Shreyas at Tirutani Feb.5, 2012

All that an 18 month old can do or does!

My 18 months old grandson, Shreyas, who is in Bangalore and whom I visited yesterday with my wife on our entry into 35 years of wedded life, was seen by us all the time pushing hard his goals and objectives.

He is quite vehement about certain things being done his own way. You find him always in the kitchen with vessels and laddles or even small spoons,  making his own meal of vegetable leaves or even pieces of paper which he will multiply in number with his hands tearing them. He is making noise all the time, his neighbours are bound to say. Certainly, he walks briskly, falls at  times and hits his head against the wall or ground.He cries but stops soon. He is keen on going out; is ready to be taken out but only by familiar people.
He has develped attachment to us, his proud grandparents, but always keeps looking for his either of his parents and is not satisfied with our pampering. 
At times, Shreyas goes only in search of his mother. He is most often found playing with the cellphone: whenever there is a call, he must be given the instrument and he will babble and will not stop till he closes the call by mistake. He walks and talks like his father loudly but in his baby language comprising sounds. He is thus very fond of answering calls on mobiles and when the landline rings he goes there, and climbs the cot and shelf on the wall and picks up the receiver.  After a while he leaves it dangling unable to cover both ends of the receiver.  Or presses the speaker  button.
On the whole, he is becoming an unmanageble brat which is a symptom of a working and growing individual's brain. All the best to him. As they say, many things need vivid description in person and over hours, and cannot be written down in one blog.

Sraddha is now shrinking in rigour

Sraddha is now shrinking in rigour

AS customs keep changing,  the rites and rituals also undergo a churning up. This is true in case of not only one-time events like marriages or  jubilees  but also the ceremony that is performed every year. The way Sraddha is conducted has totally changed in a Metro like Chennai where more and more people are accepting pay and use premises, with all arrangements being made there.
Whether they have their own homes or flats, they prefer to arrange everything at
premises available for six to seven hours in West Mambalam  or even a suburb like Nanganallur. They remit an advance of Rs 500. The owner even shares his own
flat with a party in need of the premises for the function. A lady cook (mami) arrives early in the morning and readies the meal and sweets and savouries by 10 a.m. The priest arrives with two other Brahmins; the rites go on for not more than two hours.
Gone are the days when elders in the Brahmin families, would go to shandis to bring bags of vegetables and groceries for the elaborate cooking the next  day. No longer do they need to get up at 3 or 4 in the morning and stay in wet clothing for hours together, pounding condiments or other ingredients to prepare several special dishes. The mami who is hired for anything from Rs 600 to Rs 800 does it all with great profiency. The overall charges for the preparations, the lady cook and the rental for the premises could be about Rs 2,800. If special items are ordered, you have to pay extra in three digits.
Of course, the priest and his companions are to be paid separately and this again may be Rs 800 to 1,500, depending on whether these purohits are hired directly or sent by agents. Apart from feeding the two Brahmins, food is prepared for the Kartha and his spouse and also brothers and their families, provided extra money is paid for every plate (leaf). Items could be small in size, very few in number and the quantity could be much less than what used to be got ready in older days, the beneficiaries keep their mouths shut and go through the motions for a few hours as it is just for a day for a parent. No protests or no comments. 
One reason why this option is being exercised is that the families no longer live in
large numbers or in large homes but
only in pigeon hole apartments where most grown-ups go out for education or
employment. Also, it is not simply possible to keep such habitations pure and unpolluted as per religious injunctions.
Sraddha is thus shrinking in rigour and practice. Ancestral worship is felt to be 
compulsory by many at least for the sake of their progeny and wellbeing. Endowments have sprung up to do this and some look for alternatives like poor feeding at homes and orphanages, saying they attach no great significance to excessive religiosity.
Even purohits feel the old system may collapse totally one day due to socio-economic
compulsions and upheavals in demographic structure of family units. Children get
to know very little of what is exactly done, and parents are also keen on insulating them from centuries old practices to skirt probing questions.