The Great Indian Wedding

Recently I attended the wedding of one my closest relative and this gave me a chance to do two things, 

1) To get a bird's eye of the view of the wedding extravaganza. 

2) To get some ideas for writing a blog. 

**Shopping** 

The first taste, we got off the charged up wedding atmosphere was when we found ourselves in a shopping spree. This shopping was unlike any other shopping that we have done. There was a clear cut agenda about  the time and when we will wear the dresses. Importance was given to the price and the embellishments. After the hunt in three shops, we finally made our selection. In fact, the shopping spree never ended with the first day. It continued for five days. I realized the importance of colors and patterns and did a learn few things about color sync. We were also part of the so called mega shopping schedule of the bride and bridegroom. The location was a famous jewelry shop in the town and some souls were engaged in the act of making the right choices and giving fabulous opinions about the chosen jewelry item. The shopping sessions went on until the shops closed for the day. 

**The Church**

The church and its spiritual operatives were seen as necessary evils. The priests and his coterie were there to bring in the so called 'holiness factor'. The level of involvement and participation was limited but timely. The whole mechanism ran on the size of cash deposit made at the church counter and how well you are aligned with the church committee. This decided the amount of spirituality that will be showered upon. I felt that the simple and elegant prayers said by the elderly members of the family was much more soothing and meaningful. The church also had its own rules and regulations when it came to conduct of the wedding service. The priest had the same attitude of a teacher who enjoyed the act of admonishing  his students for late arrival and the improper behavior inside the church. 

**The Wedding Planners**

The wedding is an event for the elders in the family to take the main role and perform the duties without being asked. The main participants took up their position much ahead of the main event and started the work of coordinating and organizing. The final outcome that the public sees at the end is a result of all these planning and co-ordination. I was able to have a detached look at the events and make some significant remarks about this team work. There was a dedicated transport manager, an entertainment manager (who brought in fire crackers) there was a health and safety inspector (he took precautions to prevent a forest fire), who doubled as the official to herald the wedding events. We also had the finance department, team which looked into the settlements of bills. All these different departments worked like a well oiled machine so that two individuals could start their life as one. 

**Church mediated dating**

Earlier the bride and the bride groom were seen as two individuals. In this technology driven era they start exchanging messages and calls once the families agree upon the wedding date and other details. They also attend the pre-marital counseling session together. This gives them a chance to be together and get to know each other (not that they have a choice to chance to make a diffrent choice). This is a healthy practice and I feel that the church should mediate and take the lead to find common slots for the two parties involved to make the real decision regarding their life. This will save many marriages from hitting rock bottom. 

**United we stood**

The great Indian family is always united but there are deeply entrenched factors that play a part in a family get-together like this. Wedding becomes a venure for some to snub others for their short comings. There are cases when some are frowned upon by the so called masters of the universe. To illustrate this point there was a family who had totally shunned their son and his family. The issues as usual were related to money. The wedding was an occasion for the family to just get on with their lives. I don't think that the two parties ever met during the gala event. They seemed to have buried their hatchet and went about with a forced smile on their faces as if nothing is wrong with their families.  

It is a Christian family, but the members are from different parts of the state. Some of them belonged to a particular sub sect of the Christianity and there are others who are from the same sect but from different corners of the state. These sub groups always try to assert themselves in a wedding. Each one trying to bring in their ritualistic practices. I could sense there was some friction in terms of the rituals and it is not the first time that I was a witness to  this. Anyway,the issues were settled quite amicably and the event was not marred by these petty squabbles. 

**The Lumeiere's & the Jomon T John's**

The real heroes of a wedding are the bridegroom and the bride. They are just the official version of the story, but the ones who really control the scene are the motley crowd of photographers. Right from day one, the wedding planning is based on their arrival and departure. They kind of do an act of appropriation of the groom and whisks him away to some exotic location and starts clicking away in glory. The techniques, angles and the shots are time tested and the army of shutter bugs move about with such an alacrity that there is always a group of people standing around the camera crew with their mouth wide open. It was interesting to see how the job of a photographer is made easier by technology. 

