Grihapravesham on 29-Apr-2007 ::: Part 03

To put it in Chennai Senthamizh, the navagraha homam "bend-a kazhatidichu baa". In other words, that part of the whole ceremony warranted 9 namaskarams with about a minute's gap between each.

The priests let me go after that. A little later, they asked all of us to come to the homam area and asked us to do 3 pradhakshanams around it. And even as we were doing it, they started putting stuff into the pyre and it increased its smoke output manifold. Needless to add, all the smoke getting into the eyes, made the walk around the homam quite difficult.

The eyes were watering like crazy and I had to take a pit stop after every 2 steps or so. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one facing that ordeal. It was experienced by all of us. I came out of this episode quite shaken and apparently, Superthumby felt that my eyes were bloodshot - probably due to the excessive rubbing.


All this while, Superthumby was quite keen on taking pictures. Not of the function per se. His focus was more on how I was going about the namaskarams, pradhakshanams et al. I had brought my digi cam in the hope that some good pictures of the whole function would be taken. But he had other ideas and thankfully, to negate his goal, the memory stick on my camera was near full and so he stopped taking these voyeuristic pictures.

Anyways, as part of the closing ceremony of the religious aspect of the function, my parents and I were asked to sit near the homam and give the dakshinai to the priests. It included cash and clothes. And BTW, I was intentionally wearing one of my cargos that day, just so that I could keep all the cash needed for the function in different pockets. My uncle was quite impressed with this!

So we dished out the dakshinai to the brahmnaall and in turn we were asked to drink the milk that was boiled specifically for the function. I am totally averse to drinking plain milk and that if its warm. I cannot stand the smell and the taste. But like they say about porcelain (like the sand has to be mixed in water to make a yucky paste; then be spun around in a wheel; finally get baked in an oven), one has to sahichufy such tortures in the bigger frame of things. (I am actually not sure if the milk drinking part came at the end or somewhere in between itself, but that doesn't really matter).

So the brahmnaals finally went to have their breakfast. After some time, Superthumby, Madhu and I had breakfast and we were the last ones. Nilu was coming in late and so we'd decided not to wait for him. The breakfast was cold yet, quite tasty!

A while later my invitees started coming in.