Ancestor feeding..

One thing I always look forward to in Chennai is feeding the crows before we start eating. It is not enough to put the food out on the ledge.. you call out to them and wait to see them eat and then you eat.

The crows are considered as the spirit of our ancestors.. or so they tell me. Given my ancestors were all vegetarian and these crows aren't I would not take it literally. It is a beautiful concept though.. keep the scavenger birds around you well fed.. 

All said and done, I am happy we are still feeding crows. 

you can hear a bunch of kids talking in an American accent in the background.. this custom is definitely lost in our family after the current generation.

There are a lot of traditions. If we go into why they were setup and adapt them to today, there is no problem in accepting the simplicity of it or beauty of it. The issue is taking it literally and going all or nothing on these customs. 

There were lots of philosophical debates on customs, traditions in 48 hours spent in last trip than all previous trips put together. We kept it short and sweet. These discussions never end well for anyone. 

The crows are dwindling given the hot weather and water scarcity. Based on my limited sampling that is the conclusion. Not sure if the bird statisticians concur. Hope these crows migrate to another area and where they do, they find people who treat them as their ancestors and feed them every morning. 

They are on time, every time! 

Customs that make sense..

Recently we visited Seattle for my nieces first birthday celebration. There was a formal Hindu ceremony followed by a Western style birthday party with a cake cutting. There was a short break and the birthday girl got her head shaved off and her ears pierced! 

What shocked me was that when we went to the local hair salon, we were told that they are banned by law from using a razor to shave off the scalp of the baby! In India we do not cut the hair for the baby and the first haircut is a shave, usually done in a temple that they family prays to. There is a lot of goodness in doing this. The hair grows thicker when you are a kid and we are told that this is a tradition that dates back thousands of years. 

Pretty sure some western scientists would have "studied" this in their way to come to a conclusion on hair growth rate, density, eventual impact on long term hair loss, does this apply to male pattern baldness etc. etc. Many Ph.D's have possibly been generated, for all we know!

Why ban this is beyond me! The birthday girl brought back so many memories for me as she looks a lot like our little ones, especially Jr. when she was the same age!

The photographs below are Jr. at 10 months, the little one at 8 months, my niece on her first birthday all on the day of their Mottai's !

They are all soo adorable! Sometimes I wish to bottle up my kids and freeze them at that age. 

At least we have the old photos and videos to replay those moments and enjoy!

Here are some of the old and new photos..

Jr's mottai in Gunaseelam Temple near Trichy in Tamil Nadu 2003! We had gone there as a family to pray there after my brother's wedding. She is sitting on his lap and my dad was very happy that his kids were all there in one place after many years!

Look at the size of the mosquito bites on Jr.! That was and is her only complaint when we mention "India trip"!

The little one had two.. one here at 8 months and one in India in the summer vacation when she was five!

The first one was a shave but not with a razor everywhere. I did it for her after the hair salon did a #1 cut. We did put the hair in the temple almost five years later. The thing sat in a ziploc bag for all those years!

The second time she was the star of the show. 

This is something that all kids get, both girls and boys. The boys more often.. I remember my brother and myself getting head shaved off 4 times when we were little kids, almost every alternate year! Here is a picture on one of those India trips where my nephew is sporting "the look". The kids were all troubling me that day for a pose!

Now to the latest diva, my niece! 

She was amazing. Sat there so peacefully and watched her hair fall. Think she was relieved to see it go! 

and here she is with Jr. after she got the earring!

The little one wants a second set of earings after watching her cousin get new earings..

We are now searching for an old photo where my father, me, my brother and sister are all sporting a clean shaved head after a temple visit! Will post it if we find it...

Those three days - Where is all this headed?

For previous posts by Sundar hawking a serious topic with some humor, see:

1. The Unified Theetu theory: Definition, rules and boundary conditions
2. A brief history of "theetu"

This last post on the topic is about why people follow these customs, perception of people who follow/don't follow them, in the eyes of others.

When little Sundaram was all but a boy of 3-4, he would rather be naked and sit next to his mom in a corner of the room for three days a month and still enjoy the "freedom" of running around the rest of the house than be confined to only one side of the room at any given point. After a little scolding from older folks, he just figured out that if he had two chaddis, one of which resided with his mom and another which was outside the "theetu" boundary and he changed as fast as S.Ve. Sekar changed shirts in the stage play, his total exposure time would be drastically reduced and he still got the best of both worlds. As an added bonus, this made him understand the concept of electovalent vs. covalent bonding in ninth grade very quickly.

