Its been more than a year when I made a trip to chitradurga for attending a friend's marriage but the memories are still afresh. Chitradurga fort is wonderful place to visit, do hire a guide whenevr u get a chance to visit this place, there are some famous stories about that fort and chitradurga dynasty. You may refer wiki if you wanna know more about the place. I am narrating few incidents from the function I attended.
1) I enjoy stories and I do visualize well, but the story and the visualization may not go on the same track. I always find it difficult keeping track of characters if someone is narrating a story with multiple characters. Same thing happens when someone tells me about their relatives. My friend introduced me to his uncle, I remember some time back my friend saying that his uncle is a famous classical dance teacher in Chitradurga. Uncle was bit short, dark and had heavy personality. I was wondering for some time, with that weight how can one be a good classical dance teacher. Then thought many famous choreographers are fat like Saroj Khan etc. so that should be fine. Some time later I asked my friend, I am really impressed by uncle, with that weight how is he managing dancing ? Everyone broke out laughing. After some time my friend told that he is some other uncle and the uncle u met is a Police Inspector in Chitradurga. Later I met the other uncle, I felt very light weight after seeing the light weight uncle, now he can do the dancing.
2) My friend's elder brother recently got married and I attended that function as well. Though that was a Love Marriage, an interesting one. Bhaiyya is kannada and Bhabhi is from Taiwan. I don't know how they met, how they fell in love etc. I used to wonder even if the family members accept the girl, how she is gonna fit in Indian Kannada family ? In india the role of Badi Bahu (eldest daughter in law) is bit more important. Today here is my friend's marriage, what made me surprise and totally impressed is how Aunty (friend's Mom) handled the whole function. Bhabhi participated in all major roles wherever required with proper dress code (different types of silk saries). I totally remember the scene on the stage when Bhabhi was getting introduced to all the relatives by Aunty. "The point I would like to mention is, its not only important to accept someone in your family, its more important how you represent them in front of others"
3) I met my friend's Grand Mother. She was around 85 years of age. She had some trouble with knee pains (thats quite obvious with old age), and also needed support of a person while using stairs. She was able to understand common hindi and was also able to ask typical questions in Hindi. Knowing Hindi after being from a traditional Kannada family was appreciable. I don't think she interacted with any Hindi people in her young age, it was only after interacting with her grand children and their friends. This clearly shows her eagerness to learn and adapt to new things. And here I am its more than 4 years in Bangalore and I can't speak few Kannada sentences properly :-)
She asked a question to one of my newly married friend's wife by making some hand gestures and pointing towards stomach. I thought she must be asking, did u guys had lunch ? and I was about to respond before that my friend's wife said after 2 years, then I thought this is definitely not about food :-) Grand Mother started arguing 2 years is too late I want a kid in one year and their conversation went on.
While coming back from the marriage I was wondering, at age 85, with knee pains and dependency on others what makes her smile most of the time. I don't know what are all ingredients she use to get that, one must be "Sense of Humour"
