CHERTHALA DIARIES

Two weddings, a death and arson. (Not in that order)

Day one

For a sleepy little place, Cherthala, where my grandmother lives and where I live presently has ben the scene of much drama the last few days. The first big piece of news was that the Allappuzha medical college hospital building, an ancient complex which was once a king’s palace, was burned down. Thankfully the hospital, except for the gynaecology ward, had been shifted the day before to a new building. Grandma, along with her pet newspaper theorises that the fire was deliberately set by opponents of the shifting initiative. I have to say that the arsonists are not helping their cause at all. It’s highly unlikely that the hospital authorities will move the hospital back to a burned out shell of an old building and besides, I’m sure that all the pregnant ladies of the district have already carried the gyno department to the new building with urgency after the new development.

As I’m telling you all this, there is heavy domestic drama happening on TV with my grandma as audience. There’s wedding and twenty different people trying simultaneously to thwart it. there’s also a mad guy thrown in the midst of this madness for extra spice. Back in the real world, there’s been some hilarious incidents relating to a wedding in the family. Now, the situation according to elders is that it is a friggin pain finding girls for the unmarried spinster men in our family. Reasons are many: one, the men are high school dropouts while all the girls in kerala seem to be post graduates with a B Ed. Two, the men are financially sturdy while the girls who’d agree in their desperation to marry these block heads are not so very well off or otherwise attractive. Any girl who would match the criteria set by the wannabe groom’s family scoffs at the suggestion of marrying below a B Tech/ MBA. Thus there is an impossible demand supply problem leading to desperate attempts by the men’s family to find girls.

Two of my uncles are in the race to get married for a while now. Recently it was announced (woohoo) that one of them, a 37 year old, had finally found a suitable bride. She’s from a not so well off family but is “not too bad looking and has long, thick hair”, according to the said uncle. But now we've been told that the wedding’s called off. The reason is a long, sad, and possibly hilarious story which I will summarise. Now, the wedding had been fixed un officially; the bride was the younger of two girls, the eldest still unmarried. Hearing this cheerful news, one of the groom’s friends, who lives near to the prospective bride house went to visit her himself. The girl’s parents invited him in and introduced him to the bride to be. The story goes that the friend almost fell off his chair when he saw the girl; an obese Amazon of a woman with countable strands of hair on her head. The friend went back, smacked my uncle on his head and asked him what the hell he was thinking tying such an unattractive whale to his neck. A good deal of confusion ensued when the anatomical descriptions of the bride, made by the two friends failed to match. Embarrassed, the groom went again to the girl’s house to ascertain facts. After a lot of tricky maneuvers, the truth was brought out; the girl’s family was trying to get the poor man to mary the older girl un expectedly on the wedding day (the guy can’t pull back because of the money and effort which had already been spent on the wedding ceremony) after enticing him with the younger damsel! And they almost pulled it off too. My uncle is not the only desperate one around. After this embarrassment the search for a bride was widened and they’ve finally found someone. She’s post graduate with a B Ed but has a squint eye which balances things between her and my uncle. Block head for squint eye and we have a wedding on our hands!

There’s another high school dropout uncle who’s also on the prowl for a wife. To ease things, he’s filthy rich and owns an estate. The problem: the estate’s in a remote place and no girl wants to move to this Godforsaken (in my opinion, heavenly) place. But the rumour’s that they’ve found someone. A math post graduate who’s probably very tired of learning math. Matrimonial bliss.

contd

Day two

The morning held little cheer. It all began last evening when news arrived the husband of grandma’s part time domestic help, Bhanu, had died. He was an old man; a drunkard and a pain from what I’d heard earlier (of course now he’s a saint and his death a terrible loss to entire human civilization).Grandma and uncle went to express their grief and came back shaking their heads and saying that it was for the best that the old man passed without burdening anyone an painlessly for himself. We left it at that. But I woke up this morning and went out through the kitchen door to find a bunch of neighbourhood men gathered at one corner of the large backyard, staring up at a tree.they looked comical; like a group of tribal elders, some squatting and others standing, contemplating something. “Your uncle’s promised them that tree for the funeral pyre”, granny said sadly by way of explanation.

Tragedy had struck.

The young cashew tree had been chosen to accompany the dead man to the next world. The loafers in the surrounding area had assembled to oversee the felling of the unfortunate tree. My heart sank. There’s really no need to cut the tree; there’s other equipment available to burn the dead even here and besides, a smaller tree or a branch from a big tree will suffice for any man. Its not an elephant we’re burning here. Grandma was as disappointed as I was but there was no way out.

The tree felling committee was in high spirits; glad to get their hands on my grandma’s well wooded plot (she’s not exactly popular, what with her fiery temper). “Most of the wood won’t even reach the pyre” grannie remarked and narrated her previous experiences with funeral wood cutters. So this isn’t an isolated incident. All the dead and dying people in the neighbourhood werepotential threats to our dear trees and no one could stop them from expecting us to provide tree after tree to burn. I gaze sadly as the branches come down one by one with a thud. There’s enough wood already to burn the man but they’re determined to cut the whole tree. And all for what? Call me insensitive but let’s assess the facts. The tree is young, and it bears my grandma lots of fair sized cashews in addition to just being a tree and helping the earth around it in numerous ways. The man was a drunkard who did no great service to anyone and like all human beings, did a lot of damage to the earth. So it follows that the tree, young as it is, is infinitely more beneficial to the world than the guy who’s dead. Also, the guy’s dead after a long life and he tree’s just reached its prime. The unfairness of the situation is obvious.

The tree’s crown is coming down now. The blade is set on its trunk. Noone does anything to stop this murder. Only the ants seem to care; big red ants called ‘musharu’. The men jump up and down in their mundu. Some are hopping around the tree, fighting the ants who are valiantly defending their home. I pray for the ants to grow into giants with poisoned claws. Nothing happens. The men dance around wincing, but press on with the work anyway

(it would have been funy had it not been been in this tragic context. If only they’d show this resolve for something good)

.

The tree’s down and the trunk is carried off, leaving a stump in its place. The ants walk around disoriented; their leafy nests smashed.

contd

Day three

There’s considerable racket going on here today. The squirrels had appeared on the cashew trees this morning and the uppan birds were leisurely going about picking insects near the pond. But soon voices emerged from far away and chased away these delightful idlers and woke me out of my own morning laziness. The annual festival at the local temple was to begin today; grandma enlightened me. As part of their efforts to awaken dormant devotees of the neighbourhood, the temple 'authorities' had decided to fill our ears all day with the Gita and an assortment of devotional songs; a sort of warm up before the full scale blare of the festivities. I soon blocked out this minor irritation; hopping about the yard talking to red ants and irritating spiders building their nests on the grape fruit tree with my discourteous staring. But after about three hours of force-fed bhakthi, grannie had had enough. “what is this fool singing about?”, she asked aloud (quite unbecoming of a grandmother. You’d expect old, ‘wisened’ hindu women to be favourably inclined to all forms of religion!) .“For all we know, he could be reciting a grocery list with cries to the lord in between. What a fool!” she says as she goes out with a stern looking broom. Then up comes her head through the window.

“I will stuff these coconuts down his throat…that’s what I should do…!”