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SriRangaSri List Archive: Message 00041 Nov 2007

 
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Dear friends,

Last week, business took me from Kuwait to London.
>From there, quite simply on sudden whim, I decided to
fly to Los Angeles to mix pleasure with business for a
few days. The purpose was to be present at the wedding
of a very young and lovely cousin-sister of mine, Sow
Kavita "Cande" (Americanized equivalent of
"Kandhaadai") (a favorite neice of my late mother
Sangita Kalanidhi (Dr) Mrs Mani Krishnaswami). 

Kavita, born and bred in Los Angeles, is a Harvard
alumni of outstanding academic accomplishments and a
source of real pride to the family. I had not seen her
for many years and when news of her wedding was
announced, I decided forthwith I would attend the
family event to which I was pretty sure all of the
members of what indeed is a very large and extended 
first- and second- generation diaspora of
"Kandhaadai", "Maadabushi" and "Kadaambi" immigrants
-- all living and working in cities spread across the
length and breadth of the USA for several decades now
--- would surely congregate to celebrate the joyful
occasion. 

Another reason was that a rather bemused curiosity
took hold of me as I considered the prospect of
attending a Vaishnavite wedding in the USA. Many years
ago in Madras, India (now known as Chennai), as a
young boy I had watched a a hilariously light-hearted
Tamil stage drama titled "washingtonil tirumaNam"
(i.e. "Wedding in Washington") penned by the famous
Tamil writer of yester-years the late "Saavi" or
S.Viswanathan. The play was about a Tamil orthodox
Brahminical wedding conducted in Washington DC and the
challenges and obstacles, both serious and farcical,
that are encountered by both the bride's and groom's
family members in the course of 3 days when quaint and
traditional rites and practices get to be performed on
wholly foreign soil. That was over 40 years ago... and
forty years later I was amused at the urge I had that
I should want to witness yet again another wedding
conducted in the USA: this time for real on the stage
of life rather than in drama-theatre! Was I about to
witness, I silently wondered, a "los angelessil
tirumaNam" that would turn out perhaps to be every bit
as memorable and eventful as its Washingtonian
precursor.  

Furthermost, while I had visited the US East Coast
sometime in the recent past, I never had had the
opportunity to visit the western extreme of the great
country. I thus readily and whole-heartedly seized the
oppotunity to attend a Vaishnavite wedding in the very
heart of San Fernando Valley, California, USA circa
2007.

                  **********

As my airplane began its descent into LAX I gaped with
awe at the sheer vastness of the Californianian
valley, all brilliantly illumined by the shimmering
city lights that stretched across the dry, desert
landscape and as far as the fading dusk sky would let
my dazzled eyes see. 

Amidst the swathe of neonine fluroscence hanging over
LA, alas, I perceived too what seemed a pall of smog
so great and thick and noxious that it could hardly
have been mere wisps of traffic emission or industrial
pollutants rising from below. The BA pilot announced
it was actually big forest fires that had been raging
like infernos now for days on end all across the hills
ringing the valley of San Diego and Malibu. As I read
later in the Los Angeles Times, the forest fires were
the worst ever ecological disaster to visit Los
Angeles after the devasatating earthquakes that had
struck the city way back in the '80s.

                *************

It took all of 17 hours to get from Kuwait to LA
airport via Heathrow London. It took half an hour to
alight, get on board a tarmac coach and join the
tail-end of a long serpentine queue winding its way,
inch by laborious inch, to one of several US
Immigration counters submerged as it were by what
seemed to me a veritable sea of air-travelling
humanity arriving from all parts of the world
imaginable -- India, China, Philippines, Spain,
Europe... It was the first time indeed that my mind
truly grasped the meaning and significance of the
ubiquitous cliche journalists use to describe the
world we live in today -- "global village". 

It took me all of the next 2-1/2 hours to get to the
head of the queue and then to be told politely by a
smart, uniformed officer, "Sorry, Sir, system down.
Should be up any minute now. Don't mind waiting a
while, d'ya?". 

After 18 hours of near non-stop flying from the other
end of the planet, I could'nt help a feeling of
self-congratulation wash over me when I saw I could
still manage to muster, even in numbing
travel-weariness and repressed vexation, a semblance
of patience and light-heartedness which under the
circumstances was certifiably monumental. "Not at all,
Sir", I said, "It took 17 hours to get here to this
point from home. Two-and-a-half hours from the back of
the line to the front. And here I'm with you finally!
But seems US Immigration is a little late and
reluctant in its welcome, isn't it? Never mind. What
really does an extra 10-15 minutes matter to a lost
traveller like me? I can certainly oblige, no problem,
Sir".       

