Happy New Year!

Wishing all family members a peaceful and happy 2010!
From us at Neelankarai

Between Two Worlds : From the US and India-A tale of two weddings

Hi all,


(Actually the credit of this blog should go to Amma , as she read this in the (TOI-Times of India) Bombay edition and asked me to look up this article online. As soon as I read it , I felt like immediately sharing it with all of you. I could have sent you all the link, But apparently TOI links have some problem and do not open most times as I have experienced often. Read on and enjoy!)

“How is the US different from India?” i am often asked. As a scholar of communication, my first impulse is to answer with deep theoretical insights. As i reflect, i realise that the most interesting comparisons are in our day-to-day experiences. Let us, for fun and learning, compare an American Christian wedding with an Indian Hindu wedding.









In the mid-1990s, my friend Joseph invited me to his wedding and asked me to be one of his groomsmen. I had known Joe and Charlene for a long time and was delighted. I had no idea what it meant to be a groomsman. I asked Joe and he sent me a detailed itinerary …Come four days before the wedding. Three days before the wedding, you will have to get your tuxedo fitted. We will have the bachelors’ party two nights before the wedding. And one day prior to the wedding, we will have a rehearsal. My ears pricked. “Rehearsal? What rehearsal?” I have a theatre background and the word evoked memories of fun, friends and love.

As requested, i arrived four days before the wedding. The tux fitting was eventful, trying out a shirt with blue frills and intriguing collar designs. The bachelor party was, well…what happened in Denver will stay in Denver! And what did we rehearse? We rehearsed the whole wedding, from beginning to end! Where will the ushers stand? Where will the bride’s family and friends sit in the church? The sequence was laid out: first the flower girls, then the groomsmen and bridesmaids will come from the left and right side of the aisle, one at a time, meet at the isle and make a path for Charlene, the bride, and her father. Like any good movie, we had a few takes before we got it right. The next day, the wedding was an hour long and it was beautiful. Everyone who attended had a programme, followed perfectly. The music was exquisite, the decorations subtle and stunning, and the event appropriately fun and spiritual. I joked later that Charlene would have had a fit if the roses were not the exact shade of pink!

How does one compare an American Christian wedding to an Indian Hindu wedding? For starters, if you have 200 or more guests, it is a big wedding in the US (of course, everyone has to RSVP if they wish to attend). In India, a wedding can have anywhere from 200 to 2,000 guests. The wedding invitation is

addressed to family and friends and, on the wedding day, if friends wish to join the festivity that is perfectly okay. So, no one is really sure how many people will show up. And everyone who attends will partake in the wedding meal! If the US wedding is for a few hours, our Indian wedding can go on for days.

In the US, when Joe and Charlene got married, the focus was primarily on the wedding couple. In India, the wedding couple is important, but only to very close family and friends. In some ways, the focus is on the community reconnecting with family and friends, meeting new people and celebrating the young couple. I recall sitting faraway from the wedding “pandal” where the ceremonies were in full flow. We were gossiping and chatting with my aunt, oblivious to the actual wedding. When the right cue was given (drumming music), all of us turned and threw rice towards the “pandal” to bless the couple. Seconds later, we were back to chatting with my aunt about her latest jewellery purchase.

There is no programme, no guide and no instructions on what one is supposed to do in an Indian Hindu wedding. You step into this huge wedding hall and, from an outsider’s perspective, it feels like complete chaos. Kids are running around and playing, people are milling around and chatting and a small group is in front of a “pandal” witnessing the wedding ceremonies. When Saumya and i got married at the Balaji temple in Chicago, we watched our US friends struggling to find out what they were supposed to do. Saumya asked me, rather worried, “Shouldn’t we have someone explain what is happening and what they are supposed to do?” My mischievous side took over: “No, let them discover for themselves.” It was fun watching my American friends, who were used to linear thinking, figure out: Where does one sit? How come everyone is talking? Isn’t one supposed to be quiet during the wedding? Who takes the gifts? When do we know the wedding is over?

