Trailers, websites and south Indian weddings

Over the last few years, have you noticed how every movie that is releasing, has a website and some kind of yahoo or gmail address?

Today the BIL sent a copy of his wedding invitation and what surprised me the most?

There was an official wedding email address on the invitation!!!

The world has come a long long way, from the days where the wedding invitation would say GRAMS : PANDIYA or some such identifier for people to send their wishes through a TELEGRAM, directly to the wedding hall! Even as late as ten years ago, our wedding invitation had such a GRAMS thing!

Today it is www.thesimpsonsmovie.com or thesimpsonsmovie@gmail.com for a movie, and

sundarwedssangeetha@gmail.com !! for a wedding invitation!

Going to suggest to the BIL that he and the would be start a website along similar lines for their wedding and leave it kind of open source for people to post pictures, comments, etc. etc..

Come to think of it, there are actually some nice applications to such a website. All random junta who take cell phone photos and videos at the wedding during the "thaali tying" ceremony can post their videos and photos into this site!

In case the official videographers are all over the place shining their bright handheld lights on the bride, brides dad, groom and surrounding relatives, then screw up, and don't get the 30 seconds of action right, some random audience cell phone or relatives handheld camcorder might have done a better job!

Have you ever wondered why in the odd photo, where you can clearly see the grooms face as he is tying the knot, he has a painful expression on his face? It has nothing to do with the woman he is marrying or marriage. It is literally a look of pain! Chances are the hair on his bare back have started burning thanks to the powerful filament bulb the lightboy is shining, a little too close for the grooms comfort!

We have seen our own wedding video, ONCE! We were shrunk into a small circle covering approximately 1/9th of the screen in an inset, during the 30 critical seconds, and the background of the video suddenly showed the temple towers of Thirupathi and the soundtrack switched from the priest uttering "maaangalyam ...." to "rakkamaaaaa kayya thattu"..

I kid you not. Obviously a lot of bluescreen work and video editing technology, went into that masterpiece. One possible explanation for this is my re-creation of what must have possibly conversed between the video dude (abbreviated to VD in this post! yeah.. that was intended.. I have not forgiven him yet!) and my dad, prior to the wedding:

Dad : Nalla video eduppia pa? (will you take a good video?)

VD : Dont worry Saar. Asaththiduvom ! (we will excel!)

Dad : Mootha payyanoda ore kalyaanam pa.. . (my eldest sons only wedding...) Make sure the video quality is good.

VD : Saar, Sridevi Kalyanaththukku naan dhan saar Stills potten! (I did the stills for actress Sridevi's wedding)

Dad : Enna pa.. wedding photova still'nu sollare!

VD : Film industryla neriya velai panni irukken sir. ( I have a lot of experience in the film industry). That is why I use the terms interchangeably.

Dad : Okay! (possibly launched into his "what is in it for you..." pitch). Will give you the contract for the wedding video. Do a good job and I will recommend you to all the people I know. There are going to be over a 1000 people at the wedding. Lots of eyes on you and your team.

Your work should speak for itself. If people see the good work you do, more people will ask for your business card.. by the way, why don't you give me a few of your cards, so I can recommend you in advance to some other friends whose kids are getting married.

VD : (possible big grin.. I am imagining this of course)Yes Sir. Definitely Saar. Sure Sir. I will make sure the video speaks for itself..

And thus spake VD's Video! The guy thought our wedding video was going to be his resume!

So he pretty much exhausted every menu option on his WedVidSoft Ver. 2.0, within a 90 minute video clip!

First he zooms in on San's face, then by magic, she splits into two, then four, then eight, then sixteen and eventually when we have 65536 San's at a pixel level, and two things start to happen..

a. The eighth graders in the wedding hall watching this feed on the TV monitors on the other end of the reception hall went "Now, that is what the math teacher was trying to tell us about last week in Geometric Progression.. If only I had seen this video yesterday, I could have aced that math test!".

b. The amoeba in the coffee and cooler spills on the floor next to us are going "What the heck!!! No one multiplies faster than us.. NO ONE! These two aren't even married yet and look at them divide on the screen.. God! What will happen after they are married? No one will use as an example of reproductive prowess, in biology textbooks!"

That is when the video goes "cut.. cut.. cut.." and I start to replicate myself on the screen while a frozen San watches.

We zoom in from the left, right, top, bottom, fade into each other, we have vertical and horizontal blinds that come and go only to reveal me change to her and her change to me as the blinds shift, we spiral into the screen as though we are already dizzy after a few hours of marriage, and the list goes on. In short it is an endless fun of various moviemaker options for 10 mintues straight. By this time anyone watching the video (other than us) will be in splits, laughing.

This is followed by me zooming into a freeze frame on an oval shaped inset as I watch San smile and do all kinds of video tricks, which is promptly followed by San looking down on me (yeah, it started right there) as I do cheap tricks that include but are not limited to, me looking circular, elliptical as well as linearly polarized, having a star filter around me, a central me with five mini me's orbiting around the central me(all with star light patterns), etc. You get the picture by now?

All this within the wedding reception! The actual wedding part is of course a combination of "Innerspace", "Star Wars" and "The Blair Witch project".

The camera zooms into the mouth of the yawning guests, clearly revealing the lunch menu on the big screen, so others can be motivated to get in line for the next "pandhi". This is followed by the camera doing a rolling move alongside the dining table with the food served and ready. For some strange reason, the cameras lateral movement close to the table reminds you of the title captions on the Star Wars movie!

