A Pin and a Few Fingers (Part I of II: The Falling)

Have you ever broken a limb?

I have.

Well, well, well… don’t give me that nasty look. I am still a vegetarian and a card holding member of the curd-rice-for-life movement. So, when I said that I had broken a limb I meant my own limb and not somebody else’s. But, I should also add something here. Not everyone agrees that I am all too non-violent and have never ever broken another person’s body part. My cousin, for one.

The last time I broke any body part, if I were to conveniently believe my ever lying cousin, was when I got married. She said that by choosing to marry the man in my life I had broken a few boy-hearts on the street. Well, I knew nothing could be farther from the truth than that declaration. Because I was as invisible to the boys on the street as a ghost would be to anyone in broad mid-day light. If Oviya had never lived, it would have made no difference to the ogling list of those boy-hearts.

That said, since I do not have any conclusive evidence to prove her wrong, I shall give her the benefit of doubt and concede that that was probably the lone time I ever indulged in physical violence of any sort. Before and after my marriage, I have been responsible only for the breaking of coconuts, coconuts and more coconuts.

If breaking hearts is a sin you commit thru your marriage, it is simply natural that you atone for that sin thru another marriage. I mean another’s marriage. I had the opportunity for soul-cleansing, if you will, in the form of the marriage ceremony of my aunt and uncle after he crossed seventy years of age. The Bhima Ratha Shanthi, as it is called in India. We on the net shall call it BRS, for brevity.

Let me walk you thru the setting and the sequence of events.

Thirukkadaiyur is a village in the district of Nagapatnam in Tamilnadu and is renowned for its Amirtaghateshwarar-Abhirami temple. The episode involving Markandeya, Yama and Shiva is said to have taken place in it. The legend involving the Goddess of the temple, Abhirami, the devotee, Abhirami Bhattar, the Maharaja of Tanjore, Sherfoji, the appearance of the full moon on a new moon day and the subsequent grant from the Maharaja of a portion of the revenues of the kingdom to Abhirami Bhattar is documented on a copper plate which is in possession of the temple. The millennium-old ‘new’ temple is also a place where most Tamil families will die to have marriages of all sorts.

So, when my cousins decided that they were going to celebrate the BRS of their parents in Thirukkadaiyur, there was nothing unusual about it. For almost a year, we had been talking about celebrating it in a big way. What was unusual was the lack of facilities in Thirukkadaiyur despite that being a very famous village for a long, long time. There were hardly a couple of good hotels, if you could call them good.

Yet, our story begins not in Thirukkadaiyur but in the close-by Vaideeshwaran Temple which is equally, if not more famous for its powers to keep people disease free. The temple is visited by people from all over the country for cure from a whole gamut of physical ailments.

Well, it was a long journey from where I live. Driving to Thirukkadaiyur meant driving from one end of Tamilnadu to another end. We decided to visit Vaideeshwaran temple first and fast so that Thirukkadaiyur could be next and neat. Because, both temples are so close to each other and we were not sure when we would make it again.

As usual, the driver was my atheist husband.

First, he refused to come inside the temple. His convenient excuse for that was that only Hindus were allowed inside the temple and since he is not a Hindu but a ‘rationalist’ with no religion, stepping inside would be tantamount to offending the sentiments of the Hindus. Apparently, as a responsible citizen who believes in the democratic principles of our great country he did not want to indulge in offending religious sentiments.

I reminded him that I was as much a Hindu as he was a rationalist and conveyed that I was not offended by his stepping inside. Furthermore, a Dharshan of Lord Vaidyanathaswamy might even cure his rationalist sickness.

When we obtained the Archana chit in his name he protested again. I brought to his notice the fact that though he was a rationalist, his name was a Hindu and hence the person at the counter could definitely not have been offended.

Inside the temple, he went on a refusal-spree. He refused to stand in line for the Darshan, refused to accept the Prasadam and refused to light the lamp and refused to sit. Yes, he was as courteous as ever to our family members and did not object to them performing the rituals. But that could not prevent a certain disappointment from surfacing on my parents’ face.

