A reason to live.

Chapter 19

It was a beautiful day. The morning sounds in Coimbatore was very different from Chennai, one can actually listen to the birds chirping. In our place, the sound of the weaving machines working would sound in our ears the whole day, but it was never considered as a disturbance.

I got up as soon as the alarm rang, the sun's rays felt warm on my skin. In a few minutes everyone got up. In my athai's home there were about 15 of us, we were asked to get ready soon as we had to start our first function.

The whole house was in chaos when everyone got ready, people running about, searching their things. My aunt's towel was misplaced, just when my cousin wanted to go bathe he went to take his clothes and someone had entered the bathroom. One of my cousins had kept his clothes on the bed in the night and was not to be found in the morning. All this misplacing was because we took liberty in our relationships.

For instance my cousin's clothes were kept in the cupboard by my aunt so that it doesn't get messy in the night.

Finally after about two hours we were all ready,  uff!! all the drama that happened.

All of us were ready with light jewelry, I wore a little more jewelry as I was the bride, and I felt it heavy but still I was eager for all the functions.

I draped a blue jute mixed sari, it looked like it had silk mixed because of the gold designs but it was much simpler to handle than a silk sari.

Most of my uncles, aunts and cousins were present, this was a simple function, so we had only our close relatives, about a 40 of them.

My cousins came to me and congratulated me, this was the first time I was meeting them after my engagement

"akka, show us a pic of your would be, by the way what is his name??” Sandra who was four years younger to me asked.

" uh...mm...His name is Rohan, here see" I said as I showed my phone to them to see his pic.

"Akka he looks so nice."

I must admit that he is not very fit but that doesn't matter, nobody's perfect right? plus I'm also not slim and fit. 

"You'll make such a cute pair" Rani said as she held the phone in front of my face to see us both together.

"Sara come out, we are starting the pandakaal function." I heard the voice of my aunt call out to me.

I went out to see all my relatives out there.

"We always invoke the presence of God before an event" Mary athai  started with a prayer, followed by a hymn.

After that they took the pandakaal. It was a nice big bamboo stick which was painted in white and khaki almost reddish brown around the stick alternately from the bottom all the way up. The bottom band which was about 4 to 6 inches wide was in white on top of that was the khaki band of the same width and so on.

On the top end of the stick was a yellow cloth, it is actually a white cloth dipped in turmeric as turmeric is considered very auspicious. The cloth was a small bundle of nine grains, generally those which sprout, symbolizing the start of an important phase of life .

This pandakaal was planted to the ground, in front of the house the house which holds the function  (All these functions also take place in the groom's home)

My pa's brothers' wife came forward and put vermilion on the point where the white and khaki colors intersect, 9 of them put vermilion on it (odd number).

Once that was done the daughters of my family went to the store to get salt. My athai came back from the shop carrying 5 kilos of salt on her hip, it was the salt which should be used for cooking for the functions. After all that was done, we were served breakfast.

We all sat and gossiped for at least 3 to 4 hours...

I had my mehendi function in the evening. It was a small function, with our close family and friends,  there was no particular tradition we followed, as it was a function which was started due to north India influence, and we just conducted this function to have a good time with the family.