The Edanganni Equation

After the night prayer in our village chapel it is customary to gather in the facade for a small tete-a-tete  before  we disperse for dinner.

That day the talk was about an uncle whose wife was his sworn adversary from day one. The story goes that  he was taken to a house for 'bride viewing' and he  was so fascinated  with the girl that he gave his consent then and there and the marriage date was also fixed by the elders on that occasion. But at a later date the bride's side found out some  astrological hitch and the proposal fell  through. To be turned down by the bride's side, that too his son being a  government employee, this was indeed a  prestige issue and the  father vowed to conduct his son's marriage on the fixed date. This time there was no bride viewing. The father took on the onus and in great haste a girl was arranged. Our boy was upset and on the day of the wedding he would not budge from his bed. He was cajoled and coaxed  and literally pulled to the chapel  to the accompaniment of drums and nadaswaram.  There was nothing wrong with the bride, she was  homely girl, well versed in house hold work but the man's initial dissatisfaction continued to the end. At his death bed all his anger towards his wife which included the little chapel and it's patron saint too!

He used to shout "When there are umpteen number of male saints in the church, like St. Antony,  St. Sebastian  which fool's idea  was it to name the chapel after an old  lady (St. Anne) who protects the female genre to the disadvantage of the male population?"

"Look at this village........"he lamented, “the joker in the last house died young, while his sickly wife had a good grip on life and survived till her late nineties........

Another healthy and hardworking cousin died in his seventies in his sleep while his wife freely enjoys movies in the nearby town. In the very next house the sick man is pushed to the cowshed due to some life sucking ailment while the lady plays dayam (similar to mahjong)  with her friends all day  long  gossiping .   Every year the ladies leave no stone unturned to celebrate the feast of St. Anne and pacify her by making pongal (sweet rice)

The reluctant bridegroom, our uncle, now in his seventies, used to tell his wife; "Hey lady don't ever imagine that you are going to enjoy my pension for a long time hiding behind that 'old lady of the chapel', as soon as I go I will make sure of a reservation for you in heaven to immediately follow me " With this caustic remark he would toss and turn around  in  pain.

My uncle died but something should have gone wrong either with the reservation or the delivery from the next world.......even after 20 years the ticket from the world beyond had not  reached our aunt."

 "Or St. Anne might have caught hold of the courier from heaven on his way to the village and threw the ticket into our 'Pappa kulam' tank (which is the large pond in the village).

Everyone laughed including our dear aunt as she recited this episode in the holy venue on the portal of the chapel.

There is a truth in what he said in spite of his venom for our aunt. One of the ladies in the gathering said. "We ladies live long in this place" We  laughed out again. It became the joke of the day! I shared it over a call with my elder sister for the next bout of laughter and with friends and other family members longing for more!

 "Shall we all go live there ?!" one of them joked

In great anticipation  I shared it with my youngest sister, a leading campaigner for gender equality, who regretfully belong to the category of women who could squeeze out  any element  from any woman's joke for condemnation.

After a pause she said "It's no joke sis, Do you know that in those days the girls were married off as soon as they reach puberty? Or sometimes even before that? Do you know that our own mother got married very young and we know the age difference. Our men love to have young girls as their wives. 'Young is beautiful'. 'A man never gets old' is their male chauvinistic notion. They think and believe that the ladies lose their vibrancy very quickly. So at the husband's  old age a young wife can be of great assistance to him rather than being a sick and aged companion!

Do you know that the Singapore prime minister late Lee Kuan Yew's wife is elder to him by years?  Together it was a beautiful experience for them.

Do you know that Kasthuri Bai is older by months to Gandhiji? They were an ideal couple.

Do you know that both these ladies preceded their husbands in death?

Now tell me sis, whether it has anything to do with the chapel named after our dear  lady St. Anne and that she is partial?

With this gender justice water fountain she right royally doused the feminist sarcasm.

In any equation there are two sides and that is true for the Edanganni equation too.