oil bath and grand mother

Recently when I had been to Chennai, I had the opportunity to get a Facials, Pedicure etc done from a beautician. She had told me that I need some oil massage for my hair for it to be healthy. When I raised my eyebrows, she said heat some oil and once it is warm massage on your scalp and wash it with a shampoo.
Today I remembered that and heated the 'nallannai' (sesame oil) with some whole pepper and curry leaves. That triggered lot of memories especially of my grandmother.
When we were children it used to be a weekly ritual to have what is called an oil bath. (which is nothing but what the beautician called the oil massage) . Every Friday it was our (girls) turn to have oil bath. Every Saturday it was the turn of my brothers to have their head massaged by my grand father. I vividly remember my grand dad making the sound of a moving train while massaging my brother's head. My brother used to say" come on let the train move faster" and it used to be such fun watching them.
This oil bath ritual if I remember correct continued in my family too, with my kids on Fridays and Saturdays till we were in Pune. My hubby dear took over the 'train' part. I don't know when all this disappeared from our life.
Coming back to my childhood, I used to be so impatient with my grand mother to finish the oil massage faster so that I could wash with what was called 'shiga kkai' ( a kind of nut powdered and used to clean the oil on the head) and go and play. Half the time I never had the patience to wash the hair properly and used to look too oily.

The other traditional ritual was the combing of hair. We all had plaits and my brother's wife used to have a long plait which I used to look at longingly as I just had two pigtails for plaits . (which my dear brother used to tease as 'elivaal pinnal meaning a rat's tail) . My grand mother used to sit and comb our hair nicely and put a tight plait(which I used to hate) and I had to wait for my turn as she had to comb my mom's hair and then my sister in law and then it was my turn. As usual I was impatient and used to say 'come on make it faster'. She told me once that one day you will feel sad that nobody is there to take care of you as this is part of taking care of you which truth I realize today.
Some how all these thoughts came to my mind today. We pay money to the beauticians to take care of our hair, our nails and face and what not when in olden days the grand mothers used to do this adding lot of affection and love apart from the massaging and combing.
May be our Society was fully evolved and we never realized it and changed all that in the name of Modernity and losing our support system which gave us physical support as well as mental support.

Vinu's Wedding

Well it is almost three weeks since Vinayak and Jayashree got married. Come to think of it, those two days just passed wonderfully that it seems like a dream.
The preparations, expectations, waiting etc etc turned out to be a Happy occasion which is what I wanted. It was more a get together for me especially as so many of my friends attended the happy occasion. Almost half of my lady College mates attended. My child hood friends took the trouble of attending it visiting from far off places. My school mates too joined the fun not to forget my friend from my work place (can I say that having worked just for a year). It was nice to see my many friends who happened to be with us as family friends in the Railway Colonies.

It was a great moment in our life as all my siblings attended with their spouses and also my husband's siblings and their spouses. I was so happy seeing the children of our families mingling with each other and exchanging notes with my kids about themselves as they were all meeting my kids after a long time. There were my cousins and their kids and many of our relatives and it was really a very happy occasion.
But as it always happens when I think back about the wedding I feel I had not done enough justice to the guests who had come as I could not spend as much time as I wanted to, with each of them. I did speak to them but I would have had more to talk to them, had I not been called to do this or that or meet some other guests. Hope they will understand this. This is what happened in Anu's wedding too.
One thing I realized is that so many rituals are there in our custom as it was done as a get together and entertainment and social gathering and a leisurely pastime. But all that is lost now a days with every body busy and having many more ways to have entertainment and get together that even leisurely pastime has to be enjoyed in a hurry.
I was happy that the essence of the happiness was not lost in this occasion and we were all genuinely happy to meet everybody.

It was great to see our Gardener and Helpers from Palghat who had helped me so much in bringing up the kids and who knew anand and vinu since they were born in the Railway hospital Palghat. Anu, anand and vinu were so happy to see them all and were hovering around them and taking pictures with them which was so nice to see.
My Doctor friends who had helped me in various childhood ailments of my kids came the next day just to see my grown up kids whom they had not met for ages.
The great heroine of the wedding ( apart from Jayashree of course) was my aunt who is 80 plus of age but has the enthusiasm of a little girl and was hugged and pampered by one and all.
I was happy that Tejas got the opportunity of being a child in an Indian Wedding where children generally run around making new friends and be on their own without any adult controlling them as the adults are busy talking to each other. Only thing was that unlike all the other kids (like us when we were kids) he did not know how to enjoy the tasty food served at frequent intervals. So we had to chase him and force feed him some food which he likes when ever we had time .
Thanks to Jayashree's parents the arrangements were very good and the Wedding was performed in a nice way.