A taste of Chettinadu masala - Part I

It is this phase of life when you attend wedding after wedding – friends, classmates, colleagues. Weddings are eternal in more ways than one – two people tie a knot for eternity, they are eternal in another sense too – one never stops attending weddings, they come in all shades and in various circles – relatives, neighbours, so on and so forth. But there is something very special and incomparable about attending a childhood or college friend’s wedding. We see a pal join hands with a friend for life to walk the long journey. It is in some ways, a parting of ways, and in some ways, welcoming a new friend. It can be scary, yet at the same time joyful, for all concerned.

It is to one such special occasion that I will dedicate a couple of posts here – to freeze the memories in words, to look back on and cherish. There will be more than the wedding itinerary here – meeting old friends, experiencing a new place and its heritage, getting to know a friend’s family, making new friends. In all, a lovely experience that ought not to be eroded by the sea of forgetfulness.

On the sultry evening of the 22^nd of October, myself and Nithya threw our paraphernalia into a bag, negotiated the Chennai traffic in an auto and rushed into the Guindy station to meet up with Indu @ Maami enroute to Egmore to board a train to the heartland of TamilNadu – Karaikudi.  Thendral, 20033753 and our dear friend was to wed Mr. Durai Pandi on the 24^th Oct, 2010. Orders concerning our travel to the marriage venue had come from Ms. Thendral well in advance, not that we would miss it anyway :)  I had hatched the seemingly brilliant plan of traveling from Chennai, which meant I was on traveling SBC-MAS the previous night. The travel and a day in blistering heat of Chennai had already sapped my energy and I was ready to drop asleep at a moment’s notice. But the excitement-fuelled adrenalin helped sustain me from blanking out on Nithi as yet.

As the train pulled out of Egmore at 9.45 PM, we attacked our dinner of idlis and chappathis with ardour and the salt intake energized me, and we were all set for a good old pongal session(pongal is MIT lingo for chatting :) ). The dinner was again a reminder of our numerous lunches and dinners at MITLH (short for MIT Ladies hostel). We then lived a simple life – open the parcel, dig in. What is the need for separate plates? And did anyone say spoons??!? ;) We did not think twice about going back to our simple lifestyle. We probably did attract a few stares, as Nithi belatedly wondered the next day, but then, we did not notice them.

We alighted at Karaikudi junction the next morning. The weather was pleasant, lulling us into a misinterpretation of the heat that was to cook us later in the day. As we awaited the pickup vehicle Thendral’s brother-in-law had arranged for us, we noticed a boisterous gang boarding vehicles in front of the station. Just as we were wondering if they were there for the wedding as well, we spotted the groom in their midst. He was busy ensuring his friends were all accommodated in their vehicles getting a few bumps from them in the process, and he paid no attention the three poor girls standing a few yards away clutching their bags. Grave mistake Mr. Durai Pandi, the bride was going to hear about this! And we vowed to get back at him for that ;)

Hotel Golden Singar opened its door to us. The room was neat and comfortable and the beds beckoned us. But our stomachs growled in protest and we reluctantly acquiesced. Fresh and fully awake now, we made our way to the restaurant downstairs and feasted on Podi dosai, Masal dosai and pongal. The food was awesome, it was no means like any hotel food. Crisp and homely, the dosais disappeared in no time at all, shortly followed by the melt-in-the-mouth, non-greasy pongal.

Bathed and fed, now we called the bride and she excitedly made plans for us to join her at her home. We asked for the address, but she wouldn’t hear of it, insisting that she send an auto to pick us up. The ride in Mr. Ambuli’s auto gave us our first feel of Karaikudi, wide roads and not one double-storeyed building in sight, it gave us the feeling of being in the semi-urban, no, rural, no, semi-rural, well, it can be best put as Indian countryside.

Thendral’s home had all the signs of a bride’s house. Frenzied preparations were in progress – sweets being packed, maapillai alaippu tambulams being readied, relatives busy at various other tasks. And of course, the center of attraction, the star of the day….. our darling, Muthu Pandi! ;) No, not Thendral, she comes next to her nephew, don’t you agree, Thendral?

Thendral was all smiles and vetkam at being teased, with her athachi or anni being our first partner in that. We really missed capturing on film, the blushing Thendral when we gave her a photo frame with Durai and her pics in it. We settled in at no time at all, and in a few mins, the seemingly shy Muthu kutty was dosth with us and things were only fun from there. We met Thendral’s brothers – Baskar anna, Bose anna and Illayaraja anna, and her sister Kavita akka and her kids – cute, doe-eyed Mahadarshini and her new-born brother. 

