The tale of an Ayush Homam

The day began with Siddarth aka Hari Narayanan waking up at 530 am to have a bath before the ‘yama kandam’ started at 6 am. He, by the way, is my son who just turned one that day as per the Tamil calendar and hence we were about to have the function called the ‘Ayush homam’ wherein the child is blessed with a long life by elders of the family.

After a quick oil massage, he had the bath and escaped the dreaded time of 6 am. He was safely out of the bathroom and in his new clothes looking smart and unaware blissfully of the long day ahead of him. Slowly the family members, and a typical Iyengar’s family consists of many layers and … sub-layers, so get ready for a plethora of names and the relationship confusions - streamed in. First to land were my mother’s brother (mama), Mani and his wife, Maternal grandmother and mother’s sister - they made the long trip from Tirupathi to Chennai in a Toyota SUV and were in our house promptly by 6 AM. 

Mani mama, his daughter, and Sid

My mama himself is a certified pundit, but since he is almost of the same age as I am, we are at first name terms with each other and he is more of a fun pundit than most of the others (that does not mean he does not take his work seriously, he is just more open than many others)

As I played with my son, I ignored two to three calls from my dad asking me to have a bath.

‘Muhurtam is only at 7:30 dad, chill,’ I said as I rushed to save Sid’s head from making contact with a chair. Dad grunted and got himself busy hanging mango leaves inside the house, getting bricks ready for the homam (holy fire) and such activities that characterize these events. His elder brother arrived next.

‘The function is today, right?’ he asked aloud alarming of my parents, who were surely that he had spotted something seriously wrong in the arrangement.

Periyappa

‘Yes, why?’ Dad’s voice was extremely tense.

‘Varun is standing with a half drawer (loose term for ‘shorts’) on, that is why.’

I froze. I could almost hear my dad seethe, the thought ‘I told you so’ would be flooding his brain now and he would let it out anytime unless I defused the situation.

‘I am going right away Perippa (relationship term meaning ‘dad’s elder brother’). I was giving Mani directions,’ I said and scooted, towel in hand into the bathroom.

My wife, Niel, who had travelled half way across India from Ranchi, to be married into this family, courtesy the crazy little thing called love, was getting another hang of a family function in South India. The last time we celebrated something similar was Diwali where she had a bath at 5 AM, thinking what more could be appropriate on a festival day, only to be question by mom why she bathed without asking her. What about the oil to be applied on the head?

‘How was I to know? Neither you nor mom told me about it yesterday,’ Niel protested to me behind closed doors. Fair point but I obviously did not tell mom that.

This time though, she got the green light from everyone before bathing.

By that time, many more had trickled in, my cousins, dad’s sister’s (1) husband shortly followed by his son, dad’s sister (2) and her husband and their daughter-in-law, shortly followed by their son(2.1), dad’s sister‘s(2) daughter and her husband (all the way from Trichy), dad’s younger brother, dad’s elder brother(3) and his wife and his wife’s sister, dad’s elder brother’s (4) daughter(4.1), dad’s elder brother’s (4) son and his wife and their daughter, dad’s elder brother’s (4) daughter (4.2). Sorry, I know it is going above your head now, but you got the picture right? Wrong! You just have half the picture, because also present were… Maternal grandmother (from Tirupathi) who came along with mom’s brother (mentioned in the early part of this blog) and his wife, mom’s sister (1) and mom’s sister (2) and her husband (all the way from Kumbakonam). Even now you just have 95% of the complete picture as I am sure I missed some folks along the way.

A small portion of the 95% mentioned
in the article

The priests came by around 7:15 and started busying up the place. ‘Put the bricks here,’ ‘Place the puja items here,’ ‘Where are the plantain leaves,’ ‘Ask the son (me) to get dressed up,’ ‘Ask the girl (Niel) to get dressed up’ and so on. Mani promptly took me aside with a splendid dhoti in hand to help me get the panchakacham done. Mani is a man of the Vedas. His family (my mom’s family that is) was one of priests and I never fail to tell people that care (or those that don’t too) that back in the 70s and 80s, my maternal grandfather was one of five people that ran the temple of goddess Padmavathi in Tiruchanur, Tirupathi.

The temple is the second most famous in Tirupathi as it is the abode of the divine consort of Lord Venkateshwara who people flock to visit in the Tirumala hills. His son, Mani, had taken his line of work and was one of the more well-known pundits in the town. It is always a pleasure seeing him perform rites and rituals, shouting out the slokas with perfect emphasis on each of the syllables. He would even throw a gentle line of taunt or two in the middle just to catch the attention of people around.

He wrapped the dhoti around my legs, through my legs, and across my hips in a fashion that was as complex as any piece of code that I have written in my seven years in the IT industry. ‘Whenever you are free on Sundays, try this out.

Panchakacham and Madisar eh!

I will check on you after two months and you should be able to do this by yourself,’ he told me. I just smiled in return but the guy is so persuasive that for the first time in life, I fantasized on how it would be to learn the art.

I suddenly realised that Niel was missing for the last 30 minutes. After searching for her everywhere, I realised that the door to one of the room’s had been shut for a long time and in a house as busy as ours was that day, no door can be shut unless people were in it. It was elementary. Niel was being dressed up in the women’s version of the panchakacham, the ‘madisar’ or the ‘nine-yard saree’!!! And I was sure there were at least 2-3 attendants making sure every fold was right. Sure enough, she came out looking like a bride, all over again.

We sat at the wooden platforms placed for us on the floor, in front of the square homa enclosure, surrounded by four priests and all the people I mentioned earlier. The function began.