I could have told you how Americans are generally linear, direct and explicit in their thinking. And how Indians are often circular, indirect and implicit in their ways of life. We learn so much more about the same ideas when we unpack and compare our day-to-day experiences, like a wedding. Similar insights could be had from going sari shopping in India and comparing it to buying a dress in a mall in the US! Want to join us?

Nagesh Rao
The writer is an associate professor in the department of communication & journalism, University of New Mexico.

Entry to the blog

Hi everybody,

I've been going thru' the blogs and was wondering as to whether, when and how to get into this bandwagon , jump into this fray , when I was reminded of our younger days, when we used to play this skipping game , where 2 people will be holding the skipping rope on either side and swinging it, and the 3rd player , who will be standing in the side line with her saree or pavadai holding high with her left hand and waiting for the appropriate moment to get into that skipping groove. I pictured myself as the 3rd player in the skipping arena of blog!![ I think Bharath and Bhamini can visualise this , but I do n't know about our younger generation]Hey folks , I am just kidding as the blog was going a bit too serious. I thought let me make it sound lighter , hence this nostalgic blah , blah . See u soon with more serious reports and strive to solve the very pressing global problems , our 2nd Copenhagen edition

Vasu

An interesting take on global warming!

 Finally I tooreceived an invite this morning to post on the blog !It was kinda weird that Swath had sent me 3 invites earlier and I finally received the 4th invite.( If the earlier mails had gone into spam how then did I get this invite... Anyway strange are the ways of technology and emails..! )
Continuing on the topic which is closest to Gopu mama & many of our hearts ... environment  and global warming,  & also very much relevant to the current affairs scenario of the summit in Copehagen:
I was reading an article this morning  on the Wall Street Journal which I foiund to be quite thought provoking and was keen on sharing it with all of you:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704517504574589952331068322.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

So long,
Ramya.

Attention All,

Since this is a family blog, and quite a few of us (at least the contributers so far) are new to blogging, the style has been informal and the format almost non-existent.

I'd like to point out that this is ok and I wouldn't want to put this blog in a strait-jacket and create a stuffy ambience. But there is a general protocol observed while blogging.

Most posts are addressed to the designated audience, at large, and never to a particular person unless the post is about a particular person ( for comical or inspirational purposes alone). Likewise, comments are usually specific observations, inferences, or addendas to the posts they refer to. Plauditory comments are fine. But dialogues between individuals, should, to the extent possible, be avoided. There are doubtless other platforms for that, such as mail and chat, which I would strongly urge all of you to continue using.
Do not worry about the size, content, format, form, or nature of your post as long as it is within the bounds of acceptable decency. That threshold is rather high in our family, so I think everyone will be well in the clear here. Nothing is too silly, or too profound to be aired in this forum. Likewise, feedback is most welcome as long as it isn't slanderous or downright denigrating.

I hope you don't find these guidelines to constricting. You just need to get into the swing of things and find your feet.

Writing might seem like an unnatural activity to a lot of you. It was extremely forced for me and still is. And there is absolutely no obligation to participate. But it certainly will make our interactions richer because writing is something that often bypasses the trivialities or obligations of person-to-person interaction. So make the most of it.

I hope to see more of you in these neck of the woods.

Cheerio!

Swathi

P.S: The mail format is best confined to mails but on the account of excessive tedium, I ask to be excused this time...and perhaps the next too.

Hello All.

I have received queries from some of you regarding creating posts of your own rather than just responding to existing ones.

It is for this reason that I sent all of you, about a week after the blog was launched, mail inviting you to accept authorship to this blog. The mail is from the blog, which is probably why it has by dismissed by you or your mail server as spam. Please retrieve it, click on the link, and follow the very simple instructions to starting posting your content on this blog. For those of you who do not have a gmail account, you will be asked to open one merely for the purpose of registration and subsequent use while blogging.

The entire process is easy enough. Everything that you need to know is in that mail. I have, to facilitate things for you, reissued the invitations, so you don't have to dredge through a deep pile. So please do spend some time sifting through your mails and following through with the registration.

Mail me if you have any further questions.

My email ID is swathigopal@gmail.com.

