White shirt among the sea of colors

Bangalore being surrounded by hills, the temparature seems constant throughout the year. People enjoy when they are in Bangalore. The weather is pleasant; helps u concentrate and work for more number of hours. There is another added advantage of living in Bangalore which I only realise when there is too much pressure of work. The city lies towards south Karnataka. Just a 100 kms away is the state of Tamil Nadu. The beautiful & natural state of Kerela is also not far. People here just have to make their mind and they will be in the lap of nature enjoying the peace and beauty. Kerela always fascinated me with their hills, backwaters, coffee estates, palm trees, etc. I have always wondered what do these have to offer. Do they really provide the serenity, the voices unheard or the splashes of the sea which only the person who has experienced it will be able to explain. Last year I got a chance to visit Ooty, Munar, Coorg and other places. But there are things untold but better understood that "behta paani nirmala", you want more when u tasted it good. I too wanted it again but work didn't permit me to get out of the clutches. It isn't that I am unsatissfied with my work or my manager is a red guy with horns. It's just that is in my nature to explore. Allah granted me my wish and here I was ready to attend a marriage in Trivandrum. Yes, I would be visiting Kerela again. This time to attend a south Indian wedding, a wedding of a simple but extraordinary man, my senior in office. A person whom I look upto for inspiration on how to handle work. He teaches me (without himself knowing) how to keep patience. Yes, he has been gifted with one of the most important gifts of life from Allah (swt). And when I got to know that he is getting married there were 3 things which didn't stop me to accept his invitation: 1) first south indian wedding, 2) a wonderful teacher's marriage and 3) Kerela

It was the first week of January but surprisingly I was told to take warm clothes. I did as I was told. Accompanying me were my office collegues, viz. Sirisha, Nishant, Shreyansh and Pooja. Pooja was benovelant enough to provide her big house as our place of stay for those two days. Her parents were caring enough as we had full meals and no trouble at all. The house was huge but the lane leading to the house was narrow. It tested the experience of drivers. And to my surprise they were good enough as they not only negotiated the narrow lane but also the 40° slide road which I thought would be impossible. Nevertheless we had Saturday to ourselves as the wedding ceremony was on Sunday. We had booked a cab and the cabbie looked very experienced. The way he brought the vehicle into the road was remarkable. He was a man of short height, a round face on which he had a typical Mallu style beard, an old golden watch on his hand gave me a sign that time is very important to him. His beard reminded me of my uncle who is very strict and responsible. Seeing him as our driver and guide I totally got into submission mode, agreed to myself that we all would be in safe hands. My assumptions were totally justified after we were back home tired but enjoyable day. We visited two places that day; 1) Poovar and 2) Kovalam beach.
A beach is a beach nothing new about that. Kovalam had a lighthouse which was new to me. There were many foreigners which was also new. The beach indeed was beautiful but before that we went to Poovar. The journey through the magrove forest was made to look very adventourous. The owner of the boat told us that the place would look like how it was shown in the first part of the movie Anaconda. Excitement fell into us. We thought that we are onto some scary stuff, but then we thought we will see whatever comes. The forest looked forest, too many trees, birds chirping around. From time to time we saw some cats passing around. Flying birds would try their luck to catch a fish or two by diving into the water. The forest was on both side of the bank and we had to keep looking left and right to be aware of the situations we do not know. The boat took around 45 mins to take us to a place known as Golden beach, the place where the river met the Arabian sea. It wasn't crowded, the beach had its own charm, fresh water meeting the endless sea. I wasn't able find the line where the sea met the sky. I always wanted to see that. It was mesmerising. Those two hours of time spent gave us some hundreds of photographs. While on the way to Kovalam beach we stopped for our afternoon meal. The restaurant was full of people and to my surprise not a single of them belonged to southern part of India except Pooja. All of them were excitingly joking around in Hindi. The restaurant's owner too looked indifferent. It looked like I was in Delhi. I wanted to be in Kerela and there I was, wanting to leave the place as soon as possible but we had demands of our stomach and had to fullfill that. Nevertheless the tiresome yet exciting day ended with Sherlock being watched over and over again by our group. Pooja skipped it because she got busy preparing dinner for us, Nishant too avoided it because he had some beautiful voices to hear.

We woke up next day for the most important day of Arun. I don't know why I never wanted this day to come. Probably because life is a bag containing a lot of things and you never want to let go good things. And to think that after today there won't be any such things happening again. There will be better things there will be worse but not the same things to give that feeling again.
I heard that the groom would be wearing white shirt so to give him company i too wore a white kurta. I had a misconception that southies are not that fair probably due to the climate. How wrong I was when I saw some real pretty faces at the ceremony. The ceremony was short. Within half an hour the bride and the groom was pronounced husband and wife. Of all the colorful dresses the white shirt of the groom was clearly visible from the distance where I was sitting. It reminded how simple a wedding should be. No dhoom dhaam, no extravagance, no show offs, no wastage of money, just relatives, friends and food. And with the word food it reminds me of the paysam and kheer I had there. The never ending types of kheer they provided me was simply fascinating. Although it was difficult to comprehend a wedding without meat, I had to agree that there are certain things in life which I would enjoy in its original form. And so was the wedding of South India. A banana leaf as a plate, boiled white rice, different types and colors of vegetables the name of which I never heard of, the shape of which I have never seen. But it was truly enjoyable. To me, a food is a food, if it is capable of filling your stomach and agreed and accepted by my belief it is considered to be eaten. The curd rice looked good but it was the sweets which won me over. There was a white couple seated in front of us, probably friends of bride. They had tough time in deciding how to eat each of the food provided by a line of dozens of kitchen men. More than eating they were spending their time in taking photographs of the delecacies. We enjoyed our food, with our stomach full we took time in getting up our seats.
We grabbed an oppurtuniy to get the attention of Arun again. Congratulated him again, this time infront of the camera as a proof ;-) .We bid him goodbye and wished him a happy married life ahead, wished him to be as awesome as ever. Walking outside the gate I looked back again, saw the couple accepting wishes and praises and gifts graciosuly. I strode out of the hall room, saw that Pooja already had her car ready waiting for me near the main gate.