The scheme came to a quick end when great grandma declared that as per the spec. documents, section 7.2.1.1.1 which would be

7 kids
2 greater than 3 years old
1 clothes
1 boundary
1 cross contamination

any kid touching mom during theetu, is theetu by induction, naked or otherwise unless he has a shower! You can change underwear fast enough, but squeezing in a quick shower, now that was not possible. Not happy with the rules which didn't have any written proof or basis, the little boy picked what was his first of many fights on unwritten rules that did not make anyone happy.

My mother used to tell me horror stories of how she was treated badly when she was just a teenager. Most of these stories involved older widowed womenfolk in the house taking it out on the younger girls in the name of "thooram vilagaradhu", "aacharam" etc. etc. and the middle aged women not backing the young ones and siding with the oldies for fear or retaliation. I am sure the men played a part in this by looking the other way. Decided that when it was time for my sister to go sit in a corner, I would fight for her.

A decade went by and in what would have made Abhimanyu proud, I fought the entire family tooth and nail so that my sister would not go sit in a corner when it was her turn. Initially my sister was proud of me, but after seeing the way everyone ganged up on me, she thought it was better to end the fight by going to the corner. After that, whose fight do you fight?

Told myself that someday when I got married, will make sure that my wife will never go and sit in any corner. When San and I got married, she came here within days after our marriage and the first time we had to decide on the rules, told her that my preference was that she do not go overboard with theetu. She had the right to choose whatever restrictions she wanted to follow as long as it did not affect us both. In other words, I wasn't going to take any extra showers because I gave her a hug after coming back from work. She was very happy. San would not touch the prayer shelf in the kitchen, would not touch items in the kitchen that were associated with any prayer, would not go to temples during those days and that was it. If she was tired, I would take over the cooking or we would just go to Bhavikas, not that we needed a reason to go to Bhavikas. I was also happy with that arrangement.

There was no one from either side of the family visiting us till just before Jr. was born. In those 4 years, there was only a self imposed "theetu-lite" in the house. Then Jr. came and we did not have to worry about any rules for almost another 6 months.

We did declare to the parents and in-laws that our house will have only these conditions. One funny conversation that happened with an elder relative when they came to our house:

ER: this carpet, is it cloth?
Me: it is synthetic, but has natural fiber mix in it.
ER: Hmmmm. . how do you clean it.. can it get wet
Me: they have this amazing concept called steam cleaning. They wet the whole carpet with steam and vacuum it, makes it come out like brand new. The carpet stays wet for a day but after it dries you can really see the difference.
ER: Appo "theetu" aache!
Me :!!!!!!!

Small problems like this did arise every now and then and one tries to use his limited knowledge of science and technology to come up with clever workarounds, like they came up with the vinyl covered pillows!

These days, the number of restrictions has taken a slight increase. As we grow older and have kids running around the house, we tend to gravitate more towards religion, belief and faith. Part of this is because we believe that if we raised our kids the way were raised, they will turn out okay. This of course is because we have usually turned out okay in our own eyes. There is always a hope that we would transfer at least what we perceived as the good part of how we were raised on to our kids.

Take me for example. A couple of weeks ago, the girls were so impressed when they saw me recite pages and pages of scriptures from memory. They wanted to know how to do that and said "it is too hard and impossible for me to do this daddy". They also wanted to impress daddy by doing what he does. So we started working on some slokams, by breaking them into small pieces and then putting them together into one long piece. They can both recite many slokams fluently with the original sanskrit pronunciations.

There were two reasons for my doing that. The first one being my own perception that my good memory having something to do with all those hours spent on my grandpa's lap every morning and evening as he recited scriptures. Maybe the ability to hear and remember and recite was what gave me ability to be a "star Maggu" in school and college and eventually helps me everyday in my job. Then again, my memory could simply have been inherited from my father who is a walking phone book. In either case, the logic was that the kids could have inherited a good memory from me by chance or they will improve their memory by reciting slokams.

The second reason was to teach them how to learn that complex things can be broken down into simple pieces and that practice makes perfect. The whole thing was an opportunity for me to teach them how to learn all those things and of course realize that they can do things they thought were impossible, if they listened to their daddy.

That last sentence is the bane of our existence. We so believe that what we pass to our kids will make them like us and that is the best we can do. We teach them to choose wisely and train them to choose like us.

I write this post with hope that eventually when the girls get older, they will make a choice that makes sense for that time and place and environment. There is a very good likelyhood that they will follow some lighter form of "theetu-lite". So far they do not know or even realize that something like this is being observed and that is the basis for the guess.

