Mine Darke and Twisted Life

Weddings and Wildelife pt1 – A tryst with Tamil

Phew! Its been more than a month since I last blogged. Apparently my new year's resolution was NOT keeping you goofballs entertained. As new years go, this one has started off sucky, shot up unexpectedly to unheard levels of euphoria, only to come crashing down to a plateau of despair. And that's just today. Heh, this is why I love my blog; so I can bitch, bitch, whine, whine to the unsuspecting populace, and generally contribute to increased levels of cynicism and depression worldwide.

I'm just back from a 5 day trip to Tamil Nadu and Karnataka with my slightly retarded friend Loki (NOT the Viking trickster god). Actually, it was the wedding of a friend's brother at Chennai, so we had a good excuse to bunk office. We started out late, and it was only during the frantic rush to the airport that I realised I had left my mobile at home. Not a very auspicious start to the trip. We got through security where the guard felt Loki up, and two hours later got off at hot 'n humid Chennai. I speak a smattering of Tamil which was enough to get the driver to take us directly to the 'kalyana mandappam' (wedding hall) where we met our friend Mooks. He is...err… for want of a better word, unique, in that he manages to fall in love with every girl who talks to him (Loki is not much better). Anyways, we went in to meet the bride 'n groom and their parents. A lot of the people there spoke neither English nor Hindi, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself with my god-awful Tamil, so we restricted ourselves to wide smiles and nods in their general direction.

As we were standing around, a short dark portly man emerged from the crowd, and ignoring Mooks, shook hands with Loki and me. His sole words of introduction were 'XMP'. We looked at each other in bemusement. Was this a gate-crashing software vendor touting a new OS, or perhaps the word was an unknown Tamil dialect meaning 'My name is Raja Krishan Ramaswamy, what is yours?' ? It took Mooks to come to our rescue and explain that this person was actually an ex-minister and considered that fact more pertinent than his name. Maybe he was out looking for more voters.

So we arrived for the wedding, which was at 6:30 am, and left for the railway station, were we had planned to drop our luggage, and then head out sightseeing. On arriving there however, we got a train that left immediately, so we got on, and several chess games later, got off at Coimbatore.

to be continued...