An Outlet: Part 5

12 December, 2018.

I woke up by 8:30AM today and as decided, worked on my digital notes until it was time to get ready. We went to Amanda's house first. She showed me her projects and I can see that she feels much better in this field than the last one. That's really good. We spent some time there afterwhich mom, dad and I left for the haldi ceremony.

Initially I was the only youngster there but then the others arrived as well and we left for lunch together. We had a 'veg thali (a platter with a variety of dishes in small fixed quantities)'. It was good but too much for me to finish. How people eat an entire thali is beyond me.

We walked back home and two of my cousins and I played Ludo. I've started loving this game recently. It's a perfect way to pass time. The young ones/ youngsters were sent to another house for some reason and we played hilarious rounds of dumb charades and atlas. After quite a long time, we were called to the main house where they had the whole 'ukhane' scene going. 'Ukhane' is basically an old Maharashtrian practice of calling your husband's name using rhyming proverbs. It's supposed to be entertaining but I find it very awkward.

Today, for the first time I realised that even un-wed women (my cousins and I in today's case) can take ukhanes even when we don't have anyone's name to take. Apparently each female present there had to go through this ordeal. Of course we had help from the elders because they were the ones who put us in this last minute fix in the first place.

So what I had to say was this- "tupavar tup, tupavar tup, aahoncha nav gheyla time aahe khup". Translation- "ghee on ghee, ghee on ghee, there's a lot of time to take (my husband's) name". CRINGYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

If I have my way, there'll be an infinite amount of time before I get any husband.

We all then went to the terrace where the main haldi program was to take place. Haldi= tumeric. So in this ceremony, everyone in the family applies tumeric paste onto the bride so that she gets a glowing skin on the day of the marriage. We did that, ate some snacks, took lots of photographs and also played Taboo for entertainment (well, the last one only included the youngsters).

We had dinner following which there was an impromptu dance session and the night ended with a family antakshari (song) game. All in all, it was a fun day.

So it was the second day of the 2018 MAMA Awards (in Japan) today and I watched quite a lot of performances after coming back home. 

First of all, let me talk about the venue and the stage. Dude, it was too good! The venue was really huge! Pretty sure it was one of those very very packed stadiums. And the stage designnnnn, bro MAMA organisers did such a great job with the stage(s). I had heard that MAMA stages (the literal stage as well as the performances) are always high quality and now I can see why. The LED panels on the top looked majestic and totally on brand. The various elements added to the artists' performances also were praiseworthy. People criticize MAMA for only trying to entertain people but they sure do a great job at it. Boy, they invest A TON of money into these things.

The MAMA Japan venue and stage was soooooooooo much better than the Korean MAMA venue (the award ceremony in Korea took place 2 days back and was dedicated solely to new entrants in the KPop scene). You can say that they made up quiiiite a bit of the dissapointment brought by the Korean stage with the grandeur of the Japan stage. Maybe they had to make the Korean stage small because most of their budget went to the Japan stage.

I don't know whether the final and the 'main' day of 2018 MAMA (to be held in Hong Kong 2 days from now) will show us a better stage design than this as well but it's understandable if they cannot.

Alright now let's talk about the performances. They started out with a really prominent and exciting segment today. Quite a lot of performers (who would be performing at some point during the show) covered songs that had won big at MAMA in the past. Since it's MAMA's 10th anniversary, I think this was a good way to celebrate that. What's more interesting is the fact that even though 2 of the biggest agencies in S.Korea, SM Entertainment and YG Entertainment did not send any of their artists to MAMAs this year, most of the songs covered belonged to SM or YG artists. I'm not into the whole company vs. MAMA rivalry so I was really happy to see this segment.