact that I am a Malayali
(not one of these pink lungi wearing ones.. but one nonetheless)
See, the thing is, as a mallu kid growing up, the only thing to look forward to in a mallu wedding is the reception (if it does happen). My mallu readers are at this point logging off coz they know what I'm gonna touch on.. PODAA.. may-ging funnof avar maar-ages! For my non mallu readers, here is the deal. For a long time, the mallu wedding function was known to be the quickest thing to wrap up; that is, until the Indian team landed in Zimbabwe.. now we are second best, and our pride is hurt... but i digress..
The mallu wedding is all about speed. No one cares to dance and sing, and the ones who do are chastised severely. No one wastes time wondering what colour looks good on whom. Cream colour for bride and for the groom. The groom wears a mundu (remember mundu?) so that in case he is late, he can fold it up and put in a serious sprint. The girl is almost buried in gold so that she can't change her mind and run away on seeing the groom with his mundu halfway up. The groom is not expected to wear a shirt either... buttoning up takes too much time... Also, since bhattjis take up too much time chanting shlokas, they are cut off the invite list.. I believe some wise mallu looking around for marraige pandal decorations had a flower of a coconut tree fall on him and decided to use it to grace the occasion and that is where the decorations were finalized. Of course, the abundance of coconut trees makes finding these flowers a piece of cake, keeping with the express nature of things. The band belt out slow numbers so that the guests don't go dizzy given the blurring pace, but speed up during the main functions to feed our "Need for Speed".
Oh yes, the pièce de résistance... You know how weddings have guy and girl walking around in circles (pheras) 7 times to get married? Well, we don't spend time with these saat phere. We have power-pheras which, the engineer in me tells me, is 233.33% more potent than the run of the mill pheras. So all we do is have 3 pheras with the guy leading. We mallus love our rice and people standing near the power phera taking couple throw some on them. I don't know the symbolic meaning, but if it means may God shower rice on you, I don't think that is a really nice blessing. How about throwing in some cash instead? Anyway, by this time, the aromas of the sambar and papadam invade the venue and the elders take turns in feeding the newly married couple banana in milk (Yuck!) so that the couple stay cheerful through whatever photo session there is to be. Here begins the longest (& most enjoyable I must add) part of the wedding - the sadhya (feast)..
I've cut out a number of small, nice things that happen in a mallu wedding... the bride being led in a procession of unmarried girls and other such stuff... That doesn't lend much to humour (although a lot of guy-readers are excited about the single babes), and if you wanna see it sooo bad, come over and watch my sis's wedding DVD.