It is very difficult for every generation to accept drastic changes that the next generation makes. Gradual changes seem to have open or even reluctant acceptance. Hopefully the girls will not be judged for the choices they make. To a large part that depends on how the older people in the family (we are growing older and that means it includes us and our generation) will accept their choices for what they are.

Cleanliness and godliness are both relative terms and there is always a balance between the two that every generation arrives at. Wish the girls will choose things that they are comfortable with, for their own reasons.

One thing is for sure. Just like my decision to defend my sister and wife at some point with their choice, my support will be there for Jr. and the little one, when they make choices and want someone to help them defend their choice. Hopefully that situation will not arise.

Here is to hope!

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Those three days - Past and Present

The previous post is here.

This post is to put things in perspective..

The past:

Theetu's origin can simply be summarized in two words "bloodborne pathogens". Do not know if cavepoeple figured out that isolating women prone to bleeding was a good idea. Have not seen any articles that study primate behavior for segregation of menstruating females (maybe because small apes get periods when they are 4 years old and larger ones when they are 8?). There are tons of papers on animal fertility, but not much out there on how primates deal with periods or how anthropology or archaeology has approached this topic. Have even wondered if the people who dug up Mohenjo-daro and Harappa or the great pyramids found special huts or chambers for segregated women.

For at least the last few thousand years (based on tribal customs handed over for centuries) certain cultures have been sending their women with "theetu" to communal huts or special enclosures where they spend time with other theetu women. If no other woman is there, they even have a senior older woman give company. The specialty of the huts is that they are cleaned more often, there is no physical exertion for the women who go to this hut and they are constantly in check with the medicine man. When a woman came out of that hut into the regular dwelling, she would take a special bath to cleanse herself. Looks like they did everything right and it seems very well thought out and organized.

a. treat the woman with extra care
b. make sure she rests
c. take care of the hygiene

Then you get a lot of literature on more complex social evolution based on "religion". That is where the whole thing takes weird connotations. Even read a paper on "slapping a girl as soon as she gets her first period" to tell her she is to awaken from her "childhood". I started laughing. In some communities today they broadcast the girl's attaining puberty to the whole world with banners, and a public ceremony.

The whole thing varies from "education" to "borderline harassment" depending on the era and culture and religion. What happens to a girl when she becomes a woman in a place that has something like the Taliban (really do not know but for some reason, cannot imagine it would be as good as the women from the tribes in the south pacific)

The personal view from looking at near and dear ones is that over the years, there is a lot of tolerance and looking the other way when it comes to certain customs that do not make sense. Even in the late seventies, remember that some of the ladies would just send a message to their work saying "cant be at work for the next three days". Do not know when Sanitary napkins became very prevalent in South India or when they became affordable for all that women would not have to take days off.

Certain things are understandable irrespective of the generation that is holding on to customs, be it in the name of religion, society, culture, tradition.

1. It is important to have a good hygiene standard. Washing hands, keeping toilets clean, changing bed spreads, clothes worn during those three days etc.

2. It also makes sense that the woman has a nice soak in the tub to relax before getting back to the routine.

3. Any girl/woman who is losing blood is bound to be weak, might have cramps and might also be moody and cranky and downright unpredictable. So it also makes sense to give them their space as long as it is not a hard floor, but the most comfortable bed (have always wondered why my dad and the kids didn't leave the bed to my mom and sleep on the floor instead of the other way around).

4. It also made sense to ask them not to cook if the hygiene standards were not upto the mark. In todays world of leftover rice and microwaves, do not see how a woman who cleans her hands with the same antibacterial soap as her snot nosed kid or constantly sick hubby would be a higher level threat. It does make sense from a stress point of view.

Thirty years ago, there were no mixers, grinders, microwaves, dishwashers, fancy ovens and day to day cooking was a lot more difficult and strenuous. Still remember that when we were kids, the gas cylinders were not very prevalent and we used a "kumuti aduppu" and 10 days a month you would wait for the new cylinder to arrive and would be on the kerosene stove or kumuti inhaling fumes or smoke. This was true even after we started getting gas cylinders and a house had only one cylinder. It makes total sense to make sure that the women got their rest from cooking, but the sticking point was that they were dependent on the others in the house to get them the food they wanted.