It was plain to me that LAX too like most
international airports --- not to mention all the
governments, central banks, politicians, legislators,
trade-councils of this great wide whirling world ---
LAX too is truly struggling to cope with the
confounding, sometimes paralyzing demands and
challenges of the new, golden age which we all live,
love, hope and work in -- the Age of Globalization. 
      
                   **********

At my uncle Dr. Sri Kandhaadai Sridhar's typically
sprawling Californian residence (in California, I was
surprised to see every home has more cars than it has
garages; far too many bedrooms than people living in;
and a swimming pool in the backyard no one ever seems
to use!) in one of the poshest quarters of Northridge,
I was welcomed warmly by everyone and especially by
SrIman Venkatraman, the bride's octogenarian maternal
grandfather. 

"ThAtha", as the bride Sow.Kavita calls him always
with affection, is 86 years old; a retired Govt. of
India servant of many years who, as several of those
his age, generation and widowered status from Madras,
now lives alternatingly, for varying periods of the
year, in and out of India and USA.

Sri Venkataraman lives a traditionally Sri Vaishnavite
life-style in the middle of Los Angeles. His dress,
mien, food, conversation and relationships are all
reminiscent of an 'agrahAram-vAsi' somewhere in the
interiors of any non-descript temple-town in southern
India. I was amazed to see he wore his
"urdhva-pUndhram" proudly and un-apolegetically even
at the wedding reception held days later in the Four
Seasons Hotel LA, where he strode about the
banquet-hall, rubbing shoulders easily with the
tuxedo-clad,
suited-booted-coiffured-perfumed-half-inebriated
glitterati of guests who had turned up in large
numbers.... Watching him at home, I thought silently
to myself, Sri Venkatraman is verily an epitome of the
well-worn cliche we love to mouth ever so often: "You
can take an Indian out of India but you can't take
India out of an Indian".
  
The daily regimen of this retired "thAtha" in Los
Angeles begins with morning ablutions, performance of
the "sandhyAvandanam", recitation of Desika "stOtrAs",
performance of the "tiruvArdanam" ritual, offering of
salutations to the symbolic "pAdukA-s" of his
venerable "AchAryan" back home in India, His Holiness
Srimadh Andavan presiding now over the Sri Rangam
Ashram and lastly, reading of a few passages from the
"sundara-kAndam" of the Valmiki Ramayana. 

This daily regimen, his daughter and my aunt, Dr Smt
Bama Cande, informs me, is unbroken and unvarying
whenever "thAtha" "comes and lives with us in Los
Angeles". So regular is he and so involved in the
Ramayana particulary, that sometimes "we have seen
him" (this the son-in-law, my uncle, Dr Cande Sridhar
informs me) he gets rather emotionally charged and
visibly worked up while reading out some of the more
poignant passages of the "sundara-kAndam"....".

                  *************
That night in LA as I lay my bone-weary body down in
bed I listened to the stilled silences of the Valley
outside.... My jet-lagged mind kept refusing to shut
off and slip into sleep. It kept replaying and
rewinding within itself, again and yet again, the
first images and impressions of LA it had gathered in
the very first few hours since landing at LAX; images
that perhaps were now being added to the archival
album of the subconscious ---- the images of those
raging forest-fires on the hills around Malibu, the
crowded, seething humanity at Bradley airport, the
life beats and rhythms of a prosperous Indian diaspora
in the age of Globalization... and of course, the
image of an old widowered sri-vaishnavite, deftly and
vigorously navigating the evening of his life
negotiating two cultures 
--- one that belonged to his home back in India and
the other that belonged to the home of immigrant
children in the USA --- and the image of his enduring
fascination with one of oldest love stories ever told
on earth: the tale of the "sundara-kaandam"....

Speaking of "sundara-kAndam", that night as I slowly
slipped into the blissful embrace of sleep in the
great Valley of San Fernando, my last thought was: Can
there be a better, apter occasion than a wedding in
the family --- even if it is "los-angelessil
tirumanam" --- when it's best to recollect, re-tell
and rejoice over the wonderful tale of the most
romantic couple ("divya-dampati") ever to marry and
live on earth: Rama and Sita? A moment later my mind
blanked out completely. In the morning yet, I promised
myself, I'd surely awaken to tell that fresh and
beautiful story.... 

                  (to be continued)
             ***************************

dAsan,
Sudarshan 


 





Warm Regards,
Sudarshan

" A life is perhaps worth nothing; but nothing certainly is worth as much as 
life". 
(Andre Malraux)


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