Aint no song by Sister Sledge

I have not missed my brother too much in the past one and half odd years. He has been studying law at a college in a city in a state that does not happen to be the state nor the city nor the college that i happen to be in. And i am sure the feeling of 'not missing' is mutual. As we arent too close considering how close brothers tend to be. But i must admit. I really missed my bro last saturday night. I really should mail him more often

.
I was at a wedding reception. The 'lucky' groom was my cousin. A concoction of so-called lack of time mixed with a lot of selfishness and a seasoning of nuclear family pressure has left me a 'funeral and wedding' relative. The kind of vermin who happens to show up in weddings and funerals with a toothy smile plastered on my face. I even managed to skip the last funeral in my family. But believe me I was not too happy about it.

I was not too happy about going for the reception either. Hey dont get me wrong. I really like the cousin in whose honour the reception was. The prob was the only people of my generation happened to be the groom and his sister. But she was all busy being the groom's sister to pay attention to little old me.

What that left me doing was answering questions like 'Hey how did you grow so fast ?' from people who last saw me fifteen years back. But all good things must come to an end and after an initial ten minutes or so, the questions stopped and the different sections of my family took to their respective corners of the hall.

Please do understand that my family are a bunch of wonderful, talented, intelligent and sometimes funny people. But my basic lack of communication skills and a big lack of communication skills in their language of choice and last but not the least the dreaded generation gap ensured that i would not be getting a look at all the talent, intelligence and humour that i had mentioned at the start of this para. Atleast not on that day.

After the initial starting problem i had taken my seat. And i had taken up the 'I am too arrogant to give a damn about what you think of me - but i am a really sweet guy' pose for about ten minutes and then the devil's workshop started spewing out commands which the idle body had no choice but to obey. The first command was to overhear nearby conversations. "Isnt the girl wearing a nice saree". Hell. "The guy has put on weight" Yawn. "How times have changed, the invitation says to avoid gifts". Hmmm this could be interesting.

The invitation for the reception had this nice one-liner at the bottom. "Kindly avoid bringing gifts". But whats so 'how times have changed' about that. I turned around to find out whose conversation i was listening to and i see two angelic old ladies enjoying the company of their own generation. The old lady who had made the earlier comment went on to say -"In my wedding the invitation said 'Please bring your ration card' "

It turns out that in the early years of our independence. The country was suffering from a drastic shortage in rice and the central government had banned parties of more than 15 odd people because they felt there could be a wastage of rice. To circumvent this law, guests to weddings were asked to bring their ration cards along so that if the police dropped in, the guests would show their ration cards and then lie saying that they had all brought rice from their rations and given for the party.

Rice shortage was so bad that people used to boil wheat grains like the way they boiled rice. It was like chewing gum without the spearmint flavour. Rice shortage was so bad, that the communist government in Kerala imported Macaroni. Imagine the poor Malayalis who would most likely have added coconut milk, coconut oil, and grated coconuts with the macaroni and had it with coconut chutney. Yech. I dont need to tell ya that the measure was not really a popular one. And the communist government soon stopped governing

.
Ha whats that smell. The devil's workshop has been distracted by the heavenly smell of Pulao and Chicken Manchurian and Mutton Rogan Josth (or Gosth) and Gobi Manchurian and Paneer Butter Masala. Ha dinner is served. Wah. What lovely food. My brother nust be gnawing on his hostel roti served to help develop the muscles of the lower jaw. He will be really pissed when he finds out about the menu.

I really should mail him more often