Rhopalic Fantastic

Here's an interesting word from our daily installment of A. Word. A. Day-by Anu Garg. More interesting though is the example which uses the rhopalic construction. Absolutely amazing and a fine piece of craftsmanship. Read on:

rhopalic

PRONUNCIATION:
(ro-PAL-ik)

MEANING:
adjective: Having each successive word longer by a letter or syllable.


ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin rhopalicus, from Greek rhopalos (club, tapered cudgel).


NOTES:
A rhopalic verse or sentence is one that balloons -- where each word is a letter or a syllable longer. The word is also used as a noun. Here's a terrific example of a rhopalic by Dmitri Borgmann:
"I do not know where family doctors acquired illegibly perplexing handwriting; nevertheless, extraordinary pharmaceutical intellectuality, counterbalancing indecipherability, transcendentalises intercommunications' incomprehensibleness."


USAGE:
"Soapy fired off a rhopalic sentence, that is, one in which each word is one letter longer than the word that precedes it:
'I am the only dummy player, perhaps, planning maneuvers calculated brilliantly, nevertheless outstandingly pachydermatous, notwithstanding unconstitutional unprofessionalism.'"
Alan Truscott; Talking About Behavior; The New York Times; Oct 26, 1986.

I do not aGRE

Dear Sir/Ma’am,
Apropos to the mandatory requirement of GRE scores as an application requisite, I entreat you to (re)consider its mettle (and to most test takers, nettle) as an index of competency. I have, as my sole source and reference, my own personal journey.

The General Record Examination conducted and instituted by ETS is an examination that serves to provide proof of mental competency in terms of analytical and problem-solving abilities, as well as mental acuity and recall. These are tested in the verbal, quantitative, and writing sections, all of which call upon the aforementioned capabilities. However, there is a third important skill, that is constantly reiterated in all preparatory materials: test taking.

Most of the materials, including that provided by ETS itself has a section devoted to the function, format, scoring of the examination, as well as general strategies to approach preparation and test-taking . I learned why GRE scores were important in determining successful candidature and how they came into play often as a tie-breaking measure. It took little rhetoric to convince me of the legitimacy and urgency of such an exam; one that demonstrates impeccable quality, egalitarianism, fairness, and value.

The GRE is a very smart testing device and I would gladly submit myself to its rigorous scrutiny, but for one thing. I am not a test taker. Let me explain.
I took a deep breath and plunged into the morass of material expecting to be met with predatory attacks. Nothing happened. The introductory chapters seemed warm and reassuring. The math seemed quite catholic, surprisingly, and the verbal almost insouciant. The analytical section, well, just too deep. Now, I’ve fought many a battle with math but it was here that I realized its one true gift- its finality and the binary quality of its answers – right or wrong, no shades of gray. Verbal, on the other hand, my most trusted companion, played quisling. I was warned that there were really no right answers and only some wrong answers. So really, all I had to do was decide what the most likely answer was. Closeness of fit is a good strategy but only when subjectivity doesn’t create play between the answer and the choices. So sometimes the answer is wrong even though the fit is right. So someone with exceptionally fine luck or someone who is more inclined to suck it up and agree with the computer becomes a better candidate for your course. It is but a minor injustice but a significant one for the more deserving among us.

To top it all, the test lasts four hours, which makes it seem rather more like a test of stamina (mental endurance if you like) than a test of relevant analytical prowess. In this respect, it is self defeating in that it assumes one need possess both in order to excel, which in reality is seldom true. So, while I have been doing my mental push-ups and running my cerebral obstacle courses, I fear I just won’t fire on D-Day.

I realize this perspective is entirely personal and therefore astigmatic. However, I am aroused by my futility, to question the system that I have so far been wont to conform to. I am not a ‘test-taker’ and I find it tragically ironic that my aptitude rests critically on an ability that I believe I will need the least to achieve excellence.

I offer this plea, therefore, as my collateral in this potentially calamitous venture I am about to embark on.

Thank you for your patience.

Sincerely,

Swathi Gopalakrishnan

Gaia the New Playa?

