Feb 08
or to be more precise, a tamil wedding ceremony. Head over to Krishashok who took time off from doing jalsa and showing jilpa (not to be confused with Shilpa) to write an excellent article on Tamil Weddings. A must read!
Oct 21
It is home sweet home for a month, as I am in Chennai now on my annual vacation. It’s been 4 days now and it has not been the usual “home sweat home“, as the weather, surprisingly, is quite pleasant with intermittent drizzles. I was here in april for a one-week short vacation but this time, I managed to get time off for the full quota of 1 month.
It is Navratri time here in Chennai. Since we are here this year, Vidhya didn’t create the kholu back in Cyprus like she did last year. My mom has kep a BIG kholu (deserves a separate post with photos!) and my house has been seeing a steady stream of visitors, keeping me confined to the interiors of our house.
This vacation looks to be a very hectic one going by the places we are going to travel to. Another reason is that Vidhya’s bro is getting married and we have a lot of shopping to do. Like last year, i have an opportunity to witness a grand indian wedding of a close family member. As always, we have a pilgrimage tour for 5 days planned early next month before Diwali. I am looking forward to Diwali, since it will be my first Diwali in India in 5 years. Luckily, i will be back in Cyprus on the day of the Diwali Party. I am planning a 3 day vacation-within-a-vacation to Singapore along with my parents. lotsa things to do …
With all this, i try to get in a few hours of badminton a day. And, I am supposed to be on vacation taking rest….
May 03
or is it learnt ? I have always known the past tense of learn as learnt. So, when i saw this “writing project“, asking bloggers to write a post on what they have learned from XXX, i was confused. I then checked many pages online to sort this out. It seems that Americans use learned more than learnt, while UK English stipulates that the past tense of learn as learnt. I found this surprising because Americans have the tendency to do away with anything that they feel is unnecessary like the u in colour.
Anyway, back to the writing project. I have been married for a little more than 5 years and this seemed to be an appropriate opportunity for me to write as to what i have learned from my wife.
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I had been a fashion disaster all my life before marriage. Even after 5 years of marriage, I am still arguing about this fact by quoting various instances of fan-following at various stages of my life. I fail to understand as to why she fails to understand that pieces of thread hanging from the bottom of my worn out jeans are a fashion statement and not something befitting a pauper! Because of this, i am used to getting a “dressing down” every morning.
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The living room couch/sofa should always be in showroom condition. Well, when i sit on the sofa, all parts of my body stretch out in different directions with the leg sometimes (ok, almost always) ending up on the hand rest. Cmon, this is my house, my sofa. I should be allowed to be comfortable on it, not sit like a junior employee in a board room meeting with just the edge on the butt placed on the seat! Another point i always raise is the fact that we are not going to get any visitors at midnight. If so, why should i take the effort to set right the sofa and the cushions on them when i go to bed at night after watching TV.
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I am supposed to follow the Six Sigma Methodology in my daily life i.e make only 3.4 mistakes in a million tasks. But she doesn’t realise the mental stress that goes into planning so many tasks like folding up the clothes i am wearing before going to bathe or hanging the towel in a proper place after bath and not just leave it on the bed. Motorola employees do much simpler tasks, so it is easy for them to follow this methodology, not me!
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Wash my face every 15.3 minutes to always remain fresh. I know whether i am feeling fresh or not. How can she decide that I am not feeling fresh and force me to have a face-wash. I go to the extent of even doing some acrobatic exercises to prove to her that in spite of the fact that my face might look like i have just gotten out of bed, I am feeling fresh and fit!
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Finally, Vidhya was the one who suggested to write about “What i learned from my wife” for this writing project on Middle Zone Musings. So, she finally makes a decision which she is going to regret about
Jan 15
Well, that’s what people have already started searching for on google and landing on my page because of the posts on Surya Jyotika wedding pictures and the one on Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan in Varanasi.
Googlers, the fancy names for people searching on google always follow a streamlined approach to searching on the internet. This is the first time that i have found people searching for something ahead in time. C’mon people, they have just had their engagement. Give them some time. But not too much i guess, lest it go in the same direction as the case of Karisma Kapoor!
But, most googlers aren’t this type. Take the example of Surya’s and Jyotika’s wedding. First, when news of their link-up started going around, people were searching for “Surya Jyotika romance”. When their wedding finally happened, of course people were searching for all possible combinations of the keywords “surya, jyotika, wedding,marriage”. Few weeks back, one person came to my site searching for “Surya Jyotika baby shower”. How very systematic in the approach to searching!
Well, for those looking for Aishwarya’s engagement pictures… (i apologise to the readers from countries where flickr is blocked. I had to move the pictures from my hosting provider to flickr because of the huge traffic this page was getting resulting in increasing my bandwidth!)
Some pictures from today’s wedding …
Got some pictures today from Abhishek’s and Aishwarya’s trip to Tirumala (Tirupati).
Also, if you want know about my experience at a Good Indian Wedding, check out my post here.
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Update 1: If you want to many more photos of abhishek and aishwarya as a couple and also the photo of their rumoured-to-be new house, check out my latest post at this link.
Update 2: Today is their wedding! Leave a comment with your wishes to the couple and also leave your blog link. I shall create a separate post with all the wishes and will also place a link to your blog against your wishes. Convey your wishes and also get a free link!
