Leh, Ladakh 31st July – 5th August 2011

It’s been a week of amazing travel that 7 of us have experienced up in the Ladakh Himalayas. We started off on the wrong foot by not realising that the Indira Gandhi International Airport’s Terminal 3 was several kilometers away from Terminal 1D which is where we had landed when our Indigo flight brought us into the capital from Chennai! Thanks to my buddy and classmate Pat Kerr we were able to gainfully use that extra day and we got around to having ourselves a very nice buffet lunch at a cute little restaurant called Omni (used to be an Irish pub called Bennigan’s). The next day we were not about to miss that flight and before we knew it we were winging our way northwards over the snow capped Himalayas that stretched for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see from that 30,000 foot vantage view we got from the window seats some of us had contrived to get!

The approach into Leh airport presented a stark contrast to all the snow capped mountains we had been viewing – the terrain around Leh was completely devoid of snow, just miles and miles of brown topped mountains stretching in every direction.

My altimeter reading at Leh – 3650m or 12045 feet

Some of the mountains actually had massive slopes of sand, yes fine sand! That’s when it strikes you that we are actually in a cold desert! And to our surprise it was really hot and all those layers of warm clothing we had plans of piling into seemed quite unnecessary! We were ferried to our accommodation and ordered to stay in doors to acclimatise. We had all heard and read so much about the need to let the body acclimatise that we were not about to get adventurous! In a few hours some of us were beginning to feel heavy headed and any rapid or strenuous movement began to leave us breathless! To make matters worse, we were housed under beautiful cotton-poplar trees which were shedding their seeds and with it massive amounts of fluffy cotton were swirling about in the air – almost like it were snowing! When the cotton lands on the ground it looks like the ground is carpeted with snow!

Doc Jimmy came down with a slight fever and a pain radiating from the back of his head down the rear of the right shoulder so an Army Nursing Assistant was sent out to check Doc J and all of us out for our blood oxygen concentration and BP - he advised us that Doc J should be seeing a doctor at the very well appointed Army Hospital nearby - there a Captain from the Army Medical Corps said it was a case of Shingles and gave Doc J a bagful of anti-retrovirals to fix the viral infection. Thankfully by next morning Doc J was feeling much better and was ready for the long haul trip across the third highest (my altimeter could read only upto to 5000m and we were way above that!) motorable road

Notice, my altimeter has exceeded its calibrated range of 5000m at Chang La! The needle is set to do its next round around the dial!

in the world - Chang La - to get to the most beautiful lake I have ever seen - the Pangong Tso. The lake is blue as blue can possibly get upto mid day and then it begins to change color to green, then to white and even brown by the evening!

The beautiful Pangong Tso

The road up was a killer - everybody except Gopan, Sudha and I, were puking away! But the sight of the lake set everybody right - it was simply breathtaking! Overlooking the Tso is a hill called Garnet Hill because it is strewn with rough garnet! We have some of that semi-precious stone for keep sake now! Pangong Tso is 135 km long and one third of it is in India and two-third in China so the Chinese border was rather near. The Tso is supposed to be the remnants of sea trapped in the Himalayas when those mountains were formed millions of years ago - so it is brackish but there are pockets in China where the lake has fresh water surrounded by brackish water!

On the way up to Pangong Tso we encountered a family of Himalayan Marmots - two of whom were having a sparring match either for food or female I guess - it was a sight to behold!

Himalayan Marmots sparring

We stopped by a beautiful spot on the Shyok river for tea and coffee - it was easily the most beautiful spot for a picnic - crystal clear water rushing over water-smoothened rocks while towering mountains looked down at the river from either side watching it snake its way through the valley.

The 150km return trip to Leh from the Tso was bone-jarring but the beautiful mountain terrain interspersed with emerald green villages along the Shyok and Indus rivers make you forget the condition of the road and that of your tired body!