There has been more than one reference to the green theme in previous posts. Given the current 'climate' of environmental literacy, and a perceptible ripple within within the family itself, I feel compelled to at least comment on it: the 'green' ( I cringed to type that) cause, as many opportunistic semantisists love to call it. While have no thoughtful insights on power saving, planet saving, and such, I do have some flogged-to-death questions for which I am providing a public funeral service.

Now, I get all terribly muddled with this business of natural selection on one hand, and environmental activists baying, on the other, for the reinstatement of all things 'green'( believe it or not, even the Monarch butterflies and the Birds of Paradise fall under this colourblind category). It seems 'Natural selection itself has arrived at some sort of stalemate' where we have become both the selected and the selective forces.( Now folks, stay with me here; I promise it'll get easier.)It seems, we are the fittest but since we're the ones to have come up with the theory, we can decide if we continue to stay fit or let the dogs rule. It's anyone's guess what we want, right?

Here's my interpretation
In the interest of the continuance human race, the human race had found ways to master it's environment and ensure its survival on the planet. But somewhere along the road, it took a huge diversion to Vegas and got hypnotized by Materia muchamoolah and spent much time in it's darkened chambers spinning luxuries and creature comforts. Suddenly,the shades are lifted and we are blinded by a world we had paid little attention to.

So being the pinnacle of evolution, we thought we could surmount these problems. We thought " we've adapted to nature, we've manipulated it so we don't have to adapt anymore, we don't have to get cowed down by anything because we are the fittest and who's to select anymore?" What we didn't reckon with was that all that was beyond the grasp of science, or was conveniently ignored by it, was conducting an experiment that,unfortunately, was making guinnea pigs out of us. If I'm not mistaken, the experiment was to test our fitness again- selection was it work.

Right now, under the intense gaze of nature and the increasingly adverse test conditions in the petridish that our world has turned out to be, I believe, I'm perhaps not the only possessor of this realization. In fact, I'm sure I cottoned on rather late myself. This realization, fortunately, has given us the luxury of choice but a choice that is very, very hard to make. It is not the choice between letting wilderness overrun us and dying martyrs or a choice between harmonizing with nature and fighting a technological battle till the end. It a choice between dying with the knowledge that we could have done something, at least tried and orsubmitting to natural selection in a most hypocritical, defeatist manner that is not entirely unbecoming of mankind.

The choice is easy to acquiesce to but hard to make, simply because once you do you commit yourself to anything that follows.

With the strokes so tentative in a picture so definitive, it is hard to comprehend anything. My perspective is microscopic under lens that become clouded by neglect. It is so tempting to submit myself to forces we have all along denied. But as a member of the human race, I feel compelled somehow to react otherwise.

Can individual pursuit, vested interests, and survival of the race be reconciled somehow?

Rest in Peace.

Amen
(Swathi)

Maths taught easy

Today we had this very interesting class with a special educator on Maths teaching, and was I amazed?!
She spoke about and taught us innovative and interesting methods of learning basics, such as tables, addition , subtraction, multiplication , division , ascending/descending numbers, and some more. If only we had learnt maths that way, many of us would'nt be having mental blocks for the subject. Tomorrow is going to be another session on maths, which I am eagerly looking forward to. If any of you young mothers( I meant mothers with young children) want a lesson or two, I can tell you when you come here. I only charge by the minute! Will gladly share these tips with you. And some adults too if you want to learn the tricks for some unforeseen , unexpected moment in the future.
Bhamini

The Day We Were Stood Up

When you take an exposition on the tribulations of the male Indian bladder in India, add a generous sprinkling of sub-graphic urinatory pantomime, toss it in an intimate little bowl, and garnish it with an oversized turban, and you have the ‘appetizer’ for Evam’s Urban Turban – stand-up comedy and improv show.

As stand-up comedies go, this local variation was the whimsical and goofy sideshow to the doggedly humorous stage acts of the professional stand-up variety. Even subversion seems flippant and offhand, all the while baiting the audience into thinking about issues during the rare moments when they weren’t asthmatically guffawing.