**Meeting Point** 

The wedding event is a great time for people to meet, especially the ones who are Non-Resident Indians. Many relatives came up to me and quizzed me about their whereabouts. I was careful not to divulge the real feelings that I had within me didn't give a straightaanswer. I took a diplomatic stand and sought the help of my partner who is endowed with a razor sharp memory. It is a strange feeling to meet people for the first time after so many years. The people flowed in incessantly and there was never ending queue of cars and buses which were used to ferry people from one location to another. Weddings are the only occasion for some house wives and retired individuals to be active. They delve themselves into the duties and responsibilities associated with a wedding and make themselves the custodians of the eve. t.The gathered population is also keen on inspecting the home and the immediate environment of the bride and the bridegroom and starts the work of free publicity laced with the usual ingredients of gossip. 

The Indian wedding is indeed a colorful affair and the nature of the wedding and the rituals will vary from rich to poor, religion to religion,and from South to North.The spirit remains the same. 

Sughandhi Enna Andal Devnayiki - T D Ramakrishnan - A review

Personal Touches: 

I heard about this work for the first time from the author T D Ramakrishnan himself when he attended the Bahrain Keralayee Samajam book festival in the year 2014.. He spoke at length about the island country of Sri Lanka and how as Malayalees we had a dispassionate look at the whole thing. The same feelings are reiterated in the prologue to the book when he says that it is the sea area between India and Sri Lanka that prevented Indians from knowing the horrendous happenings in Lanka. TDR is heavily influenced by the Tamil culture and he has to his credit some translations from Tamil literature. He has lived and worked in Chennai for sometime and has a peculiar fascination for the Tamil culture. 

A celebration of Womanhood

The novel is a celebration of womanhood. The immediate target of any war or civil disturbances are the women. The novel also celebrates the fact that woman can be good at bed and good at the throne. The main feminine characters are portaryed as combinations of beauty and brain. The titular character, Devanayiki, the high profile Manju act as lietrary testimonies to this fact. The novel is an act of profiling of three distinct individuals. 1) Andal Devanyiki 2) Sughandi / Meenakshi Rajaratinam and 3) Rajini Thiranagama. What the novel establishes is the fact that no system is perfect and either you have to live along with that reality or do something to change the system.The book talks about people who were ready to change the system and the price they had to pay for it. The work strongly supports the rebirth myth and even alludes to the cliched concept of the phoenix bird.

Research and the concept of Historical Novel:

The amount of research that has gone into the making of this book is simply astounding. The brahminical roots of TDR could have helped him to read some of the texts in their original form. The research objectives for him was three- folded. The first one was to research about the classical Tamil literature. Secondly, dig into the past life of the Chola, Chera Kingdoms. Thirdly, look at the immediate history of Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka itself has two histories - one belonging to the Tamil migrants and the other one belonging to the Sinhalese people. While reading the book, I had to take many  digressions to do some web research about the history of some places and do some check on some personalities. Like his earlier book Francis Itty Cora, Sughandi enna Andal Devanayiki borrows heavily from history and it serves the purpose of a literary canvass.  The novely is built around the character of Andal Devanayiki. He examines the biographical details of this character and finds parallels between her life and the struggle for liberation in Sri Lanka. The novel can very well be treated as a historical novel like the novels of Elizabeth Kostova. The novel portrays the anguish of an age and kind of connects with the Arab uprising and fight against the Fascist forces around the world. The novel also chronicles the rise and fall of an idealogy. The Liberation of Tamil Tigers Elam had some flaws in the system and the same applies to the Sinhalese idealogy of 'Srilanka for Sinhalese'. 