Day Two

The plan was to visit the Patharsahib Gurudwara and the Sangam (confluence) of the Zanskar and Indus rivers in the morning. The direction was different from the one we took yesterday so the scenery too was different - the Gurudwara is set up at the spot where Guru Nanak is supposed to have meditated in the 16th century - an evil local who was not happy with the benign influence that the Guru was having over the locals decided to kill the Guru by rolling a huge stone onto him while he was meditating. Legend has it that the huge boulder turned to wax as it hit the Guru and left the impression of the meditating Guru on its surface. This boulder is still around and is housed in the Gurudwara which is the first stop for all Indian Army missions that head out to the frontiers - there they seek the Guru's blessings for a safe return from their tour of duty to the frontier.

Onward from the Gurudwara, before we encounter the Indus river on the Srinagar-Leh Highway (NH1) we cross Magnetic Point - supposedly a place where vehicles in neutral actually move up-slope defying gravity! It turns out that because the horizon is hidden by mountains all around the human eye has trouble discerning whether a slope is running up or down so what is supposed to be a vehicle going up-slope is really not so! After our little researches into the physics of the place we left to witness the two mighty rivers - the Indus and the Zanskar cutting through huge mountain gorges and meeting at the Sangam! Lovely sight, indeed.

On our way back to Leh we stopped by the Spituk Monastery on a hillside overlooking the Indus river and the Leh Valley. Buddhist monasteries are almost always built atop some hill/rock formation and it takes a huge effort to get up there because you get breathless after every couple of steps! Once on top it takes a few minutes to recoup your breathing rhythm.

We were busy clicking away in the monastery and Mary wandered into a huge room where there were plenty of Buddhist artifacts to photograph - one of the monks came by and promptly shut the huge red doors to the room with Mary inside! Luckily I was aware that Mary was in there so I told the monk and he re-opened the door to let a frightened Mary out! We couldn't stop laughing at the thought of what could have been if Mary was locked away there - the next morning when the monks opened the door they would have seen a woman in their monastery and looked up to the heavens and said 'thank you lord, our prayers have been answered - we have a woman for company - Mother Mary herself'!

We got back to Leh town and decided we were going to check out a Lonely Planet and NDTV recommended eatery called Mentokling Garden restaurant - the food was awesome and amazingly low priced too! Most of those around were whites from all over the world - they seemed to have become like the locals - totally laid back, happy and in no hurry at all! The Ladakhis have this amazing ability to befriend anybody and everybody and they are always smiling. Their worldly requirements are minimal so they tend to be happy with whatever it is they have - something we can all learn from the Ladakhis.

The afternoon was spent visiting the Hemis Gonpa (monastery in Ladakhi) - another amazing monastery, the richest in Ladakh, built initially in the 11^th century and rebuilt in the 16th century on a huge, rocky hillside! I will let the pictures do the talking about this beautiful monastery.

Then we moved on to the Shey Palace - another awesome structure atop yet another hilltop overlooking the Indus river and some interesting high altitude wetlands populated by ducks and fish.

I love this picture of ducks sitting on their grassy island and beholding the reflection of the heavens above in the waters of the Indus below!

The Shey palace has one of the nicest looking statues of the Maitreyi Buddha - the picture of this statue must have adorned hundreds of magazine covers if the magazine has ever covered Ladakh!

It is interesting to see how the Ladakhis are so consumed by the idea that evil demons must be kept at bay at all times and their whole life is spent keeping these demons away - that is why you see so many scary faced dragons and masks all over Ladakh. No house will be without these dragons or masks!

From atop the Shey palace you get a terrific view of the Thiksey Gonpa especially as the setting sun casts its light on the hillside. I have a lovely long-shot of that view of the Thiksey monastery which was supposed to have been the influence behind the Potala Palace in Tibet.

Unfortunately, by the time we were done with the Shey Palace the ladies had had enough of heights and monasteries and were in no mood to climb!

