Prologue
It started with my wife complaining of a headache and tiredness. It came long and strong. Yes, I am talking about advice.
You see, soon after the wedding, we (my wife and I, duh!!) took it upon ourselves to visit every conceivable temple and submit an application, in duplicate, with every God in a 500-kilometre radius, that our life as a couple should be trouble-free, happy and prosperous. Add to this, some “special” prayers to which my wife had committed herself (I shall refrain from any further reference to these prayers on account of what we, in Britain, fondly refer to as “reasons of health and safety”. i.e., I’m going to be a wuss and chicken out of any further comments on the abovementioned special prayers). As a result of this, we ended up spending 15 nights ensuing the wedding in 15 different places and would end up wondering which city we were in each morning.
Such a lot of travel and holiness does take a toll on one and one gets tired.
Chapter I: Don’t pick on your food
We were in Chidambaram with me trying not to open my mouth, lest it be stuffed with food. My newly wedded wife woke up with the mother-of-all-headaches and general fatigue and made the mistake of saying so to her aunt (S), who, bless her, took it upon herself to make sure her child was well fed and watered for the duration of our visit.
Aunt S began with a scathing attack on youngsters of today and how they pick on food, ending up looking listless and weak. And promptly sat us down to eat. Now, I must digress here and remind readers about the kind of food we had been eating in the recent past. You see, in each of these different towns we had visited, we not only had temples in varying quantities, we also had relatives. By now you will be we versed with the equation: marriage + relatives = feasts. To cut a long story short, in the week preceding this incident, we had collectively consumed 60 idlis, 45 dosas, 4 kilos of rice and an bath tub size pool of sambar and rasam. Each. So, when Aunt S mentioned again that we youngsters pick on food, I promptly chocked on idly number 61.
Chapter II: The trip back to
The route from Chidambaram to
Sometime earlier, I had professed my love of driving to my father-in-law. The morning after I arrived in Chidambaram, I came down from the flat to stare into the business end of a Hyundai I10 car that was to be at my disposal until I caught the train at Kumbakonam.
Many hours of happy driving, avoiding flora and fauna, defensive driving, close brushes with death later, it was time to take a final drive to Kumbakonam, 70km away. By bus, the journey takes a little under 2 hours and by car, it takes around 1.5 hours. I was quite looking forward to the drive.
Aunt S spends the night before our journey mustering up the courage to ask me what I would like to eat during the journey. In the morning, she asks if we want rice, idlis or chapattis on hand. There is no choice between whether we want food or not, just this or that.
Aunt S: “Shall I pack some idlis and curd rice?”
Me: “No, thank you.”
Aunt S: “You are going by car only, you can take some food with you, I’ll pack a little.”
Me: [Blink, blink]
This is something users of cars often encounter – just because they are going by car, carrying mountain loads of luggage is somehow automatically justified! Even if we were only going by car, its still us that has to eat the food, right?
Now, based on the foregoing paragraph, do not, for one moment think that I am in any way thinking about health and weight control while denying food. I merely have my sights set on the food that is sold on the train from the pantry car!
After much convincing and cajoling, we are allowed to get into the car minus food. Aunt S bids emotional farewell to us and looks at me behind the wheel and says, “Drive carefully, do not cross 30kmph.” I do the blink, blink routine again, and reply, “Don’t worry Aunt S, I will drive carefully, but I need to catch that train today and not tomorrow,” and set off….
Epilogue