The rest of the video can easily put "the blair witch project" to shame. Maybe they got the idea for that movie only after seeing bootleg copies of our wedding video, err, our videographers resume!

Now where was I? Wedding websites, in case the videographer screws up....

A post that started as an altruistic freelance advice to the BIL and his would be, ends up becoming a description of our wedding video. Tsk, Tsk! Deep are the wounds from the one time viewing of that fateful VCD!

It is now time to let the BIL and BILie, write their own video saga!

ps. I will be there with my own camera phone, camera, camcorder, etc. etc. to witness the event, just in case the....

pps. My dear BIL, not to worry. The material scientist in me is going to bring a flame retardant spary for your back, to protect you from filament lamps, as you tie the knot! I got you covered.

Busy week

A lot more things happened this week, than the adults watching Dasavatharam!

Jr. finished Kindergarden. One more year just flys by!

Here is this years Photo. Jr. was so proud and happy. It was a treat to see her prepare for her graduation performance, singing, dancing, having fun!

One more year of married life completed this week! We are happy, healthy, constantly fighting, constantly reconciling after fighting, managing to maintain the status quo for another year. Time IS really flying by fast.

As though to symbolize this event, we had a special flower bloom in our front yard. Thought it was just an ornamental non-flowering plant when we purchased it six months ago. Now we know better.

The flower bloomed over a whole week gradually. It was amazing!

and as if to say, "yeah right!" for the association of the flowers blossoming to our wedding anniversary, another flower bloomed!

It looks like an Allium, but seems to say "pOda ....."

Let us see if you can guess what flower this is!

And finally, Father's day! A very special day for me because Jr. always makes my day! The first thing she did when she woke up was to run to me and say "Happy fathers's day daddy" and she gave me a bookmark. She had kept it a secret for a whole week. The little one still doesn't understand what the hoopla was about, but joined in the hugging and kissing.

An eventful week this one! Guess, going forward we will have the second week of June becoming a busy week because of the Graduation, fathers day, anniversary combination!

Wishing all those dad's out there a very happy Daddy's day!

ps. After reading last years post on Jr.'s graduation, I just realized.. This Blog completes another year!!!

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When a man gives a woman

This post started as a comment in Dipali's blog. It got too long and became a post here instead!

Fathers are told that the greatest deed a man gets to perform in his lifetime is to give his daughters hand in marriage. The part of the marriage ceremony where the girls father gives away the bride is called Kanya-dhan. Kanya means "virgin" and dhan means "giving" in Sanskrit. The idea of Kanya-dhan being taken literally to be girl-gifting sounds crude, and if taken in todays world, is crude!

Jambu Sastrigal, the man who performed our wedding ceremony explained the significance of Kanyadanam to my FIL during the ceremony..(I was an irritating groom who asked Why? What? for everything). He patiently explained almost every ritual that we performed. Between him and my own grandpa, they had all those rituals covered and most of them pertained to a south Indian marriage where the groom was in his early teens, the girl was still not a teenager (not a woman yet), the whole wedding set in a village setting, arranged marriage, more involvement from parents than the bride and groom, etc. etc.

The priest went on to explain "When you give anything away, you are doing Punyam (more along the lines of "if you love somebody, set them free") and there is no greater punyam than getting your daughter married!" In any case, made my FIL and my father feel elated at the prospect of doing such a great deed!

In todays context though, half the rituals do not make sense because it does not fit todays world. The whole Jaanvasam thing where the groom goes around on a horse or in a "convertible Car" all around the village was to show his face to the local crowd to see if he was already married to anyone! Something along the lines of "if there is anyone who has a problem with this marriage speak up, or forever hold your peace!" in Christian weddings. Today guys go in closed cars around a few blocks in some strange city! Local detective agencies and Google have eventually replaced the car ride today!

If you look at things in the same context, Kanyadhan itself may not mean much to youth. It might still mean something to the parents!

There is something to be said for the marriage ceremony though. The fact that you promise to take care of the person (till death do us apart, in sickness and in health , etc. etc. whatever be the words, whatever be the language .. a living one like English or an arcane one like Sanskrit), the nature of the commitment is somehow put in context when all those people sprinkle rice and flowers on you and bless you as you "get married".

To put it in a geeky nerdy way, it was almost as though a wormhole opened and somehow some deep connections were made in my brain that would take that moment in time and freeze frame it inside my head for the rest of my life. Somehow, that point in time and space has become a new origin for me and it was all because of the ambience. Some credit does go to the gorgeous bride sitting on her dads knees and the dimple on her chin as she looked down and smiled, but most of the credit goes to the ambience. The sight of a sea of people who had come to bless the union, the sound of those people and the priests wishing you well, the smell of garlands, incense, ghee, camphor, smoke.. it was a combination of all those things!

We did have a registered wedding as well with our parents and a witness, but it pales in comparison to the experience of the "kanyadanam" ceremony! Somehow I would have missed all that in the registered wedding. (San agrees!).

If you are a south Indian bride or groom tossing between a formal wedding ceremony and a registered wedding, go for the formal ceremony, if and only if you will have almost a thousand people at your wedding, both of you are willing to go through that ceremony, you have a priest who explains things in context and most importantly, you have an open mind to a great cultural experience!

It will be worth it!

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