Day Three

We were headed back to a place a little short of the village of Chilling on the right bank of the Zanskar river to do some river rafting - we actually drive back along the Indus till we come across a much photographed bridge across the Indus, cross to the other side and drive towards the confluence of the Indus and Zanskar rivers and then turn left up-river along the right bank of the Zanskar to get to our launching point. The river was flowing quite fast but at places it slows to a pace that actually allows you to stop rowing and look vertically up the river gorge to see the Zanskar and Ladakh mountain ranges on either side of the river looking down on you! We luckily did not have any spills into the river even though we were kitted for it but we did see another raft turn turtle and the occupants were fighting the river currents while trying to get back on board an over turned raft! Later we learnt that the Army had chosen a rather mild place for us to do our rafting instead of going up river from Chilling where there were Grade 4 and Grade 5 rapids!! So I made a mental note to do that next time around!!

After the rafting it was time to visit the Hall of Fame - a memorial to those who fought to keep Ladakh free and a integral part of India from 1947-48, then again in 1962, yet again in 1971 and lastly in 1999. It was a beautifully set up memorial - with some amazing stuff on display. The 'Last Post' was particularly poignant - a letter written by a 22 year old Indian Army officer, Capt Vijayant Thapar (Robin) just before he was killed in a pitched battle atop one of those mountains! It left us all teary-eyed especially because we knew what a herculean effort it is to even breathe when we go about our daily activities in Leh and here you had these youngsters fighting at 20'000 feet or higher for days without letting up! It was good to see those Pakistani arms captured by those intrepid Indian soldiers - all of the arms have Pakistani flags stuck on in reverse as if to cock a snoop at the enemy!

After lunch at the base camp we headed off to the little village of Chushot on the banks of the Indus about 30 kms up-river from Leh where they have the only Bactrian Camel (Double Hump camel) Breeding Center in the world - it was amazing to see those almost extinct animals up close - we even got to see a 3 month old baby double hump camel named Tony, who's mother had refused to nurse him so the staff there had taken on the job of bottle feeding the baby! The little son (Chimmi) of one of the staff there had developed a great relationship with little Tony - the pics will tell you a better story than I can!

After the camel encounter the ladies said they wanted to experience a Ladakhi village while Doc Jimmy, Gopan and I headed off to see the majestic Shanti Stupa built with Japanese money. It is an imposing monument again atop a hillock that over looks the city of Leh and the Leh valley. Once again the pictures will

Adult Bactrian or double humped camel

describe this structure better than I can. We had told the ladies that it would involve a 200 step climb up here which is why they decided they'll do the village viewing!

As it turns out one can drive all the way up to Shanti Stupa!! We did not dare tell the ladies that we actually drove up there! They were amazed that the three of us could have climbed those imposing steps and still look fresh!! Doc J thought he'd atleast try going down the steps from Shanti Stupa - so

Tony the three-month-old Bactrian camel with friend Chimmi

Gopan and I said we'd meet him at the base in the car! A little while later Doc calls to say he aborted his mission to go down the steps because its a dizzying sight from on top and there are no hand rails to steady one's self!

Shanti Stupa at Leh

Maitreya Buddha at the prayer hall near the Shanti Stupa, Leh

Our last outing for the day was to a sound and light show at the Zorawar Fort maintained by the Corp of Engineers of the Army! This is a fort built by the great Dogra military strategist Zorawar Singh in the late 1800s after his army annexed Ladakh and he launched attacks on Tibet from here. It really must have taken a master strategist to marshal those forces of 10,000 men on horseback and foot and climb those treacherous high altitude passes to launch those successful attacks on Tibet in temperatures of 20 degrees below freezing! Zorawar and his army were the first specialist high altitude fighting force!

Day Four

We set out early morning for the trip up to Khardung La - the world's highest motorable pass - 18,380 feet! It is 42 km from Leh but takes about 2.5 hours to get there because the roads are steep, winding and prone to massive rock slides which make it really difficult to keep the road operational. Plenty of bikers, mostly on Royal Enfield Bullets, pass you as you inch along the road to the Khardung La Top!

