Wedding Pathirikai

It was a tense morning in my house . My amma and appa were rushing to their respective workplaces. My sister was crying. Her ID card , which she couldn't find made her cry. I had an off day that day Lying on my bed , was I seeing all this. A video with greater than normal frame rate was , that morning.

I went for my brush. The toothpaste tube was empty. I had two options now. I skip brushing for the day or buy a tube.

Buying a tube seemed to be the more demanding option. But then the idea of  having a bottle of slice from the shop got me interested. I did as planned. I had a tube of toothpaste while on the way home.
A card like thing was hanging out from the postbox of our place . I was sure it wasn't a letter from it's rigid look. A wedding pathirikai was it. I saw the names , Guhan and Deepa were it. I gave it to my amma. She was too busy to see it . She asked me to check the venue and date of marriage and note it down.The drum shape of the  card was appreciated for it's innovative look.  That was all it. The card was thrown into the junk of old newspapers.

   வாரண மாயிரம் சூழவ லம்செய்து,

நாரண நம்பி நடக்கின்றா னென்றெதிர்,

பூரண பொற்குடம் வைத்துப் புறமெங்கும்,

தோரணம் நாட்டக் கனாக்கண்டேன் தோழீநான். 

கல்யாண குணங்கள் நிறைந்த ஸ்ரீமந்நாராயணன், ஆயிரம் யானைகள் புடைசூழ, ஊர்வலமாக 

வருவதால், எதிரே பொன் மயமான பூரண கும்பங்கள் வைத்து, நகர் முழுவதும் தோரணங்கள் நாட்டியிருப்பதாக நான் கனவு கண்டேன் தோழியே!

A couple of days back , when I peeped into what my perippa was writing , I found the above sloka. He was having a huge book of naalayira divya prabhandam . I found him copying these  verses with extreme caution. He didn't want it to be wrongly printed on his son's wedding card. The ancestral villages of where his grandfather and father had lived were neatly sketched down. He was preparing a rough draft of his son's wedding card with lots of enthusiasm. It must have took him hours to have done that. He gave it to me for an error check routine. He accompanied me in that. 

He wanted everything to be perfect . He called up the bride's place  and confirmed the way her name was spelled.

He googled up the address of the reception hall and penned it on the card. He took the calender and checked the correctness of the wedding date 100 times. The tasking of doing it for the 101st time fell on me. It was correct , my one time check gave him the assurance. He checked with perimma the name of her ancestors and corrected them wherever needed. 

Educational qualification on wedding cards, Should it or should it not be there? This debate went on for thirty minutes. At last my perippa took the latter choice . He decided to do away with the qualifications of people on wedding cards. My father who came into the scene some minutes back from there wasn't happy with the decision . He wanted the word MBA to follow his name on the card. That word coupled with my father took 20 precious minutes of my life time. At the end , my perippa's decision stayed . 

After all that hustle , we went to the card printing shop . We had a choice of 100 templates from which we needed to choose 1. 1 on 100 , too many alternates. It was 6 pm by then . I was so sure about missing Nadaswaram at 7 30 pm. Choices  hurt me . It was 7 pm when we zeroed in on a style. 

An advance amount was given to the man at the shop and he asked us to come and get the final draft copy two days from then so that we check that once again, 

Two days passed , my perippa called us to come to his place to check the draft copy. We started to read it.

 I never knew wedding card printers were this bad with tamil slokas. Headache again for my perippa who got that big book again to his rescue here. "N mistakes" again and we cleared most of them. After all ,we wanted the wedding card of my perippa's only son to be error-free. We didn't have the luxury of having a second chance here. 

It is hard work behind every wedding card . Extreme precaution , a lot of pride at stake and passion are also involved. Hardly any of us do have time to read it . But then after seeing my perippa's hard work  I took out the wedding card from the newspaper Junk  and read it more than thrice. After all it must be some one's perippa's hard work . I could easily relate to it.

I memorised a few lines of it that day as I was too bored  . 

I took a pledge that day , not a single  perippa's work shall go wasted because of me. Of all the things that are wasted in the world today, i took this wasted thing/time to use my otherwise wasted time. least important or is it not ??