The show false-started with Sunil Vishnu sashaying onto stage with his ‘big afro’ hairdo, winking at the gals, slurring out his greetings – “Hey there, how’s it hangin?”- and just barely launching into a monologue about something undeniably “American-esque”, when he was rudely recalled to the wings for sporting the wrong accent, wig, and attitude…much to his puzzlement. A few seconds later, Kartik Kumar bhalle bhalle-d onto stage almost in time to a peppy Bhangra beat, in a turban large enough to crown Punjab. Thus began the “urinary tract monologue.”

Kartik outlined the woes of urination in India— the toilet dilemmas, the confusing toilet nomenclatures “loo, restroom, or kakkoos,” his toilet misadventures in a 5-star hotel ( the hotel staff ever-so-courteously suggesting that he urinate in the cloakroom!), the space constraints in toilets forcing one to adopt “yogic postures”— bemoaning the lack of a universal system to impose consistency. The audience rocked with laughter when he described another of his 5-star debladdering experiences wherein he was convinced he was defiling on a modern art installation when all he had was a glass wall to pee against. He continued with his rants against “a certain very popular multiplex whose name I refuse to divulge” and its toilet queues, unfortunate toilet bonding, not so furtive exchange of glances and notes after the separators came down, and the ingeniously placed mirrors that would afford everyone a view of the entire row of fellow urinators. He shared his deep sense of violation and revealed that his only safe haven was the far cubicle where, thankfully, he had only one human neighbour, and he was most effectively shielded from potential terror strikes. It was quite startling to learn how much the act of urination had evolved over the years and to what extent technology intervened in life processes. We came up short when he told us that “ this certain very popular multiplex whose I name I refuse to divulge” had even installed personal screens in each stall. When we balked in disbelief, he said assuringly, “They show adverts and trailers for the ultimate peeing experience… Satyamaa!”

We got our much needed respite when Shannon McDonald took over with anecdotes of her India visit and her personal memoir of her Chennai experience. She exasperatedly declared that her ‘native’ was USA, as she was tired of explaining that she was ‘from Canada and ahd travelled all over the place and only spent a little while in the USA,’ to the people who could only grasp the USA part of it. She went on to detail her observations,the stock observations of most visiting foreigners, about the seemingly inappropriate questions about money and family planning, and the curious phenomenon of the Indian headshake. She spoke of her journey to India and how in spite of and because of the immediacy and coarseness of everything here, she began to feel a sense of warmth and belonging. She concluded by saying that when she returned from her vacation in San Francisco and she stepped out into the early morning air and was greeted with a rush of smells and sounds, she had to admit to herself, and her husband, that she was finally home.

The third act, Sunil informed us, would be by one of their team— a young man of hardly 17, who had never stepped on stage— who wanted to share his thoughts with us. Rabhinder kannan spoke about the delicacy of human relations, highlighting his own relationship with his father and the one incident that invited a new perspective on it. Rabhinder urged us all to look for that spark in a relationship or around a person that could make our lives the richer for it. He spoke with surprising poise, clarity, and insight, injecting just the right amount of wry humour into his monologue to make it relevant and incisive.

Kartik Kumar came back on with a special mouth organ performance played in time to some prerecorded beats. The performance revealed another of his many talents— the ability to make the lack of talent look good. After the goofy performance that lasted about 30 seconds before Kartik declared triumphantly “You guys will buy anything, won’t you!”, he settled down to more solemn business. This time he embarked on a serious discussion on habitat loss, extinction, Darwin’s principle of the ‘survival of the fittest’, and sex ( or baking in an oven and trying not to make cakes). He covered everything from the hopeless extinction of species, vegetarianism, the unfitness of our species (because of the questions of where, when, and how to bake, plaguing us), the enigma of the “birds and bees, ” and the evolutionary superiority of dogs, particularly pugs. In interweaving these facts, Kartik established a critical, if hitherto unnoticed, insight. In pledging their allegiance to humans (the current ruling party) as man’s best friend (no accident that!), dogs had actually secured ascendancy. He concluded by portending ominously that these mean cake-making-machines would soon become the masters of the world, dooming the human race to inevitable extinction

Evam’s Urban Turban premiered in Bangalore and was performed at Alliance Francaise, Chennai for two days. The shows were all improvised and therefore, Evam claimed, no 2 shows were alike.