Sudha, Doc Jimmy, Sheila, Mary and Bindu at Khardungla – 18380 feet. The snow capped peaks in the background are the Karakoram range of mountains

It was freezing up there and the altitude made every one of us woozy and disoriented!

The army runs the world's highest souvenir shop up there and the ladies really cleaned out that shop! We also got to be served cinnamon flavored tea at that height by the army - it obviously was a big draw with everybody there!

With Sudha, Bindu and Gopan at Khardungla Top

Over the top and down-hill to the north is the Nubra valley and further afield is Siachen. From K Top you get to see the majestic Karakoram Range completely covered in snow because it is much higher than the height we had got to! Hats off to folks like Pat Kerr who have ridden over 4 of the world's highest motorable passes inside 24 hours - a world record! We now know first-hand what a humongous effort it must have been. And I hear he is off again some time next week on another of his crazy bikey adventures in this area!

We had not yet set eyes on the famous Yak - the animal that keeps these gentle mountain folk fed with milk, cheese, meat, fuel and wool! So on our way down back to Leh I persuaded Jamyang Tashi our Logistics Officer (from the Ladakh Scouts) to take us to a Yak farm run by the army! Boy, are those animals impressive - about one and a half times the size of the regular cow it can survive in very cold weather and on very poor grade fodder. They are crossed with cows to produce Dzomos or Dzos for short - slightly diminutive animals used as pack animals and for milk - the male is infertile but the female Dzo can reproduce!

We were soon back at base camp and pretty badly off because most of us had headaches and were quite woozy on our feet from the rapid ascent and descent we had made! So we spent the afternoon in our rooms and the ladies decided the evening would be spent checking out the Leh market. The apricots in the market there were to die for and the Ladakhi jewelry seemed to have found favour with the four women in our company!

As we descended those twisted roads from South Pullu, where we met those Yaks, I looked up in to the sky to see one of the rarest of sights - a circular rainbow around the sun - why, there were actually two concentric rainbows. I managed to capture the inner rainbow on camera but not the outer rainbow. It was indeed a sight to remember.

So finally day five, the day we would leave Ladakh, was upon us - one cannot but feel a tinge of regret for leaving this beautiful place with its cheerful people and stark scenery. I look back with a lot of longing for all that I was leaving back and a faint hope that someday I will have the opportunity to return to this ethereal place.

Apricots galore

I have been remiss

Indeed, I have been remiss and have not done my blogging the way I planned to when I first set about to blog. I wonder if every blogger plays as much truant as I have done here! I'm amazed at how much of writing I do in an average day and yet I never seem to manage to find the time to do a little blogging. I'm hoping that from now on I will not miss out on doing my blog. So whats been happening in my life since I blogged last, one month after Ammu's wedding? Well, quite a lot actually because I spent some time in frozen Europe trying to drum up some business and then it was time to get our offsite reunion of the school going in Pondicherry. Once that was out of the way it was about the Christmas and new year and getting a new business division operational - this is the new Algal Biotechnology Division of Aban that I was required to set up - had to convince a young US returned Phycologist to take up the challenge and once he was on board it was about finding people to get a team together. In the meantime Ashwin was going through his Submarine Qualifying Exams in Mumbai which is a gruelling 10 day affair where 10 senior submariners orally test the under-training submariners for their knowledge of those denizens of the deep. To cut a long story short, Ashwin cleared the exams rather well and has since been inducted in to the elite submarine arm of the Indian Navy. He wears that dolphin badge with a sense of pride and I hope he will excel in his duties as a Submariner. Ammu in the meanwhile has finally found herself a job in 'Umeed' an NGO that specialises in teaching Autistic special children. This was something she always wanted to do, so she is all excited about her new job! We, Sudha and I, are happy for her because she now gets to do what she always wanted to do without quite having to get herself a B Ed in Special Education. Ofcourse, she will have to register for a B Ed some time down the line but when she does she will have an invaluable cache of practical knowledge on handling these special children. Ammu continues to surprise me when it comes to her marriage and her husband - the two of them are so alike in their likes and dislikes that they understand each other better than I do my wife of 28 years! Good on her I would say and good on Arun too because he has shown tremendous patience and understanding in managing a sometimes temperamental wife! Last week I managed to get around to taking a couple of days off to head out to Kottayam and spend time with Mum - she was pleased as punch to have Sudha and I over for the those two days. It was a thoroughly relaxing time spent in Kottayam. From there we headed off to Calicut by train to meet with Sanil and Viji, friends from school, who were driving from Calicut to the Nilgiris the next day to attend the Executive Committee meeting of the school alumni association in Coonoor. That was fun too.

