ExpertDabbler

My overnight trip to this sleepy little town in North Malabar was for eating Ela Adai, enjoying the train journey, and to attend my friend’s engagement. I also realized that little or no industrial development keeps the region serene and less polluted. Maybe there is a reason for all the strikes and hartals in Kerala which free market ‘bourgeois’ economists can never understand, it is part of the communist’s noble agenda of keeping the green in Kerala.

Morning breakfast was served in the hotel. I was offered two white hard substances which looked like Idly. Later on I was told that was indeed Idly. No wonder it looked like idly then. My stomach, which can enlarge and contract admirably based on the quality of food, went to crash diet mode immediately.

As for the actual ceremony, ‘Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler’ may have been uttered by Einstein but this set of Keralites take it very religiously, at least in their ceremonies. The actual engagement ceremony had all the bare essential elements but not a bit more. The boy and girl were made to sit in ordinary chairs, some person took out a mike and read out a statement, it could’ve easily passed for a press release announcing the launch of a mixie in the region. The content was again kept to bare minimum - the agenda of the meet, the boy and the girl’s name and address preceded with the parents name, the date of the wedding and the approval of the elders, followed by one ‘thattu’ exchange, one ring exchange, and the standard ’stand erect and stare’ photo session with select relatives. That was it. The whole function got over in about half an hour.

Lunch was served and I realized that the much dreaded kerala rice is not to be dreaded at all. What needs to be dreaded though is the ‘Maida’ Chappathi. Another noteworthy mention is the way Keralites fold the leaves after the meal - it is always away from them, quite unlike south tamil nadu where this can imply something offensive. Brahmin customs require the leaves be kept open after meals. To each his own.

Post-lunch session required a visit to the girl’s ‘tharavad’, about half an hour from the engagement venue, and that was where I got the super delicious, awesome, heavenly, ‘Ela Adai’. Wow. Well, there are some things in life which more than compensates for all the troubles. I think Keralites should be given a honorary Nobel for contributing Ela Adai to mankind.

Last but not the least, the tickets for the trip was booked through Cleartrip.com which was an absolute dream, in stark contrast to the IRCTC website which is an absolute nightmare. One caveat though - the tickets are a bit more expensive than IRCTC, cleartrip makes some money in the process and I did not mind in this occasion. Here is someone making money purely on design and ease of use. Design is business. Online train ticket booking is taken to the next level thanks to the likes of cleartrip, makemytrip and yatra entering this space.

All in all, the trip was a welcome relief from the hot and humid chennai for two days.

PS:Updated based on comments from Hrush

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 6:58 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.