Going out...

Whew! Finally back home after two days of hectic (!) life in Karaikudi for a marriage. Marriage of an aunt I’ve never kinda met before. Watched a marriage almost completely after years. Went by train after a year too. Was good fun and a pain at times, too.
First my kiddo cousins. SR, Ad and Aj, I know you guys wouldn’t be reading this, but I must let you know you guys were some helluva lot of trouble in between. These kids pestered me to play Dumb charades, quiz (guess the questions? “Which is the capital of India?” and the like), Name Place Animal Thing and Antakshari. Maybe I should be thankful they didn’t ask me to play running and catching with them. It was quite difficult to explain to them that college second years don’t generally play running and catching, that too with kids, and that too, ME….one person who never gave much a damn for sports.
Ooops….not in my dreams did I think that Karaikudi would be worse than Chennai! Boy, the heat roasted me live and I was thankful I had some tolerance towards heat because of my Chennai upbringing. I hate to think what would’ve happened otherwise.
The train journey to Karaikudi was, well, bad. The train jolted, shook, swivelled, jumped, rocked, jiggled, and well, I’m out of words in English to describe how the train moved. So much so that I felt I was in a train and felt that up and down movement till I boarded the train to come back home. The return journey was perfect except for somebody’s snores that were actually grunts and snorts. I did all I could to find the source but because of my laziness to climb out of the berth, I was unsuccessful. The grunts were periodical and shook my lil’ bits of patience out of me. Thank heavens; they stopped after about a couple of hours.
Metre gauge trains are pretty horrible. They are so extremely small. My head kept bumping against the ceiling and so I was not able to sleep in the upper berth. Worse still, my hair kept getting caught in the fan and I gave a tiny scream every time it did, getting my mom freaked and hence me, down.
The marriage was good. I met strange people who claimed to be close relatives of my mom and dad, and some who are related both ways and I felt like tearing my head apart and telling them “Sorry, en thalaila ithana vishyathukku idam illa.... what’ll I do knowing this?”. But decency and a sense of showing off to people that I was a well-behaved girl stopped me short.
So Karaikudi is famous for Chettinads, aachis and paniyarams. I had my first taste of paniyarams with my mom by my side patiently explaining how it was made…. “Namma appam pannuvom illa, instead of frying it in oil they just …” I stopped listening and had a bite…boy it didn’t taste that nice. Konjam uppu chappu illadha maari irundhadhu. But maybe that’s the way they do it.
And Karaikudi poi how can anyone miss temples? Pillayaarpatti, Kunrakudi, Ariyakudi and Koppudaiyamman temples. Boy, erkanave visiting temples is not my cup of tea. On top of all this was the heat around the place and this was enough to make me grumpy. Thankfully again, I was able to revive myself after seeing empty temples and the feeling that I didn’t have to wait to see God in long queues.
I finally met my “aunt”, a regular reader of my blog who is in Chennai but we still couldn’t just make it to meet each other. Hi D.!!! Try to start blogging too!!
Two eventful days. Filled with fun, too. They’re over now and I’m back to lovely home. Nothing is like Chennai, eh? :)