January 2011 went by like a shot and here we are in February!

Of daughters and marriage

Its been exactly a month since Ammu, my daughter, got married - time has been flying by at the rate of knots and I'm still coming to terms with Ammu being married and actually managing home and hearth in Mumbai. Last January she was engaged and at the time the September wedding seemed so far away. Before I knew it it was upon me and now its over, done and dusted! Time seems to come at me like the rushing wind comes at you when you accelerate on a powerful bike - it hits you in the face and before you know it, its past you!

Before Ammu's big day I would imagine how I would feel as I gave her hand away, I would imagine what I would say to Arun as I couched her hand in his and held their two hands together. I asked myself if it was going to be an emotionally draining moment when she got into that car and went away to Arun's ancestral home. To all those questions I seemed to answer myself with equanimity and tell myself 'its really no big deal', 'its just going to be another day in her life, why should these thoughts bother me'! Around me cousins asked me how I would feel when Ammu is married off and I would tell them the very same thing I felt within me. But I would also wonder why so many people want to know how I, as Ammu's father, would feel when she left home.

Then the day dawned, there were all these friends of Ammu crawling all over the house getting themselves ready for the occasion. Ammu herself was packed off with her soulmate Anam to the beauty parlour to get ready for her big occasion. She looked happy and quite confused at all the paraphernalia she needed to carry to the parlour - the jewelry, the hair clips and other accoutrement, her wedding saree, blouse, bangles, flowers for her hair and so many little things! Anam managed all that like she had done this kind of organising all her life! She infact is a young Muslim girl from Lucknow so there was no way she could have known about all the stuff that a Nair bride would require but she played her role with panache. Three hours and some minutes later the car entered the compound of Sudha's mother's home, people all around were in various states of getting ready, they all stopped in their tracks as the car made its way in. The front passenger door opened and Ammu emerged from the car looking oh so beautiful, all dressed in bridal finery and I took one look at her and my mouth went dry and I suddenly felt a tug on that heartstring, the eyes welled up but I could not be seen shedding a tear, so I held back. I was kind of numbed by the vision of my little girl emerging from a pupae ready to fly away as a beautiful butterfly. It reminded me of a tatoo she surreptitiously got done some years ago on her right upper back - it featured this young girl fitted with butterfly wings and taking off. In a jiffy it was time for me to drive Ammu off to the mandapam in our car, soon Arun was ushered on stage by Ashwin and a bevy of young things bearing the traditional 'thaalam'. Ammu was then also ushered in onto the stage and the next thing I know I was giving her hand away to Arun. My mouth was still bone dry, I had been chewing on gum hoping to get the salivary glands to secrete but they too were numbed by the occasion it would seem and all that I could utter to the newly weds at the time was 'all the best to you both'!

Farewell Molu!

On choice

Hark back to those days, not so long ago, when we had just the choice of the Ambassador car or the Premier Padmini if you were shopping for a car. Today, the Indian consumer is spoilt for choice - there are more car brands and models than one can count and on TV there are a thousand channels to choose from! Is this supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing? Most of us have grown up hoping for more to choose from because we were always up against a limited range to choose from. When we traveled overseas we always were a bit flummoxed at the 200 varieties of bread in the London supermarket. I know I always wondered how people made up their minds when such a huge choice existed! As a kid in London I would simply ignore the whole range of breads and go simply for the Mother's Pride loaf of bread because I thought it would boggle the mind if I had to actually evaluate all those options before deciding on the bread of my choice!

