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...Three men in a boat
I was witness to many of quite another sort of wars in peacetime. They are called, euphemistically, Wedding Ceremonies of an earlier generation in our South India.
The wedding is customarily celebrated at the bride's place and the groom's party is invited and housed and fed as per their wishes. But the whole idea was that the groom's party would try to rag the bride's party and outwit them.
When my didi's marriage negotiations were concluded with the IAS groom in 1970, we asked how many of them would be arriving for the wedding in Gudur from Madras. And we were told that theirs was a small family and they were enlightened and did not believe in formalities and would arrive with just about ten members. And so we made arrangements for the wedding feast at noon accordingly.
And, as the wedding ceremonies were in full swing, there suddenly arrived a busload of 'guests' who were all employees of the Government Printing Press at Madras of which the groom was the General Manager. That was supposed to be a challenge. But they didn't know that our own party on the bride's side was more than a hundred, and so the 40 odd guests in the bus were just about a tiny 'error' in the estimate. Our Master Cook had just to dilute the sambar a wee bit and add enough chillies and spices so that it would be more than enough for the bland tongues of Madrasis...they were all spouting fire, and when asked for a second helping, they said, "No, no, no...we are full to the brim."
Yet another sort of warfare is going on nowadays in Hyderabad during the Ganesh Festival. Each pandal in the city is competing with others as to who would make the largest laddu as prasadam to their Ganeshjee. Over the past few years the size of the laddu has been increasing by leaps and bounds and has reached tonnes and tens of tonnes in weight. After the laddu is offered to the hungry god, it would be auctioned in public. And the latest bids were in tens of lakhs of rupees. The highest bidder is supposed to get, apart from publicity, boons from the god that would more than compensate the amount of his bid. The bid money would go to the Pandal for its upkeep and building a taller and taller Ganeshjee next year...the tallest is now about 60 feet.
And on the last day, devotees would arrive in thousands to partake bits and pieces of the giant laddu as 'prosad' which would yield them good dividends as wish-fulfillments.
This year the Khairatabad-4 tonne-Laddu had the following stats (ToI):
"We (16 persons) prepared the laddu. We used ingredients including 1,600 kgs of sugar, 1,000 kgs gram dal, 900 kgs ghee, 200 kgs cashew, 100 kgs badam (dry fruit), 50 kgs elaichi and 10 kgs green camphor in the preparation of the laddu. The cost of the laddu would be around Rs 15 lakhs."
All fine...but the rain god, Varuna, grew jealous of Ganeshjee and suddenly it poured heavily. The laddu could not be covered and protected from the onslaught of Lord Varuna. So, it rotted.
The huge laddu had to be dumped in Hussainsagar...the Water God of Hyderabad.
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"...I
do think that, of all the silly, irritating tomfoolishness by which we are plagued, this "weather-forecast" fraud is about the most
aggravating. It "forecasts" precisely what happened yesterday or the day before,
and precisely the opposite of what is going to happen to-day.
I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one late autumn by our paying attention to the weather report of the local newspaper. "Heavy showers, with thunderstorms, may be expected to-day," it would say on Monday, and so we would give up our picnic, and stop indoors all day, waiting for the rain. - And people would pass the house, going off in wagonettes and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sun shining out, and not a cloud to be seen.
"Ah!" we said, as we stood looking out at them through the window, "won't they come home soaked!"
And we chuckled to think how wet they were going to get, and came back and stirred the fire, and got our books, and arranged our specimens of seaweed and cockle shells. By twelve o'clock, with the sun pouring into the room, the heat became quite oppressive, and we wondered when those heavy showers and occasional thunderstorms were going to begin.
"Ah! they'll come in the afternoon, you'll find," we said to each other. "Oh, WON'T those people get wet. What a lark!"
At one o'clock, the landlady would come in to ask if we weren't going out, as it seemed such a lovely day.
"No, no," we replied, with a knowing chuckle, "not we. WE don't mean to get wet - no, no."
And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was no sign of rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea that it would come down all at once, just as the people had started for home, and were out of the reach of any shelter, and that they would thus get more drenched than ever. But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and a lovely night after it.
The next morning we would read that it was going to be a "warm, fine to set-fair day; much heat;" and we would dress ourselves in flimsy things, and go out, and, half-an-hour after we had started, it would commence to rain hard, and a bitterly cold wind would spring up, and both would keep on steadily for the whole day, and we would come home with colds and rheumatism all over us, and go to bed.
The weather is a thing that is beyond me altogether. I never can understand it. The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as the newspaper forecast..."
I remember a holiday of mine being completely ruined one late autumn by our paying attention to the weather report of the local newspaper. "Heavy showers, with thunderstorms, may be expected to-day," it would say on Monday, and so we would give up our picnic, and stop indoors all day, waiting for the rain. - And people would pass the house, going off in wagonettes and coaches as jolly and merry as could be, the sun shining out, and not a cloud to be seen.
"Ah!" we said, as we stood looking out at them through the window, "won't they come home soaked!"
And we chuckled to think how wet they were going to get, and came back and stirred the fire, and got our books, and arranged our specimens of seaweed and cockle shells. By twelve o'clock, with the sun pouring into the room, the heat became quite oppressive, and we wondered when those heavy showers and occasional thunderstorms were going to begin.
"Ah! they'll come in the afternoon, you'll find," we said to each other. "Oh, WON'T those people get wet. What a lark!"
At one o'clock, the landlady would come in to ask if we weren't going out, as it seemed such a lovely day.
"No, no," we replied, with a knowing chuckle, "not we. WE don't mean to get wet - no, no."