While the performance was no gourmet dinner, it was a fine meal for the street food lovers among us. I, for one, definitely wouldn’t mind going back for seconds.

(Swathi)

Inhibitions

(one more in the "I" series after Inspiration ( of swathis))

Inhibitions become a part of you when........

You cant say what you want to, to even your close ones...

Every word is measured and analysed before it is done

You bottle up with all those unspoken thoughts

And your mind turns a battlefield with all the wars not fought

An optimist would casually ask you to rubbish these, and rightfully so!

But to rubbish would mean to forget and lose and maybe over the years

You have forgotten so much, that there appears other fears...

That you have lost your memory with all of your life's "thought diary".

Brinda

Inspiration - Hit and Run?

Writing is an interesting exercise in visualisation of thought- quite literally. But being beset by an abstraction of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, this will at best be an approximation of thought, my thought.

Now, to lower those raised eyebrows and temporarily stall the clucking tongues, let me go on to elaborate my bold allusion to the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. To add credibility and a professional sheen to my post, I cite his principle here:

The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum
is known in this instant, and vice versa.

While the qualities and parameters under consideration differ, what binds my analogy to this is that the studying of the nature of process interferes with the process itself and vice versa, making it impossible to achieve both simultaneously.

To transpose this into the present context, it would seem impossible to study one's thought ( and render it in any form - visual or oral) and continue to think the very thoughts being studied, simultaneously.

Well, many of you would rightly point out that this has nothing to do with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, only the patent limitations of human cognition. As implied, I completely agree. So why go through the trouble of citing his r and deriving perhaps specious connotations to my own personal observation? To illuminate a kind of irony (which I'm sure I haven't achieved as yet).

The conception of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as of several others that inadvertently to human cognition, is a cognitive activity. The human mind accedes its limitation to cognise its own working, while all the while cognizing its working in a certain sense.

Well, if I haven't lost you already, I'll leave you to mull over this observation by J.M Coetzee.
" Why is it that the intellectual apparatus that has evolved for human beings seems to be incapable of comprehending in any degree of detail its own complexity? ....I cannot see what evolutionary advantage this combination gives us- the combination of insufficiency of intellectual grasp together with consciousness that the grasp is insufficient."

This is my parting gift for today. Use your time wisely while in your maze, reflect But don't try to find your way, because you never will.

Bon Voyage!

(Swathi)

Welcome to the 'relatively' new world of blogging! 'Speaking' of which , hope everyone is on board the train.I still have to see Swathi's list of the other zoo mates, but if somebody is still in the cage, open the doors for them.
There were other ideas for the coveted tiltle for the blog, from yours truly - like, Blog Trotter(!) and Let's play Bloggle etc. All these were quickly turned down, and naturally too! So, if any of you have any names that could have been, write away. It is always nice to know what missed the bus.

Post pictures , write poems, share recipes, and share jokes( a good platform for Suku Athimber and Raghu Anna) and the kids in the families, tell us about your activities in and out of school ... just keep the stuff coming...
Yours relatively speaking,
Bhamini
By the way, do you know that Tedx (Ted talks ) is hosting Tedx in Chennai in IIT madras on the 29th of this month? So log on to tedxchennai.com and hear what some of our Chennai luminaries have to say . If some of you have'nt heard of Ted talks, in spite of Pranav Mistry, just log on to tedtalks.com and get the experience.

Curtain Raiser

To our family and other animals,

I am pleased to inform you that after much deliberation and even more technical ineptitude, I have finally installed this platform for our use. For those of you who are familiar with blogging, you have another platform to air your views (if they aren't already overventilated). For those of you who are not familiar with blogging and other such 'miracles' of modern science, just jump and pray someone will lend you their chute.

Let the proceedings begin.

May the force be with us.

Swathi