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Technorati Tags: Abhishek bachchan wedding Aishwarya rai wedding abhishek aishwarya engagement
Sep 12
After being linked from Chennai Central through one his Blogger Round-up posts, i have been getting lot of hits for my original post on the Surya Jyotika wedding in Chennai. Also have a look below at the top twenty search queries which have brought people to my site (Click to enlarge). All the twenty of them are combinations of surya, jyotika and the word wedding!
So, to please the appetite of all the people browsing for their wedding pictures, I have posted more (Courtesy: More email forwards). Enjoy! Btw, these pictures also contain lot of other celebrities:
The lady in the second picture (to the left) is Surya’s sister. The third one has Prabhu and his wife. The 4th one has Sarath+kumar , his wife Radhika. The 5th one has actor Prasanth. The next one has our dear Amma, Jayalalithaa. Next, the superstar Rajinikanth. The last one has Kamalahasan (his usual dashing self) and the guy next to kamal is Karthi (Surya’s brother), soon to debut in Paruthiveeran. You can see some more pictures of Surya and Jyotika at the wedding of Prabhu’s son Vikram here.
The lady in the second picture (to the left) is Surya’s sister. The third one has Prabhu and his wife. The 4th one has Sarath+kumar , his wife Radhika. The 5th one has actor Prasanth. The next one has our dear Amma, Jayalalithaa. Next, the superstar Rajinikanth. The last one has Kamalahasan (his usual dashing self) and the guy next to kamal is Karthi (Surya’s brother), soon to debut in Paruthiveeran. You can see some more pictures of Surya and Jyotika at the wedding of Prabhu’s son Vikram here.
Filed under: Movies
Jun 10
My only cousin got married a few days ago. Probably, I am one amongst a handful of Indians of the current generation, who has only one direct cousin, including the father’s and the mother’s side. So, this was an important occasion for me to attend. Luckily, the wedding coincided with my annual pilgrimage/vacation to India.
This was a good Indian wedding, which I was expecting it to be, considering the importance of this wedding to me! So, what makes a good Indian wedding? It may be similar to big, fat Greek weddings, as in, Indian weddings are big, in scale, in money spent and also in the number of people attending. Indian weddings definitely make one feel fat, with the dozens of varieties of food items on offer during the course of the two or three days of the wedding.
Ironically, Greek weddings are neither big nor fat. I had the opportunity of attending the wedding of one of my Cypriot (Greeks known by a different name) colleagues. Her wedding was held at a “family” church with around a 100 people attending, with more than half of this number being the neighborhood kids! She was so tense before the “walk to the altar”, that she was puffing away at cigarettes just outside the church, to calm her nerves! The strangest part of the wedding, at least for me, was that the entire wedding process, that of the priest solemnizing the marriage and the “I do” sessions were held with their backs to the audience. So, we spent the entire time sitting in the church watching the butts of the bride and the groom!
Back to the good Indian wedding, my cousin’s wedding was very good and it followed a very good schedule. It started off with very good Tiffin early in the morning and 3 or 4 cups of good filter coffee in the few hours after. All this while, something was happening on stage (mandap), something related to the marriage, I suppose. By then, it was time for a good heavy traditional lunch (Sambhar, Rasam, Butter Milk etc). Lunch was followed by a brief afternoon siesta for 2-3 hours. By this time, the bride and the groom had spent many hours in front of the “smoking altar”, cleansing their sinus cavities in this process. I came to know, that the couple had been officially married in the time I had been away for lunch. Next, it was evening snacks time, Pakodas, Badushas and some mixture, of course with the usual servings of filter coffee. Then came the reception. “Reception” in an Indian marriage is done to show off to the public, that the couple is still happy and smiling in spite of having gone into wedlock. When it is time for “reception” for the couple, it is time for dinner for the people attending the reception. The “reception dinner” is usually the best of the lot, as this is the time, when the work-bosses of the parents or the couple, good looking friends of the bride, the not-so-good looking friends of the groom who came to look at the good looking friends of the bride and other socially and economically relevant people attend. Needless to say, it was good.
My cousin has no brothers (If you hadn’t concluded this after the first line of this entry, go and practice old Infy question papers). She has 3 cousin brothers and I am the eldest of the lot. So, I had additional responsibilities, the foremost being that of ensuring that the quality and quantity of food being served at the wedding was adequate. So, there I was, at least 15 minutes before each session, first in line for the pandhi (serving). Not only had I to check the quality of each and every food item, I also had to ensure that everyone got whatever quantity they asked for. So, I had to keep asking for more servings of almost all items to ensure that there was sufficient for all. I had to different kind of tests too. For example, when I was eating the payasam at the end of the dinner and the seats to my either side had been vacated as far as the eye could see, I wanted to test their responsiveness to unplanned requests (thanks to my company’s customer satisfaction survey for giving me the idea of this test). So, with a cup of payasam in my hand, I shouted “One appalam (papad) please”. The guy with the appalams almost fell down in surprise. Good that he actually didn’t, for if he had, all the appalams would have been crushed. Surprised, yet cheerful, he handed me an appalam and asked “Sir, do you need some rice to go with the appalam”. Good guy!
Finally, after three days of the same tough routine of getting my responsibilities right, the good Indian wedding came to an end and may the couple live happily ever after.