And when the afternoon was nearly gone, and still there was no sign of rain, we tried to cheer ourselves up with the idea that it would come down all at once, just as the people had started for home, and were out of the reach of any shelter, and that they would thus get more drenched than ever. But not a drop ever fell, and it finished a grand day, and a lovely night after it.
The next morning we would read that it was going to be a "warm, fine to set-fair day; much heat;" and we would dress ourselves in flimsy things, and go out, and, half-an-hour after we had started, it would commence to rain hard, and a bitterly cold wind would spring up, and both would keep on steadily for the whole day, and we would come home with colds and rheumatism all over us, and go to bed.
The weather is a thing that is beyond me altogether. I never can understand it. The barometer is useless: it is as misleading as the newspaper forecast..."
...Three men in a boat
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Father was born at the onset of the First World War and I at the height of the second. So, stories of these two wars fascinated us.
When I was a kid and Father was in the mood he would tell me with wonder in his eyes how the tiny Japan defeated the vast Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.
And how the so-called impregnable Maginot Line was a mute spectator in the Second World War. This, he said, was an instance of how Generals fight the previous war, if they had won it. He used to say that the First World War was one of trench warfare with millions of casualties, and the French withstood the frontal attack of Germany on its borders for all of 4 years and won at last.
So, after the First World War, they built a series of concrete bunkers all along their border, with air-conditioning and underground railways and huge stocks of dried food to last a decade of warfare in any future war with Germany.
And he said, with utter astonishment in his eyes, how Hitler never attacked France frontally in the Second World War, but outflanked the Maginot Line, keeping it intact, and rushed his Panzer Division with thousands of tanks and aircraft into Belgium and then dug deep into France from the north. And it was all over in two weeks and France suffered a humiliating occupation for all of 4 years.
And so on and so forth...war fascinates those who are untouched by its dead.
During my own youth, the biggest upset I was a close witness to in Bengal, via newspapers and radio, was the Indo-Pak War in 1971. I was then living in the Faculty Hostel of IIT KGP and we were all agog with it, sitting on the lawn benches and gossiping. East Pakistan was then held by military which dug its heels for all of 10 months and fortified every flank for the forthcoming war with India. There were about a lakh of Pakistani troops and their boast was that each Pakistani soldier was equal to ten Hindu soldiers...a flashback to the Ghauri and Ghazni days.
So we expected that the war would last a year and more and would end up in another stalemate. And then there was this biggest upset seen in my life when it was all over in less than a fortnight and all of 93,000 super-valiant Pakistani troops surrendered to India ignominiously. And a new nation was born in front of our very eyes. That war was called the Liberation of Bangladesh. The Pakistanis never forgot their humiliation and have been trying to liberate Kashmir since then by hook or crook with limited success so far.
And then there was this humiliating retreat of the mighty Superpower called the US from a tiny country called Vietnam. We were stunned to read that the US troops that held South Vietnam for a couple of decades had at last retreated to the US Embassy Building with their Stars & Stripes rolled up into a bundle and had to be airlifted from the top of it in helicopters in an operation called, euphemistically, Operation Frequent Wind.
Wind? There are 5 winds in Vedanta...praana, apaana, udaana, vyaana, samaana...one goes up, another goes down, yet another sideways...
It is one thing to read of wars in text books and quite another to read them 'live'.
The wedding is customarily celebrated at the bride's place and the groom's party is invited and housed and fed as per their wishes. But the whole idea was that the groom's party would try to rag the bride's party and outwit them.
When my didi's marriage negotiations were concluded with the IAS groom in 1970, we asked how many of them would be arriving for the wedding in Gudur from Madras. And we were told that theirs was a small family and they were enlightened and did not believe in formalities and would arrive with just about ten members. And so we made arrangements for the wedding feast at noon accordingly.
And, as the wedding ceremonies were in full swing, there suddenly arrived a busload of 'guests' who were all employees of the Government Printing Press at Madras of which the groom was the General Manager. That was supposed to be a challenge. But they didn't know that our own party on the bride's side was more than a hundred, and so the 40 odd guests in the bus were just about a tiny 'error' in the estimate. Our Master Cook had just to dilute the sambar a wee bit and add enough chillies and spices so that it would be more than enough for the bland tongues of Madrasis...they were all spouting fire, and when asked for a second helping, they said, "No, no, no...we are full to the brim."
Yet another sort of warfare is going on nowadays in Hyderabad during the Ganesh Festival. Each pandal in the city is competing with others as to who would make the largest laddu as prasadam to their Ganeshjee. Over the past few years the size of the laddu has been increasing by leaps and bounds and has reached tonnes and tens of tonnes in weight. After the laddu is offered to the hungry god, it would be auctioned in public. And the latest bids were in tens of lakhs of rupees. The highest bidder is supposed to get, apart from publicity, boons from the god that would more than compensate the amount of his bid. The bid money would go to the Pandal for its upkeep and building a taller and taller Ganeshjee next year...the tallest is now about 60 feet.
And on the last day, devotees would arrive in thousands to partake bits and pieces of the giant laddu as 'prosad' which would yield them good dividends as wish-fulfillments.
This year the Khairatabad-4 tonne-Laddu had the following stats (ToI):
"We (16 persons) prepared the laddu. We used ingredients including 1,600 kgs of sugar, 1,000 kgs gram dal, 900 kgs ghee, 200 kgs cashew, 100 kgs badam (dry fruit), 50 kgs elaichi and 10 kgs green camphor in the preparation of the laddu. The cost of the laddu would be around Rs 15 lakhs."
All fine...but the rain god, Varuna, grew jealous of Ganeshjee and suddenly it poured heavily. The laddu could not be covered and protected from the onslaught of Lord Varuna. So, it rotted.
The huge laddu had to be dumped in Hussainsagar...the Water God of Hyderabad.
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