So we come to the same question - is large choice a good thing or a bad thing? It seems one intrepid sardarni from the US decided to check this out - Sheena Sethi Iyengar a clinically unsighted psychology Professor set up these two tables at the entrance to a major supermarket and on one table she had 6 different jams to choose from and on the other she had 30 different jams to choose from. Of the 600 people who were exposed to the two tables she discovered that more people purchased from the table with fewer choices but more people visited the table with more choices!! Taking this one step further she evaluated people's level of satisfaction when exposed to choice and discovered that people exposed to more choice tended to be less satisfied with their purchase than the ones' who were exposed to less choice! So can we conclude that 'more choice is not necessarily' such a good idea? Well, this amazing lady has written a book on this subject and I'm about to launch into reading it - hopefully we'll find out about if more choice is good or bad when I'm through with the book. Until then I'd like some of you who read this blog to tell me what you think about the issue of choice!

I'm off to catch a train for Tuticorin in a moment - am headed off to Pearl city to attend my school friend Thamilarasu's daughter's wedding. There is going to be a large number of old buddies from school and I'm getting that excited feeling about meeting them.

Hectic times

Its been a while again since I put something down in my blog - guess the approaching wedding of my daughter isn't really helping my writing! The blogger's block is palpable and in my face most of the time because I seem to want to do so many things at the same time and in the confusion that results, writing my blog takes a back seat.

The last two weeks have been hectic to say the least - what with all the travels for one wedding or the other and the kids coming home - its lovely to have both the brats home but I'm not so sure the wife thinks that way about having them both home at the same time! They are two very different kids and pandering to their individual likes and dislikes is a tall order! When they come home they actually expect the mother to be doing exactly what they like!! My mother-in-law is here too - to spend a few weeks with her grand-daughter before she takes on a husband in September! The plan is for Ammu to learn some of her grand-mother's cooking while the old lady is home but I am not sure much of that learning is actually happening!

One of the tasks I am vested with when the mother-in-law comes to Chennai is to take her every morning to the temple in Shastrinagar, Adyar at about 0700hrs - a task I do not fancy because it means I have to hang around outside the temple till she has finished appeasing her God! It always amazes me that the old lady believes that this God of hers actually listens to her and will do his damndest to make sure all her petitions are addressed appropriately! This year however, I notice that the mother-in-law made no such efforts to head to the temple every morning - I dared not ask her why lest I remind her of her usual chores! It turns out that because of a death in her family back in Kerala there is a period of time that must lapse (its called Pela in Malayalam) before she can visit her God again! So this year I am spared the chore of getting my dear Mother-in-law to the abode of her God every morning! Shall we say 'thank God for small mercies'?? Or would that be a mean thing to say given that somebody had to die to spare me the chore? Whichever way I see it I am grateful for the small mercy!

Then there have been all those Georgian visitors to Chennai from overseas - first it was Dr Sam Thomas from Cleveland, Ohio and Glenn Sargon from Perth, Australia. These guys provided us with the excuse to get together again in Chennai after a fairly long hiatus! Boy, was it good to get together again with the old school buddies! Sheila and Doc Jimmy provided the venue for one of the get togethers and Anita and Arun Fredrick opened their home to us all for the second of the get togethers while the third was held on the terrace of the Chater home. The gatherings were well attended and a great time was had by all. The kids joined in and seemed to have themselves a good time too. Below are some pics taken at the get togethers.

Bellboys all - PC, Glenn, Sattar and myself
Ashwin answering a zillion questions on life in an Indian Navy submarine!

Are we as a nation awake or what?