Muthu Kutty

We had a totally gala time decking up Thendral, not to forget the sumptuous lunch, and the bride was ready to go to the mandapam. By then, the house was in total chaos, Maha and her brother gave akka a tough time and we somehow managed to get some lunch into Muthu kutty. At about 4.30 pm, we started from the house, Thendral and her family went to the mandapam, and we three went to the hotel to freshen-up. The travel and the excitement of the morning finally caught up with us and we crashed on the inviting bed for a short nap.

Refreshed from our nap, we scrambled to get ready – we had orders from Anni to reach the marriage hall soon, and at 6.30 pm we made our way to the mandapam, a couple of hundred metres from our hotel. The maapillai alaippu, marked by the deafening fireworks, courtesy of Durai’s friends, was in progress as we walked in. The bride was getting ready and we sat around and chatted, followed by our personal photo session with the bride. Thendral looked gorgeous in her maaman-seeru purple-pink saree and the hairdressing was simply beautiful. We met the Durai and we chatted for a few minutes. That was when we had our chance at revenge on the groom, he was at our mercy for a sneak peek at the bride and he did not get one ;)

Private photo session with the bride

Muthu kutty was restless, all the running around had tired him nicely and anni was worried he was running a temperature. We all took our turns at carrying him around and pacifying him. He wanted to meet Durai maama, and we took him to meet the groom, small consolation for the groom, nephew in place of the aunt. ;)

Anni escorted Thendral for the ceremony downstairs and we spent our time clicking pictures and observing the rituals. The Chettinadu rituals were foreign to all of us and interesting to watch. Thendral was quiet and serious as she performed the rituals expected of her.

Finally, it was time for dinner. In fact, it had been dinnertime for quite sometime then, one after another Thendral’s annas had repeatedly urged us to have our dinner but we were having too much fun to think about food. But now, we were terribly hungry and we meekily surrendered to Bose anna’s orders to go down to the dinner hall. Dinner was simple and simply delicious – idli, dosai, and idiappam made the main course, with chicken and mutton kolumbu to go with it. Just as we finished one item, our ilais were replenished speedily with piping hot dosais or idlis. Care was taken to ensure vegetarians were served vegetarian side dishes. We rounded it off with palpaniyaram and carrot halwa followed by milk laced with pannankarupatti.

We met Thendral’s friends from work – Divya, Janani, Velmurugan and Naryananan, we chatted for a few minutes. We all said our byes to Miss Thendral Muthusamy (point to be noted ;) ) and walked down to the hotel together escorted by Baskar anna, for they wouldn’t trust Vel and Narayanan with escorting us safely ;) Come what may, what is a get together with old friends without pongal? We were dead tired, yet we couldn’t resist a short chat session in our room before we finally drifted off to sleep.

A first at the M. Chinnaswamy stadium ;)

Every sports fan’s first piece on a favourite sport or even a casual spectator’s recounting of a sports experience typically starts with tracing his or her history with the game. Should I follow the unwritten rule or break it? Maybe, I will include my “history” somewhere as I go along, and keep up with the tradition to a small extent atleast.

Though I should have begun my sport chronicles with the F1 seasons of the days of yore of Schumi or with the FIFA World Cup 2010, I never really got around to that. So this time I was determined not to miss out on yet another of my “firsts” – a live cricket match from the stands! It was something indeed. It wasn’t a breakneck-paced Twenty-Twenty or even the conventional ODI, it was a Test match! I know how even a hardcore cricket fan would react to this – “Um.. Test.. Interesting”.  And I know it hardly sounds interesting, but it was nevertheless a cool experience.

It was the first day of the second test of the series in Australia’s tour of India 2010 – Oct 9, 2010. It was the “Border-Gavaskar Trophy series” – I knew this only when I looked at the actual gate-pass. It was a match that would go on to become legendary, but we are yet to enter the stadium, so we have quite some ground to cover before we get to that ;) The Indian side having returned fresh from a win at Mohali, skepticism prevailed as to their performance in the second test at Bangalore. Well, what do you expect? Our boys have been known to put up their feet after a win… and end up with a thrashing in the next match.

