NRI Maami

People I personally know who frequent the blog have been asking - ‘So, where is the post on the Chicago Thirumanam’. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing it, but thought people would be bored to read it. But, if you are interested, go ahead and read this, or don’t.

 The Chicago thirumanam went off really well, to everyone’s happiness and satisfaction during the thanksgiving weekend. Yes, it’s now more than a month.

We tried very hard to keep it as close as possible to what it would have been in India. Of course, many of the specimens mentioned in this post, were definitely missing.

We had 2 sessions - the previous evening was the Nischyathartham/Reception. That was followed by the wedding ceremony the next morning.

The crowd was close to 100 people. Most women turned up in silk sarees, and wore the jewellery they had access to in the US. The reception desk at the entrance was unmanned, because there were few young girls in the crowd, and those that could have done it, found it odd to stand by the entrance. All the same, we had a plate full of colourful daisies and sugar or chocolates to sweeten the guest’s mouth as they entered.

In true desi style, like all other desi parties, everything was delayed by a minimum of one hour. Thankfully, the priest who was skilled at either reciting quickly or conveniently omitting the extra frills, managed to have the thali tied, 2 minutes before the end of the muhurtham. Thanks to starting so late, our guest were in time to witness the ceremony too, else we might have had a handful of people, 80% of who would have been white-american. The poor chaps had no idea about the Indian Stretchable Time concept I guess.

In preparation for the wedding, some of the interesting things we did were:

Welcome Board & Vethalai Paaku  bags - The welcome board was handcrafted in exquisite Red gift wrapping paper and adorned by gold glitter to display the names of the bride and groom. No place for the word ‘Welcome’ when I finished. We made sure it was displayed outside the mantapam on both days.

The vethalai Pakku bags were white paper bags. We used half-page labels to print out the bride and groom’s names with the date of the wedding and Thank you written. We had it done in marroon and blue (for women and men). The stickers then were easily applied to the bag. In all I have to admit, it looked very professional. What went inside the bag was- For the men, apple and Bakshanam(Karasev and laddu) bag. For the women, there was manjal, kumkum, apple, ravikai thuni(blouse piece) and a gift.

Nischyathartham plates - Found $1 trays in the local dollar store. Filled them with an assortment of stuff and sealed and tied them with Cling wrap and red and gold ribbon.

Vratha Bakshanam - More $1 trays from dollar store.  No Kai-Murukku experts here, so managed Mul-Murukku in large sizes, Nukkal, Therati paal (from Ricotta cheese), Om-podi, Appam, and bought out Laddu and Mysore Pak.

So, that in brief is a little of what happened those two days.

In India, especially in Chennai, one dreams of a cool day or a cold night. A day when you need not walk out of a bath and feel it was pointless, a day when you can walk the roads without squinting at the un-pardoning sun or care about the browning or blacking (depending on your original color) of exposed skin, a night when you can have a romantic candlelight dinner by a fireplace(unimaginable), a month when you feel like you haven’t written off your hard-earned money to the Madras Electricity board (thanks to the all-consuming A/C unit).  Above all, one could dream to see snow, a frozen ‘Koovam Nadhi’, dusty roadside pavements camouflaged by an inch or two of white clean(looking) snow, icicles hanging from the 8 or 9 floors of Saravana stores buildings in T.Nagar, Somasundaram ground becoming a massive ice-skating rink, etc… etc..

Being in Chicago, and that too in December, I would gladly endure a sweaty, scorching, bright and sunny day. Well, I am sure all you folks in Chennai are saying, ha! Seriously you would definitely understand my position if you had slipped on black ice and all 190 lbs of you had landed with a thud right outside the garage.

The truth is, snow is beautiful for a day and then it becomes dangerous. Getting out of the house entails a 15 minute process of locating the appropriate jacket for the day, bundling up in sweaters, scarves, jackets, gloves, socks and boots. Then you open the garage and find that the snow has to be ploughed. If you are unluckier, it could be ice, because let’s face it - it is denser and thicker and harder than snow and much tougher to plough. If you are unluckier still and don’t have a garage, you are also faced with the 20 minute rigmarole of having to ‘transparentize’ all the opaqued transparent parts in your car, and if you are car is an obsolete model that does not have key-less entry, you might have to de-ice the key-hole to even get your car started. All of this to just get out of the house.

Then of course, in a moment of carelessness or haste, you might just slip on ice and land on your back. Still worse you could hit your head and go through several months of hospital visitation (like my friend once did) to rectify your brain. In Chicago, the windy city, which is rightly called so, the wind tests the success of all the ice-cream, oil, ghee and fattening agents that you have consumed all year, by trying to get past all your layers of fat to chill you to the bone. In that way, I should consider myself rather lucky, for I have not one year but several years of fat to my defense. After all the time spent in getting ready to head out, you try to hurry to work, but further frustrated by all the accidents on the road caused by careless travellers driving before you.

So you start the day ‘lucklessly’ so, manage to get to work or wherever, do your thing during the day, and before you look out of the window twice, you see it’s already dark because it is already 3:30 p.m and then drive back in the dark through miles of traffic to a home which could have been warmer no matter how high the thermostat is set at.

For all this and more, welcome to Chicago during the winter. But hey, don’t be disillusioned. There are better things during winter. Christmas lighting and Christmas cheer at least gets us all past New Year, then it’s back to waiting for spring which will also bring our parents here from India.