The last few days have seen a torrent of news items on honour killings across the country and I'm trying to make sense of this nonsense called honour killing. It seems that panchayats (local governments in villages across India) are allowed to rule on the issue and can actually penalise persons who choose to marry out of their community. As if that is not enough, there is this notion of 'gotra' and if somebody chooses to marry a person from the same gotra the panchayats can nullify the marriage and punish those who dared to enter into holy matrimony thus! So what is this 'gotra' - I asked around and believe it or not very few even have a foggy idea of what it is! One of the most cited explanations is that every one of us is descended from one or the other Rishi (Hindu hermit) and each of these descendents along the paternal line will be said to have been born under that gotra - for example, all the descendents of Rishi Bharadvaja belong to Bharadvaja gotra. Now, it is forbidden to marry a person from the same gotra - I really wonder who is keeping track of the gotras that people belong to and does any one really care? Well, it seems there are plenty who are keeping track and even more folks who care and will even kill those who dare!!

I haven't the faintest idea which gotra I belong to but then again I am not brahmin and technically speaking the gotra system applies to the brahmins is what I must deduce because you trace yourself to the rishis who were all brahmins.

With so many brothers killing sisters and their husbands for marrying within the same gotra or outside the community the politicians have gotten into the act and some have said panchayats must be given the legal authority to punish people who flout the gotra or community rules! I think it stinks just as badly as the insistence of some politicians to do the Census of India on a caste basis! For heaven's sake don't these jokers realise we are living in the 21st century and not in vedic times? Does education and basic intelligence not impact upon such issues? Seems like education in India is for the classrooms and must be left back there when we exit the classroom and enter the big bad world! That perhaps explains why we in this country do not think anything about spitting in the corners inside buildings or in places where people tread, that perhaps explains why people across the country think nothing of taking a crap in full public view on the roadside!

Seems like none of the politicians or advocates of honour killing have read that soul stirring piece by the poet laureate of India - Tagore:

.....Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee to ever-widening thought and action -
Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

It is clear we, as a nation, have not yet woken up!!

What is it that goes into a marriage invitation?

The time has come for us to go about getting that invitation ready for Ammu's wedding. So last weekend the task was to be undertaken by Sudha, Ammu and myself. I commented to Ammu that I do not even recall having seen what the invitation looked like for my own marriage and here we have her wanting to have a say in everything from the paper used, the color combination and even the wording!

The one thing we three were agreed upon was that it would be a simple, not-too-wordy invitation card. After a visit to a couple of card shops we zeroed in on the paper and general size and layout of the card and handed them the agreed upon wording which was to make references to the parents and grand parents of the bride and just the parents of the groom. These details were conveyed via telephone to the two grand mothers (my mother and Sudha's mother) before we set out for the card shop. By the time we got back home from the card shop my Mom was calling desperately to say that we had to have the addresses of the grand parents printed on the card or people may not be able to tell who the bride is! Sudha and Ammu would have none of this because they argued that the invitation would go mostly by hand or if it did go by post it would be followed by a telephone call so people would easily be able to tell who is getting married.

On Monday the proof arrived by email and it soon became clear to me that just mentioning that the groom was 'son of Nirmala and Lt. Gen G M Nair SM, VSM' would not do - people would want to know where they are from, which means that the details of their ancestral home will need to be mentioned! As I was thinking of this my mother calls to mouth exactly what was going through my mind - call it deja vu or whatever you may! She had a hearty laugh as she spoke of my cousin saying that if we did not give details of the bridegroom's parents 'people may think that Arun's folks have no address'!!

All this basically harks back to the ancient traditions of Kerala where a person is not just himself or herself, he/she is essentially also made up by his ancestry and therefore his/her ancestral home must be part of him/her. Thus, people are always referred to as 'Gopi son of Devaki of Thottakat House in Muttambalam' that description circumscribes the person in his entireity because it tells you who he is, who he is born of and the reference to the ancestral home provides a historical perspectives of the doings of that ancient ancestral home and its scions and therefore a character sketch of the kind of person he could be.

When Sudha and Ammu choose not to have those details appended to the grand-parents of the bride and the parents of the groom they will be breaking a mould that is many hundred years old. Iconoclasts these two young ladies are turning out to be!