Political Stand

The novel navigates cleverly through the cultural, social and political tapestry of the island country. It talks about the rivalries that existed among the Kings of the ancient times and the same is juxtaposed with the civil war that divided a nation. There are attempts made to make the local universal by referring to the Arab spring and the fight against fascist forces all around the world. The author is quite careful not to take a stand when it comes to the political scenario. Instead of overtly getting involved in the scenario,he blames both the parties. He concludes with the realistic picture that the war is far from over and the concept of integration promulgated by the Sinhalese government has not reached a satisfactory level. The author sees the presence of Budhha Bala Sena is a threat to this smooth transistion.  He warns of the millions of the LTTE sympathizers in countries like Canada, France and United Kingdom who are still nursing the old civil war wounds but are working like the Resistance army during the time of Nazi occupation of France.

As an Indian, TDS has taken a neutral stand by making just one mention about the atrocities committed by the IPKF. Maybe he was worried about the anti-national branding that is quite common these days with the student's agitation at JNU seen as a terrorist act. He has portrayed the role of  US/CIA as agencies that worked in close association with the rebels cause of toppling the Sinhalese government. There is no mention about the Norway’s role as an mediator. A closer examination of the literary landscape of the novel may lead us to the assumption that the author is supporting the cause of the Tamils. His sympathies are with the Tamils and he ends the novel with the two powerful descriptions. One about the new generation Tamil sympathizers being tortured in the prison camp. The second is the image about the huge shape of Andal Devanayiki taking  giant strides. 

The Feminine Power of the Narrative:

The words have their limit to bring in or stir up the right emotions. The author has tried to pull the right heart strings by making the narrative overtly sexual and graphic. This is one book which needs some kind of Parental Guidance. There are vivid description about the intimate scenes between the King and his consorts. The sexual acts reaches a level of experimentation employing Tantric sex and the use of other guides on the art. The culmination of these experiements makes the titular character achieve a level of consciousness that is akin to the state reached in the movie Lucy played by Scarlett Johansson and the evil Nazi officer in the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull. Maybe it is the authors literary ambition to elevate his character to a level of omnipotence and omnipresence which is quite striking in the concluding part of the novel.

There is clearly a sense of the novel being written from a feminine perspective. The feminine personality is seen as a great buffer to all the pain and the grief in this world. The acronym of the title of the novel will read as SAD which stands for Sughandi Enna Andal Devanayiki. The lines that gets repeated throughout the novel is: 

I am sad,sad, sad

I am mad,mad, mad

Fuck me

Fuck me

Fuck me

The novel is a strong attempt to chronicle the lives of the women who were involved in the cause of the Tamil freedom. The novel is a dedication to all the lives lost and to one individual - Rajini Thiranagama. It is this personality that  prompted TDR to embark on this grand literary journey to bring to the forefront the physical and mental pain that a group of people, who are Indians, not Tamils, had to suffer at the hands of a government. The International Red Cross has used these words to describe the situation ‘unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe’ This is no critique of the system known as LTTE but a careful chronicling of some lives involved.

After reading the novel, I feel the urge to visit this country and see some of the places mentioned in the narrative like Sigiriya, Jaffana, and Mullaitivu. I read about the plans by the ICRTC to conduct Ramayana Yatra to cover some of the religious significant spots in Srilanka which is again a calculated move to project the glossiness of the island nation. There should be educational trips and discussions about the true history of this land where battles were fought over ethnicity and fascistic ideologies. 

Summary of Writing without Fear - Using Life writing to free the writer within you - Christopher Mitchell

Recently I did course in Skillshare. As I attended the course which spanned for three days, I made some notes and jottings. This blog summarizes the notes that I created.  

The course at the outset tries to answer one pertinet question - Why do we need life writing?

1) Personal experience provide great material.

2) No need for research or outside consultation

3) You are the expert and it is all about writing what you know and it is better to avoid any upsetting memories.