Poor girl would say "stop. enough. dont want more" and they would pile it on her plate knowing that once it got to her plate she couldn't put it back or give it to anyone else, because the food on her plate was now "theetu". If she choose to waste that food, she would get yelled at. Also, the fact that people who observe this had men in the house who had no clue how to cook and learnt cooking on "those three days", can be the subject of a book by itself. If Meenakshi Ammal wrote a book on learning to cook in thirty days, many a Meenakshi Sundaram has learnt to cook in three days out of thirty!

Present :

In today's world, any newly married couple who are by themselves mostly choose to observe "theetu-lite" where they restrict themselves from going near the prayer room, temples, religious functions, even cultural functions like weddings (don't know why you would not go to a close relative or friends wedding because you have periods, that one still beats me. For some reason identical rules for a person in mourning are applied to a woman with periods when it comes to attending functions, Why?).

Some women go one step further and eat outside or go on a jamba juice diet which again makes sense. No cooking and need to keep hydrated! Also know that most of the couples we know do not have separate beds and that means they do sleep in the same bed when the woman has periods. Chances are she is going to ask for a hand and foot massage because of cramps and she totally deserves it and she will get it in houses with "theetu-lite".

There are a lot of families which just do not observe any differences and tell you they do not believe in "theetu". There are believers in god who do not observe theetu and atheists who do, in Tamilnadu which is interesting. So that is probably the proof that this crosses religious boundaries and could be more of a social custom.

However if you have parents, in-laws or older relatives living with you the rules bend. If grandparents or grand-in-laws are there the rules pretty much bend so much that they look like a mobius strip.

To a large part the future of "theetu" depends on this past and present. How the previous generation convinces the next to follow certain customs is the final part of the post.

1. How much of a choice did/do/will my grandmother/mother/wife/daughters have in chosing to observe these customs?

2. How were/are/will the girls be convinced on the moral, ethical ramifications of the decisions they make?

3. How were/are/will they be judged based on their choice?

There are still families which follow "theetu" in India. A lot of folks who have stopped following it because they live in nuclear families, automatically assume that the rest of the world has moved forward with them. That is not true. I am also guilty of making such assumptions on a day to day basis. Have this subconscious feeling that the whole world is tech savvy, which it clearly is not.

Very sad to disappoint those folks who were expecting a fight or flame. The intent of these posts was not to create any animosity or friction.

It is to understand and get clarity on this custom and maybe learn a thing or two by sharing thoughts. Using a professors words "you haven't thought it through till you have written it down and you haven't understood it till you have published it"..

Here is to hope for a better understanding as the publish button is being hit.

ps. the final part on Saturday.
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India lives in Villages?!

The recent India trip time distribution was as follows:

Time at parents place : 7 days
Time at Sans Grandparents place : 1 day
Time at Marriage hall : 2 days
Travel : 1 day

While on the face of it, there appears to be a gross discrepancy in the way disproportionate time was spent in my parents place, let us assure the readers that of the 7 days spent at parents place more than 70% of the time was spent travelling between Mandaiveli and West Mambalam using a route that even I would not have imagined possible. Let me explain that in graphic detail.

As a guy who used to get lost within his own one bedroom apartment, within every locality we lived in, yours truly had a tendency to wander around. I used to miss exits on the freeway and claim to the Mrs. that we were taking "the scenic route", an excuse that would get me a smile and a dimple in her chin in those early years of marriage, compared to the "gas vikkara velayile..." (gas price being what it is...) lecture I get today... where was I? Hmm.. getting lost!!!

Even the guy who gets lost with this kind of consistancy, would not take a route to West Mambalam from Mandaiveli that involves taking a right on Chamiers road, geting on to Anna Salai via Cenatoph road, then going through the entire pondy bazaar just to get to Doraiswamy subway! What used to take us 30 minutes, now took an hour and 20 minutes, not to mention having to hear complaints from every auto dude about rising petrol prices, the longer distances, government policy, how no one knows which route is one way in which direction anymore, how cops are exploiting the new one ways to gouge unsuspecting auto drivers etc.

To top this, you see the guys in autos frantically screaming to the auto drivers urging them to drive as fast as they can, as one approached panagal park for fear that the women folk might just jump out of the stagnant auto, into Nalli's, Pothy's, RMKV's, Prince Jewelry or what have you at that corner! The reason, why guys always sit on the open side of the autorickshaw when rounding the south Indian Saree capital, finally dawned on me! Enough about traffic.

