Sing.. sing.. Singapore!

I reached Singapore exactly a month back.. 20th June... It been a month... Seems to have just flown past... I remember on the 18th my boss briefing me and the other guys, telling us "Its going to be challenging..." The moment I got onto that Air India flight, I knew the challenge had begun. I entered the flight to find an old woman dressed in a sari, glaring at  me.. I scoffed at her, thinking Hmph! Grumpy Fliers... I looked around to find that there were more wearing similar saris.... All displaying varied levels of hostility.. I feared the woman in the sari would soon make me feel very sorry..

The in flight food was awesome and the flight was quite good actually... the service was not bad... Yes, I got no response when I pressed the Call Flight Attendant button, but at least they didn't hit me when I asked for a glass of juice or give me disapproving looks when I took a beer! The entertainment was well... Ajab Prem ki Gazab kahani, one episode from some English sitcom, and one episode of Tom and Jerry.. All in loop mode.. Of course, you could also listen to a single song for 5 hours and 20 minutes on the in flight radio, but the fake enthusiasm of the RJ had me reaching for the air sickness bag.

So here I am... in Singapore, missing family and friends but learning a lot about living in a foreign land. Its fun, but it leaves me with very little time to blog.. in fact I call home barely once in 3 days or so... The entire week whooshes past... But unlike in Mumbai, my weeks here are very structured.

My week is split into 3 parts -
Mon thru Friday - This part of the week is where I make it increasingly difficult for me to reach my bed. I do this by throwing around chargers, cups, chopsticks, headphones, cameras, pouches, clothes, hangers and basically any movable object. Soon the unswept floor is barely visible and by Friday night, getting to bed is a tricky task - a tiring exercise as I do combos of long jump, high jump... everything except the pole vault. Friday nights I sleep out of exhaustion.


Saturday - This day I become Mr. Tourist. I dig out my denims, cap and camera from underneath a pile of clothes and spend the day admiring Singapore, clicking pictures and having a blast.. I generally get home well past midnight and then stay up all night putting up pictures on FB!

Sunday -I wake up late... and not my daddy late (which is 8:15 BTW!) but L-A-T-E! 12:30 or 1 in the afternoon... Late start aside, this is by far the most tiring day of the week coz after cooking, cleaning the house and washing clothes, I need to tidy up my room and this is generally around the day of the week I miss mom the most.

But I am enjoying this a lot... Living as a bachelor is something every guys must do... Its just so much fun! And Singapore is easily amongst the best places to work in... Yes, Singapore is teaching me a lot of things.. I learn each day, the work is interesting and challenging, and I am having the time of my life roaming its streets... I learnt how the eat with chopsticks, how to make dal, and that mom does sooo much at home that I never realized..


But despite the joys of Singapore, I generally don't sleep very happy. There is a face I see which wets my eyes, I see that face each time I close my eyes, I dream of that face when I sleep, I even think of that face when I work... Nano... clinging to me on her birthday... fear in her eyes that mama will leave her side if she lets go.. Her face... a mixture of joy, excitement and happiness on seeing me, and an unknown fear.. Her face...

Marr-aiges

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.