My mother said to him, “It is very important to worship the Lord once inside the temple. The Lord in this temple is so powerful. You should worship Him. He will cure us of all illness.”

He replied, “I generally prefer to check the doctor’s degree certificate before entrusting myself to him. There are so many quacks in the world. Does the Lord hang it behind His desk in the sanctum?”

I said, “Your presence will not offend Hindus. Your speech definitely will. You would offer yeoman service to humanity and its happiness if you could keep your mouth shut!”

Shut it was.

From there we proceeded finally. I said finally because, we were delayed bad. The crowd, my husband’s interest in art on the walls and the pillars, my mother’s songs of prayer, the road that was more moon-like than earth-like, and the inching traffic all contributed to the delay. By the time we reached Thirukkadaiyur and the temple, the evening ceremony for the BRS was almost drawing to a close.

My cousins took me for a ride, literally. The question “Why are you so late?” was a long roller-coaster ride with different emotions, different facial expressions, different speeds, different pitches and tenors and different voices. I felt extremely guilty.

It was with that guilt that I performed my Namaskarams. It was with that guilt that I ate my food arranged at the Purohit’s residence. It was with that guilt that I took part in the conversations thereafter. It was with that guilt that I retired to our hotel room. It was with that guilt that I slept.

I woke up early. I was anxious to get to the temple as soon as possible. I woke him up too. Our parents and son had stayed with the other relatives in the Purohit’s house itself.

I said, “Yesterday we were very irresponsible and reached the temple late. Today, we have to be there well in advance. I am getting into the bathroom now. So, use my bathroom time to slowly get rid of your sleep and be ready to get in when I get out. Don’t think that today is a regular Sunday.”

I flew into the bathroom like an inter-galactic space shuttle. I noticed that water was dripping from above on to the commode tank. The whole place was wet and slippery due to the continuous splash of water. When I reached for the knob to arrest the dripping I realized that the place was more slippery than normal, given the circumstances. But before I could recover, the surface under me was being pulled off my feet.

While it was dawning on me that the servant had not washed off the cleaning liquid properly, I reached the floor with a big thud. My skipped exercise routines and relaxed diet that got me out of shape and my vocal chords that were in great shape made the sound of the thud a remarkable one.

I could not get up. I was immediately aware of a terrible pain in my left hand. I rolled over a bit and rose with my right hand. I was crying uncontrollably. I opened the bathroom door and cried louder, seeing my husband.

He leapt off the bed and rushed to me and asked me what happened. Between sobs I managed to tell him that I had fallen in the bathroom and that I was in excruciating pain. He hugged me and kissed me but stood with me like a lifeless tree. I sensed that he was paralyzed. He repeatedly asked, “What to do now, what to do now?”

I stopped crying and told him calmly, “We must see a doctor”

He said, “Yes, we must”

I said, “We need to find someone who knows the place around and can help us find a doctor”

He said, “Yes, we need to”

“You have to dress up fast”

“Yes, I have to”

“We should inform our folks in the Mandapam”

“Yes, we should”

“Hurry!”

“Yes, I am”

We did all of the above, in the reverse order of their occurrence, of course. There were no doctors in Thirukkadaiyur. In fact there was nothing in the village except the Lord and His Consort. He and I along with a local, found a general practitioner after travelling about 5km. After a few twists and turns of my hand and thereby giving my throat a power-training session in air-pumping, the doctor said that we had to see an Ortho as he suspected that to be a fracture. We had to go to Mayavaram.

The great, tradition-rich town of Mayavaram treats its days right. A Sunday is always a Sunday in Mayavaram. Nearly all business establishments and offices are closed on Sunday. That includes hospitals and Orthos. I was told that the doctors in the town exhibited what I call a Principle-Centered Sundayship. They would not put a steth on a dying body if it was a Sunday. More so, if it was an auspicious Sunday when they had to attend marriages and ear-piercings.