Priests behave in different ways – They either rush the slokas in a hurry, pay scant respect to whether you, as the host, utter each of those slokas properly or not, collect their money and leave even before the ‘Muhurtam’ time is over. This is done if the host is judged (by the priest) as someone that wants the function done just so it has to be done and just because the religion demands it from them.

But if the host and family are inherently religious (this sounds more like my family), and even worse (from the priests’ business point of view), if there are qualified pundits in the host’s family itself (there were at least four people from either side of my family that day that recited the slokas along with the priests, two of them ultra-qualified pundits, holding important positions in some of  the top temples in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu- two of the major Brahmin bastions of India), not only will the priests ensure they recite the slokas slowly, they would also be a tad nervous if they are intimidated by the wealth of knowledge around them.

So the main priest began reciting the slokas taking care that I recited them properly after him. Even in the second scenario that I mentioned above, a certain minimum speed has to be maintained when reciting the slokas as the Muhurtam time was usually short, spanning anywhere between an hour and a half to two hours. And at this speed, it is difficult to follow what all is being said even if it is said in English, leave alone in Sanskrit (which of course was the language of the day). The art of not embarrassing oneself by blabbering something completely unrelated to what was just said takes years to cultivate and being brought up in the family and having gone through many functions like this (‘Upanayanam’-Holy thread ceremony, ‘Changing of the holy thread’ ceremony – once every year since the Upanayanam, My marriage, Ceremony held at the eighth month after Niel conceived to name just a few), I knew most of the slokas soon as the priest started uttering them and had some tricks up my panchakacham to handle the other bouncers thrown at me. For those that are searching for ways, here are a few in ascending order of difficulty:

1.  Top most and easiest of them all is to start a phrase as soon the pundit starts it. This way, you can get away uttering anything from that day’s cricket scores to the news headlines till the last part of the phrase (that almost always ends with a ‘swaha’) is recited. But unless the elderlings around you are totally deaf, do not recite the news headlines. Rather, try following the priest and say things that at least sound similar to what he says and then end the phrase with the mandatory ‘Swaha.’
2. Grab hold of the mantra book prior to sitting on the hot seat and follow it as and when the slokas are being recited
3. Learn all the mantras by-heart and fire away at will, go on give people around you a complex. At the end of the day, you might even get a little extra (in the form of Ashirvadam) by the elders. Not the easiest way to earn money, but hey, who said earning money was easy!

Head priest intimidating us

This pundit was good and constantly ensured that I was at least keeping pace with him as he recited along merrily. He would merely increase the tone and pitch of his voice if he found that I was getting distracted and that would bring me back to planet earth from wherever I went (which that day, ranged from something as exciting as TinTin-3D to something as mundane as just getting rid of the dhoti in favor of my ‘half drawer’).

The pundit breed is ultra-special. You will not see many people speak better and so confidently in public gatherings, not even the top salesman in award winning car dealerships. They have to meet people from all strata of society – rich, poor, Six pack Suryas to those with one big MRF tyre pack (as obese people are referred to jocularly) and a lot more variety. Doing this day in and day out make them so garrulous that only empty politicians or army officers can challenge them in this trade. My mama is no different and can hold in own even if he is amidst NASA scientists discussing their next launch. He would probably convince them into visiting Tirupathi to seek the Lord’s blessings for the launch.

The chorus of the slokas raced ahead towards its imminent conclusion when the chief priest’s phone rang the tune of another sloka. He picked up the phone, glanced at the number, looked sheepishly at the rest of us, and signaled us to stop for a bit. And attended the call, much to my surprise. I remember my dad slapping me on my head during my younger days if he found me spacing out during these functions, and here the priest was on phone giving directions to some guy who apparently wanted to reach some place. The audience looked at each other wondering how to bell the cat and resume the chorus. My father’s younger brother did it elegantly.

‘What happened?’ he asked, addressing everyone and no one in particular. ‘Some emergency?’ he feigned a state of shock while neatly conveying the message that such an interruption in the midst of a major family function could be warranted only by an emergency and nothing else.

The chorus resumed instantly and all was well again. The function ended in the next fifteen minutes and the crowd dispersed to various corners of the house – the women folk bunched around in gangs in the kitchen, terrace and in one of the bedrooms, men lorded over the ceremonial hall and the verandah, my son ruled the entire house commanding attention wherever he went, the priests stuck to the space around the homa kundam.

Mrs. I and I were then paraded around the house by various elders who suggested to us to prostrate before and take the blessings of other elders around. Though we were used to this, my mom thankfully nudged my dad and asked him to tell everyone to gather around so that Mrs. I and I can prostrate before all en masse. 

The beginning of a prostration,
not even the kid is spared!!!

And so, the who is who of the Rangarajan family gathered around in the ceremonial hall and showered a ‘limited meals’ amount of ‘Akshata’ (rice mixed with turmeric powder, considered very auspicious) on us.

The day ended with me and my wife replacing our festival clothing with more modern and comfortable clothing. Yet another family function, high on religious quotient and very eventful!

Post Script

The current generation, I don’t think, is very excited when it comes to such functions. I shamefully include myself in that category. But my humble opinion is that when we take time off to explain to our children practical and religious significances of such events, the point would go much farther. Fortunately or otherwise, the world is tending to be more scientific and less religious. 

Mom

Dad 'ashirwad'ing us

Therefore, just thrusting rites and rituals on children would more often fail than succeed.

From the other side, we, the internet generation, need to understand the sensibilities behind our parents laying stress on such events. Not everything religious can be explained practically, and generations of educated people cannot be wrong. So, unless you would be seriously impacted, let us go ahead with the flow, understand the meaning of these events beforehand, enjoy them and make them enjoyable for everyone around.

If we all make these adjustments, our culture would be able to stand the test of time for a very long while to come.

Swaha!