So it was with the least expectations of excitement that we started to the match. We were an assorted gang – myself and my roommate, a senior and a junior and a friend from work. It all started with spotting the ticket sales on bookmyshow.com. The first day fell on a Saturday, and we thought, why not? We leisurely made our way to the stadium on the appointed day. The match had attracted quite a crowd, largely thanks to the brilliant idea of selling the tickets on bookmyshow, I believe. Here, I shouldn’t forget to mention the innovative methods of securing the stadium. “Cameras, Audio-video equipment not allowed”, the website had stated sternly. So it was with a little worry that we carried our brand-new handycam  to the stadium. The security guards let us carry it in, but they had a handycam of their own and clicked a picture of each spectator, cam in hand, at the gate :)

So, there we were, tickets collected, queues cleared and armed with our handycam, walking into the C-Stand. We felt a small tinge of disappointment that India had lost the toss and was fielding. Alright, we will atleast get to spot all our guys, we consoled ourselves.

As we entered the stands, we noticed two things immediately - the choicest seats were taken and the ground was smaller than we had expected. The second observation meant something good for us; we weren’t going to be staring at ant-sized figures in white all day without any clue as to where the ball was or what was happening. So coming back to the seats, we learnt our first lessons on live sports viewing:

1. The best seats vary from one sport to another. In a cricket stadium, the best seats are the ones nearer to the boundary, you can follow the footwork and the ball better. You get a good view however further back you are (we were pretty much at the back, but still got a good view), but the front ones are the best. It probably works the other way round in football, I suspect. 
2. It is better that you aren’t assigned seat numbers – there are these huge pillar supports that can block the view squarely and there comes your luck
3. The lighting matters, so do the weather and the direction of your stand.

Ok, the good thing about these lessons is that we did not learn them the hard way - we got pretty good seats(unassigned, you pick them), in the west stand(the sun doesn’t hit you full on that way) and the weather was cool too.  So yes, the gyaan was for my enjoyment and your torture ;) Ok, I will move on now. Hey, stay with me, no more lessons, I swear!

Just as we settled in to our seats, the first thing we did was… yes, look for Sachin! And oh, he was at the boundary near the East stand :( That was when I realized what Sachin really meant to every cricket fan and every Indian. The crowd cheered every move of the little master. If he bent to pickup the ball or adjusted his cap or stretched his hands, every move was greeted with cheers. Yet, for all that, he was modesty personified. Once in a while, when the crowd pleaded constantly for acknowledgement, he would turn and give a shy wave. That is Sachin for you!

We spent sometime identifying where each player from the Indian side was positioned. The spectator crowd was mostly the IT workforce of Bengaluru, with a smattering of student population and a some bunches of families. The action on the pitch wasn’t hot and just as we were starting to feel the thirst for action, the first Aussie wicket fell to Harbhajan Singh. The crowd cheered in good spirits and the team celebrated at the pitch.

Just as I was getting a feel of the handycam – zooming at the right speed, moving the cam in a steady fluid motion of the arm, I got my reward, I caught the next wicket on film! Or HDD or whatever, but does that matter? Me, at my first cricket match, at the first instance of handling a handycam recorded a wicket!

As we finished our lunch of sandwiches and bananas, we got our next reward, Sachin was stationed at our side of the field. We trained the cam on him, patiently waiting to click our very own Sachin-pic. After about a minute of two of endearments and cajoling from the crowd, the man of five-foot-five, who rules the hearts of many an Indian, turned and gave us a wave.

The next two wickets fell at roughly forty-minute intervals (or as one of our friends remarked, after every food-break :)) and we dutifully cheered. I caught one more wicket on camera and was congratulating myself on the good fortune when Ponting walked in, and with that our frustration. He wouldn’t budge, nor would North. We were getting restless and my roommate declared over and over again, that she would be satisfied with the day if only Ponting’s wicket was taken. Another declared that the match was too drab, and he would prefer that the Aussie hit a few good shots atleast, to spice things up. The clock was edging towards 4 pm and we were making our plans to leave, when Raina(Raina!?!) dismissed Ponting for a lbw. So we left Australia at the crease nearing the end of first day of play at 236/5 and walked out, happy with our money's worth - Sachin and 5 Aussie wickets, in that order. What more can one ask for?

Now, for posterity, I will make a mention here of how the rest of the days played out – Aussies were packed off only at 478, Sachin and Murali Vijay put up a century each – Sachin’s 49^th century and his 6^th double ton, India’s first Innings score stood at 495, Aussies put up a 2^nd innings score of 223 setting a formidable target of 207 for India, and on the final day of play, debutant Cheteshwar Pujara and Sachin batted away, or rather blasted a way, to India’s victory.

P.S: My history of cricket-watching isn’t all that interesting, it started with watching the 1996 World Cup and has been continuing on-and-off :)