Days of my life!!

Almost every Bollywood movie, that contains a marriage scene, has explicitly showcased a ritual that is very common and unique to this part of the world - the ritual of applying Haldi to the bride and the groom. Now, if you go and tell any Indian bride that Haldi or Turmeric is described in Wikipedia as " Rhizomatous herbaceous perennial plant of the ginger family ", she will probably gallop away and never get married, but if you tell her that 'it gives you an extra glow and keeps away harmful bacteria from your skin', she will probably apply an extra layer and that is exactly why it has been included as an important ritual in every Hindu marriage; GSBs not be left out. However, in our marriages in order to save some time, the wise bhatjis have devised an innovative way to perform the same. Here, the bride and the groom are made to separately sit on the ground. Two leaves, from a mango tree, are chosen for this task. One end is dipped into some turmeric water and th...

An Indian wedding consists of various rituals that need to be completed as part of the overall wedding ceremony and a typical G.S.B (Gaud Saraswat Brahmin) wedding was not far to be left behind. As a value addition to my wedding, I had decided to try and learn the real story or theory behind each and every ritual and I must say that to a certain degree I exceeded. I can proudly say now, that I am far more educated (with respect to a GSB wedding), than I was say a month back. So, writing about each and every one of those rituals is quite a tedious task and hence, I have decided to write it in short installments. For starters, I wish to talk about a certain ritual that was performed by both Prachi and me, separately and fondly goes by the name ' Urda Murthh '. The Ritual - As part of the ' Urda Murthh ' ritual, the groom has to sit on the stage in front of a small grinding wheel. This wheel is made of stone and has a strong base at bottom and a movable stone on top which...

The preparations leading up to my marriage began on Monday with what I would normally call a small pooja . However, this time around I was made to realize that though I don't look like one, I am actually a brahmin !! Normally a pooja or aarti in our household would mean that we place the photograph of a God in front and decorate it with banana leafs and surround the area with coconuts, flowers and rice. The pujari or ' bhat ' as we call him would then murmur some sholkas in sanskrit and ask us to follow few set pieces of instructions and after a few hours declare that the function is complete!! This time around it was completely different. The bhatji who sat next to me, was quite vocal and a certain extent modern. Thus, at every juncture he would actually tell me what we were doing and what significance it had to my marriage. Now, I may not be an expert at this, but from what I understand this is what the theory says: "As per the Vedic scriptures, a brahmin enter...

A dear friend of mine is due to get married soon. So, in the list of invites he includes the names of his colleagues from the company he worked in previously. Now this a start-up firm and doesn't have more than 25 people on it's payroll. So, he decides to send out an invite to each and every employee. In that process, he scans the wedding invite and sends out an email to everyone from the C.E.O to every Engineer in the firm, but he sends the actual wedding invitation by courier to the office boy!! Any idea why he did this?? Simple - The office boy did not have an email id!! Logic or stupidity......I'll let you decide that.