Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2020

The Years of Dal and Salt

You are getting married. You are tense. Various people are surrounding you and rattling instructions at you. There is an endless series of ceremonies. You zone out and just do things without absorbing what is being said. Being the Father of The Groom is also stressful. However, you have more context, having been married for a while and sitting on the sidelines and watching the fun.  One thing became clear to me, the Indian wedding ceremonies are definitely designed for brides and grooms in their early or mid-teens. Not people in their late twenties. Many of the activities which would have been fun when younger are embarrassing when you are older. For example telling your future father-in-law, "Bye, I am off for higher studies." The father-in-law stops you and tells you he is willing to offer you his daughter in marriage. At this point, they tell you. Jump for Joy. 😃. There is a lot of playacting. There is a lot of dialog. If this was done on stage with good actors it coul...

Weddings - Symbols and Messages

When I got married, I spent my wedding days in a daze. My parents, my in-laws, the officiating priest gave me instructions and I blindly followed them. This is normal . During an Indian wedding there are a huge variety of rituals to be carried out. They vary based on the region you come from, the sect you belong to, and traditions followed in your family. In my opinion, they all have one thing in common, the bride and groom are totally disconnected from the entire spectacle that is playing out around them. Now my son Prahalad is getting married to Sneha and I will watch them go through an identical experience. So I started wondering how I could help them make sense of the crazy few days they are going to experience. I have a wonderful idea Me, I am an engineer and so I had this wonderful idea. Compare the wedding ceremony to F=ma. That is Newton's Second Law of Motion. If you understand the symbols and what they stand for, then it is a very useful and powerful equation. If y...