Now that we are back on track, lets say the probability density function of the Narayanan electron cloud around Madras was more likely to be :

Time at parents place : 2 days
Time at Sans Grandparents place : 1 day
Time at Marriage hall : 2 days
Travel : 1 day
Time spent in Madras Auto : 5 days

The only abberation in the cloud is the 1 day travel spent outside of the city, which actually happens to be the focus of this post. You can clap now, as though the title has been mentioned, in the middle of a Vijayakant movie!

We were not yet out of jet lag after reaching Madras when we were whisked away in a 13 seater A/C van booked by my FIL to take us to Anandhathandavapuram and back within one day!

Let's break that down for the non-Tamizhian folks... Ananda(happy)-thandava(dance)-puram(place). Literally, the place where lord Shiva did the "happy dance"!, with his wife Parvathi, of course (it is one of the few temples where the goddess is sitting on the lap of the god). With that in perspective, one is open to interpreting the "happy dance" part, as gods are always an inspiration, but that is outside the scope of this blog, which considers parenting as part of its staple!

The trip was promised as a safe, fast and comfortable one by the in-laws. While it was fast and comfortable, it was nowhere safe, especially if you sat on the front passenger seat with your four year old nephew on your lap.

While the kid thought he was in some real life video game, dodging cars, trucks and government buses coming head on towards you, on the wrong side of the road only to careen away in the last split second to pass a speeding bullock cart, the adults were screaming at the driver to go safely, who in turn was cursing the other drivers in "pure thoroughbred" -"thooya" Tamizh, unmindful of the octagenarians, ladies (or both) who were travelling within the same confined space.

The BIL and me, being the only young men?! in the van, learnt a lot of new "gaalis" which make us "current" w.r.t. Madras, sorry Chennai slang!

We even had a thirty minute break when our van encountered a fallen tree in the middle of the Highway. The locals came with saws and a mover to clear it. The kids had fun watching the proceedings, while goverment bus drivers decided to gridlock the road by trying to check out the happenings by coming on the wrong side of the road.

Soon the tree was gone, but the traffic was jammed in both directions! More choice epithets were used by the drivers on both sides, as the vehicles moved through surrounding marshes to continue on the adventure. The brigaspathi who started the jam, even obliged us with a picture!

Once we hit the villages though, it was pretty. Not many people in sight, a glorious calm, rice fields and greenery everywhere, the occasional hut with a few goats tethered outside, a few chickens running around and the naked toddlers running around behind the chickens! Pity we were on a schedule. Could have exhausted a 2GB memory card right there.

We went on to the little "kula deivam" temple at the edge of the village. The last time we visited the place was in 2001. This time the water tank was empty, but the greenery was still all around. We all got to bathe in the temple, then pray, eat food cooked for the prayer and then leave.

The best part at the end, was when the little one and daddy both asked the priest "where is the rest room?" and his reply was "inge adhellam kidayadhu. appidiye vayakattu pakkam pongo!" (there is no such thing here, just go around to the edge of the paddy field and do your business!). The little one, brave girl that she is, watched the chickens and goats and did her business. Luckily, no one took pictures of a sheepish daddy walking around paddy fields, in his dhoti with a mug of water in his hand, Vijayakant style!

The trip was a blast. It almost felt like Vijayakant was travelling with us the whole time in various get-ups because there was a poster of him every 10 feet, all the way from the village entrance back ot Chennai City, in village clothes, in military fatigues, in police uniform, looking tech savvy with rimless glasses and a cell phone, etc. etc.

What is a post about a trip without pictures? Here they are...

A place for good tea somewhere near Dhindivanam

If a tree falls...

The man with a plan!

The kids, looking visibly distraught at the first part of the roller coaster ride. Coming from US and Australia, where bumps are used as speed breakers, they were surprised by the drivers using the bumps as speed enhancers, by launching vehicles into the air!

Welcome to Pondy!

The speeding bullock cart with a top speed of 6 mph between two vehicles with a top speed of 60 mph. But the bullocks would give the Toyota Prius a run for the money what with the 60 mph vechicles consuming gas while the 6 mph bullocks, producing gas! Think the bullock carts are here to stay on the highways for a long time to come, because at the end of the day, it is all economics!

The nephew doing "peela" jadoo using a nimbu on the little one!

The village goats, a typical scene

The other avatar of Daddy Narayanan...

Posing inside the temple

Tickets to India for family of four : 6000 dollars
Renting a van to Anandatandavapuram : 600 dollars
Chasing your cousin in a village temple : Priceless

On the way back, we stopped at Vaidheeswaran Kovil to visit the temple, and the Mrs., on a whim, decided to check out her Naadi Astrology prediction.

That is where we stop today and continue tomorrow...

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