After much struggle we found a heretic Ortho who was open for business. Naturally, we had to take an X-Ray. While waiting for our turn in a long queue of broken arms, splintered legs and sundered hips we tried to determine the extent of the damage by looking at my X-ray.

Studying it, my husband and I decided that it was a case of multiple fractures of the fingers and the palm. Because, we found a lot of broken fingers and a palm that looked like a broken extension of those fingers. The remaining portion of the arm looked fine. I was sobbing a lot more after seeing the X-ray.

The doctor said, “The wrist is broken”

I could not believe it. I asked her, “What…? What about the fingers and the palm?”

“They are fine. You must have landed on or near your wrist. It is broken below the thumb”

“I don’t know. All I can remember is that my throat was hoarse when I came out of the bathroom… No more fractures?”

“No. See here!”

She showed me that part of the wrist which she said was fractured. My husband and I could not see the fracture at all. To us, the wrist appeared to be relaxing in a cozy set up. These doctors, like their special handwriting, must have their special vision too.

I asked her, “Then why oh why, is it paining like I am being hammered all over my hand?”

“That is because you are so sensitive to pain. Trust me, there is nothing major. I shall get it bandaged and slinged. Once you go home see an Ortho in your town and he will help you with the rest.”

We came back to Thirukkadaiyur. We vacated the hotel and stayed at the Purohit’s house. Unbathed, with the nighty on, with a bandage in sparkling white and with a sling around my neck, I did not enter the temple. We waited for the party to return.

The bride’s-shedding-of-tears episode you witness in marriages of young people are normally absent in BRSes. That is because, in BRSes, after all, the bride will go back to the same house. No parting parents here. But one look at my ragged condition ensured that my aunt’s BRS most perfectly resembled her marriage day 50 years back. My aunt cried in fits and starts on her BRS day. Quite a few elders joined her in the same fits and the same starts. I consoled them all! I promised that I would be back amongst them in better shape in a couple of weeks for my cousin’s marriage.

Different people had different takes on the incident.

My husband said, “This happens just the next morning after we visited the Vaideeshwaran temple. It proves that there is no God. And that most of your beliefs are unfounded and silly.”

My mother said, “No. Just because we visited the Lord, the trouble has stopped with a minor accident. If we had not, it would have been major. Who knows? There could have been a road accident! The Lord saved us”

My mother-in-law told her son, “God has punished us because you insulted Him in the temple.”

And there were a few other viewpoints expressed.

So, you see, there is no single answer to the God-no-God conundrum.

We drove back home. All along the return journey I was haunted by the fact that I could not witness a single ritual performed in the marriage ceremony I had been so eagerly looking forward to for nearly a year and had driven a few hundred kilometers to attend.

What is the name of that guy who said, “Man proposes, but God disposes!”?

 

My Dear Athai,

I am so blessed to have yours as the first reply. It feels cozy.

Oh, my.... 4 surgeries... You really had a hard time.

Thanks again Athai, for flagging off the FBs.


Love,
Your Niece.

 

Dear Sowmya (my honey, aren't you?),

I know you since so long. Nice to interact with you for the first time.

Many thanks for stopping by to give such a wonderful FB.

The pin will be introduced in Part II


Love,

 

Dear Satchi,

Thank you so much for your FB.

I liked the thing about 'better-half' becoming 'bitter-half'.

Atheists have very strong views. They sometimes practice their 'faith' like religious fanatics.

Hopefully, I shall be able to contribute more in IL.


Love,

 

My Dear Pa,

Well, well well... I did not expect an FB from such a wonderful writer so soon. I thought a write-up has to be interesting enough to be nominated by some one to attract the attention of the bigwigs. That usually takes a bit of time. So, I would not have been so surprised if I had seen you here after a few days. But within the first few hours.....Thank you!

Azhwarkadian and Nambi...Ha Ha ha... My husband used to say that he was Vandhiyathevan and I was Kundhavai. I shall shatter his claims to heroism with your line.

Thank you for inviting me. I would love to make it to your BRS.


Love,