Writing memoir is all about self awareness, introspection, joyful/sad/life moments. The intention of this course is to create memories which can be passed on to the future generations. The five stages of the writing process 1) pre-writing, 2) drafting, 3) revision, 4) editing and 5) Publishing

Pre-writing is all about digging around in the dirt. This is time to discover the big idea which will in turn will become the focus of the memoir. In this stage we write without judgement and we learn to leash the monster. You should exercise the writing muscles everyday, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, or a journal entry. Creating a daily regimen that allows us to make great strides in our craft. We should learn to love the process. The three pre-writing tools: are brain storming , clustering refers to the act of mapping and free writing is always raw, uninhabited passages, no punctuation and grammar. It is focused on putting ideas to the paper. Afterwards one can highlight the words as paragraphs that surprised you. Brain storming can be described as ideas that came in short bursts. The act of grouping and organizing is known as clustering. The first draft will always be sloppy and need not be perfect. ‘Free writing helps to loosen your memory’- meaningful ideas that come up in free-writing will be used later for draft. When you write the first draft you are not striving for perfection 

The five senses to make your memoir more tangible are, hearing, touch, smell, taste and sight.  The events should be arranged in the chronological order like Harper Lee's - To Kill a Mocking Bird which contains a series of flashbacks, a pinch of local color and flavour of regionalism. Harper Lee places her charcters in the familair literary terrain of the American Deep South. 

Looking at the brain stormed ideas and search for that word or idea that will give you the spark to start writing. Opening line/the hook which will intrigue the readers.The feeling that the opening idea or line is something which I can live with. The second paragraph can be quite realistic in the sense that you can talk about the setting and introduce some characters. Experiences portrayed should be unique and there will never be any place for over-inflated language. The balance between objectivity and subjectivity is also of prime importance.

Revision is the stage when you make your writing strong. The writing after the pre-writing is like a rough piece of cut wood. Revision allows the writer to ‘re-see’ the draft for clarity, cohesion and ‘consistency'. There are four ways to do revision - expanding underlining -  highlighting passages or sentences and details to make passages more vivid, cutting - removing some words, reorganizing - make passages more coherent, and replacing - language choices - replace cliche’s with unique expressions - overused words. Revision is also the stage where you emotionally connect with your reader.

Editing - The act of cleaning grammar and spelling. It is also the stage where you start cleaning up the draft for typographical errors and grammatical errors. It is good to read the memoir aloud. find your voice - writing intricacies, hear awkward phrases, slow the reading speed enough to catch mistakes as you read - focus on each word and phrase.

Certain things that can be worked upon in the editing stage are: needless repetition, grammar mistakes, typographical errors, and spelling problems. b

Certain books that can help in your journey through the beautiful world of words are The Little Brown Handbook and The Elements of Style. The web resources that can referred to are ‘OWL - Purdue Online Writing Lab’ - owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/ and www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers

Publishing - It is the final act of your writing procedure. It is all about sharing the final work,maybe in a blog,or a website or even a book. The following acts of publishing can be done through the following acts like share your work with a loved one, publish in a website or a personal blog and create a project gallery of your writings. 

The course illustrates some instructions on writing and life. The main reason for the writer’s frustration are writer’s block, the fear of the blank page, and the urge to be perfect on the first day. Another feeling that haunts the writer is the  'inablility to say what I want to say and how I want to say it'. The writer is also afraid and he is plagued by the thought 'I am nervous about what I might say'

One example of perfectionism quoted in the book is about the 47 endings written by Ernest Hemingway for his novel - Farewell To Arms - just to get the correct order of words. The focus should be to write the beginning, the middle and the end. You should not aim for perfection when you write the first draft but rather you should aim to make it elegant. Memoir writing demands that the writing is truthful, authentic to oneself and the memories. It is important that the fear is conquered and it is put on a tight leash. We should always free oneself so that we can write without fear.

Writing process is always recursive and it helps when you always visit the stages that you have completed.

The course explains the classic guide and the steps in writing non-fiction, develop a routine, sit in a comfortable place with a hot beverage and hour or so.