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Wedding cards fascinate me...morbidly.
To invert a favorite simile of PGW, when I get my hands on a wedding card, I feel like a man-eater who has been gifted her coolie.
I open the envelope at once with fretful fingers and proofread the card out of sheer habit.
And it is rarely that I don't get my bit of joy.
In AP there is this custom of printing the English and Telugu versions on the same card...left and right.
You may ask me why? The short answer is that it is as cheap as two living under the same roof as one. The reason for the English version to exist at all is given by the Raam Bhakts of Nagpur who, I am told, dub the 4...or five ;)... Southern states as 'English India'...which is out of bounds for them...they lost the only state they ever won, for spurious reasons.
As I was saying, I jump at the chance to discover errors of all sorts in the AP wedding cards that are distributed all over the world nowadays...most middle class Hyderbadis have their progeny in the US...those that don't, have theirs in the UK.
This syndrome is not confined to the megalopolis (derived from 'megalomania') of Hyderabad. Sometime ago I visited Gudur, a small town in AP, where my mom stays. For the last half century I have been going to the Bhavani Silk Stores, the Raymonds of Gudur, to chat with its owner who is of my generation. We exchange pleasantries, mostly news of our kith and kin.
The last time I met him, the greying gent asked me how many kids I have and where are they settled. I replied that I have only one son, and my wife and I live with him in Hyderabad. And he was as pleased as Punch to hear this news. And told me:
"All my 3 kids are in America. Also the kids of my in-laws. And my nephews and nieces and their kids"
I congratulated him appropriately.
That is one reason why the English and Telugu versions of our wedding cards live together like an unwed couple.
The other day there were visitors to our Hyderabad home. Generally all our visitors are friends of my son or D-i-L or Ishani. And I say 'hi' and withdraw to my bedroom. But I was told that the current visitors were arriving to invite us to a wedding. And so I stayed put in a sofa chair in our drawing room to have a greedy look at the wedding card that would be dealt.
It turned out that the visitors were the bridegroom himself and his mom. Friends of friends of my D-i-L.
After ascertaining that my son and D-i-L are a working couple and guessing their salaries from the makes of the cars they drive, they felt happy.
Suddenly the oldish mom of the groom asked me the only question I was put:
"And you stay home?"
Meaning:
"You are unemployed!!!"
That is the sort of moment when I sorely miss my Bengal. No visitor in Calcutta would ever be so impertinent to ask that question to a senior citizen entering his 70s.
"Oh! Calcutta!"
Anyway, I latched on to the wedding card they gave us as a lizard does to her cockroach.
And found, to my delight, that the first name of the bride's father which was:
"Ananth" ("Everlasting")
was spelled:
"Anath" ("Orphan")
and was immensely delighted...some boorish vengeance there...
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Wedding cards fascinate me...morbidly.
To invert a favorite simile of PGW, when I get my hands on a wedding card, I feel like a man-eater who has been gifted her coolie.
I open the envelope at once with fretful fingers and proofread the card out of sheer habit.
And it is rarely that I don't get my bit of joy.
In AP there is this custom of printing the English and Telugu versions on the same card...left and right.
You may ask me why? The short answer is that it is as cheap as two living under the same roof as one. The reason for the English version to exist at all is given by the Raam Bhakts of Nagpur who, I am told, dub the 4...or five ;)... Southern states as 'English India'...which is out of bounds for them...they lost the only state they ever won, for spurious reasons.
As I was saying, I jump at the chance to discover errors of all sorts in the AP wedding cards that are distributed all over the world nowadays...most middle class Hyderbadis have their progeny in the US...those that don't, have theirs in the UK.
This syndrome is not confined to the megalopolis (derived from 'megalomania') of Hyderabad. Sometime ago I visited Gudur, a small town in AP, where my mom stays. For the last half century I have been going to the Bhavani Silk Stores, the Raymonds of Gudur, to chat with its owner who is of my generation. We exchange pleasantries, mostly news of our kith and kin.
The last time I met him, the greying gent asked me how many kids I have and where are they settled. I replied that I have only one son, and my wife and I live with him in Hyderabad. And he was as pleased as Punch to hear this news. And told me:
"All my 3 kids are in America. Also the kids of my in-laws. And my nephews and nieces and their kids"
I congratulated him appropriately.
That is one reason why the English and Telugu versions of our wedding cards live together like an unwed couple.
The other day there were visitors to our Hyderabad home. Generally all our visitors are friends of my son or D-i-L or Ishani. And I say 'hi' and withdraw to my bedroom. But I was told that the current visitors were arriving to invite us to a wedding. And so I stayed put in a sofa chair in our drawing room to have a greedy look at the wedding card that would be dealt.
It turned out that the visitors were the bridegroom himself and his mom. Friends of friends of my D-i-L.
After ascertaining that my son and D-i-L are a working couple and guessing their salaries from the makes of the cars they drive, they felt happy.
Suddenly the oldish mom of the groom asked me the only question I was put:
"And you stay home?"
Meaning:
"You are unemployed!!!"
That is the sort of moment when I sorely miss my Bengal. No visitor in Calcutta would ever be so impertinent to ask that question to a senior citizen entering his 70s.
"Oh! Calcutta!"
Anyway, I latched on to the wedding card they gave us as a lizard does to her cockroach.
And found, to my delight, that the first name of the bride's father which was:
"Ananth" ("Everlasting")
was spelled:
"Anath" ("Orphan")
and was immensely delighted...some boorish vengeance there...
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