The display board outside the marriage hall was as large as a class blackboard. The edges and corners were decorated with images of floral garlands and conchshell drawn in dirty pink and white chalks. In the centre, written in bold white chalk with stylised running calligraphy was "Anantharaman (Adarsh) weds Savithri". None of the green and garish floral boards which proclaim who is getting married to whom in flowered lettering. The preponderance of green owed to the contractor pasting all those left-over leaves from the wedding roses and marigolds.

I had promised my Mom I would represent my family in this wedding of my "second cousin sister". She was years younger to me and was more like a niece. We were not close but years back in the 80s, we used visit them in Madras every summer in our annual pilgrimage from Bombay to Tirunelveli.

It was not practical for anybody from my family to travel from Bombay just for 2 days of marriage. Being in sales, I managed to fix an appointment with a couple of Chennai based Banks to whom my firm attempted to sell some banking software. So I could keep my promise to Mom and Dad, fly for free and not antagonise my boss, all in one fell travel requisition. So it was that a muggy wednesday morning saw me in a pre-paid white Ambassador from Chennai airport to West Mambalam where the Kalyana Mandapam was. It was tucked into one small quiet lane called Giri Street, which is between the chaotic Doraiswamy Underbridge and the bustling Thambiah Reddy street.

I reached the hall at around 8:30 in the morning. My first appointment was at Indian Bank at 12:00 so there was plenty of time. I was looking forward to meeting all relatives and acquaintances I had not seen in 10 years, some even longer. Right at the entrance, I saw a bunch of tiny girls in the tight pull-over top and silken skirt commonly known as Pawadai-chattai, stationed to greet all visitors with a sprinkling of rose-water from silver coloured decanters. I received my share of cold fragrant droplets, skimming over my temples and slightly running down my cheeks before I lost sensation of them. Once past, I immediately accosted by a young chap that I recognised vaguely.

"Hey Rajesh, remember me, Vasu, Surya’s best friend. We saw Thevar Magan together in 1993." I remembered watching this movie on a hired VCR, a pirated and grainy print and my uncle’s brand new Onida colour TV. And I remembered this chap well. He was, then, and obviously even now, my cousin’s brothers closest pal. I mean he was my cousin’s best friend because her brother was my cousin too. I mean..., well forget it. I just knew this young chap from around 12 years back. He had been appointed general doorman and welcome-agent exclusively for young males it seemed, because a group of middle-aged matronly women who entered along with me got the same treatment from another lady appointed for the same purpose but closer to those women in shape and profile.

After a few seconds of "What are you doing these days (IT ofcourse)"? he shepherded me into the dining area. He insisted I do my tiffin first and then walk up to greet the couple or any of my various uncles and cousins. The dining area was in the basement, fitted out with plastic chairs and long wooden tables covered with cloth and plastic sheets.

In one corner, there were a few old ladies with young grand children in one corner. The grandmoms were trying to feed these elusive little imps who ran away and played tag with one another before reluctantly returning for one more mouthful before they set off again. This corner was mostly empty. On the other side was a crowded area of men and women eating swiftly with their bare hands. But one thing stood out- the men I passed by upstairs were in silk Dhotis with Kurtas or informal shirts and the women wore Kanjeevarams with glittering jewellery. Here the men were mostly in formal shirts and trousers while the women wore cotton saris. The women appeared stark, almost austere, compared to the splendour upstairs, the difference accentuated by their hair. While upstairs, not a womanly head was unadorned with long white and fragrant flowers, here the women wore one short 2-inch strip of a thin garland or nothing at all.

At any rate the emptier section was closer to me and it made sense to go there. I was blocked by a server (you can’t call the wedding caterer’s men waiters), "Tiffin closed saar. Only coffee available." I groaned, "What was was for tiffin pa?"

"Idli, pongal, kirai vadai, jangiri, chutney, sambhar, molaga pudi and coffee". he reeled out, each word piercing me like a stinging rebuke for my delay in getting here. "Also horlicks for children and tea by special request. But this is last batch saar, no more tiffin after this."

"Then what are all those people doing in that corner?", I asked

"Office goers batch saar. Started at 7:15 sharp. Why dont you go there?"

"You mean lunch is being served already?" It was around 8:30.

"Yes sir - started on time - people have to reach Parry’s or Beach by 9 o’clock no? So we starting office-goers batch at 7:15 itself"

I was stunned. It was the office-goers batch. I had almost forgotten it. It was a staple feature of Tambram weddings in the 80s and early 90s. An early lunch served specially for people who had to make it to office after attending the marriage. It had been declared extinct now, not rare, not endangered, just completely extinct. And now here it was, right in front of me in this nondescript street in the midst of IT enabled West Mambalam.

Also Parry’s, Beach, Broadway, it was music to my years...in the last 20 years of intermittent Chennai visits I had seen the city change. And specifically in the places people work. Now hardly anyone I know works in these places...now people work, not in but out of, Tidel park and old Mahabalipuram road. These boring names can hardly evoke the memories or have the rhythm and flavour of Greams road, Montieth road, Casa Major road or even Nelson Manickam road. I wondered if I had wandered into some time-warping device transporting me 20 years past into a world of Parry’s and office-goers batch.

I went closer to the office-goers batch. Two chaps with briefcases tucked under their table, were discussing relative superiority of one drug of Cipla against something from Ranbaxy. Medical representatives waiting for the evening when their real work starts. One mother in the generically termed Punjabi dress was patiently explaining to her little daughter to go home with patti while she went off to office.

Then there was the bride’s onu-oota chittapa-thatha, the bride’s grandfather’s cousin. He, the trusted lieutenant of the bride’s father, was appointed to exhort diners to not worry about LDLs and to indulge in the gastronomic delights in front of them. He was urging a skinny teenager with a college bag strapped across his shoulders to have more payasam. "Are you not LIC Raghuraman’s grandson - his middle-son’s only son correct? I knew your grandfather from 1938. We studied together in Kadayam high school from 1938 to 1946." The lad, petrified in his seat made no comment.
The old man beckoned the server and asked him to fill his payasam cup for what the boy protested was the 4th time in 10 minutes.

"Look at your bones, this payasam will do you good. Oothunga Saar", he called out to the server.

Soon, people were heading out towards the water faucets with their hands hooked and fingers held upward to prevent the liquid curds from dripping on the floor. Others returned from the faucets wiping their mouths with their coloured handkerchiefs. Why, I lamented, did Bombay ever migrate, so wholesale and thoughtlessly, to white ribbed kerchiefs. These blue, green and checked handkerchiefs have such character, distinction as opposed to the nameless, featureless white kerchief, bought in sets of three from Shoppers Stop.

So what, I asked myself, killed the office goers batch?

For one, the profile of Mamas and Mamis who formed the guest list of the Tambram weekday wedding then. They were clerks and stenographers from LIC / Sarkari Banks / TNEB / Medical Reps in the 80s. They would simply shrug to each other, "permission pottu vandein". It was a half-truth at best. Permission, in most parts of the world, would mean making a request and getting an approval from your line manager. In this context, it meant calling your workplace neighbour and telling him to tackle the boss if he comes around looking for me. But now the professional profile of the working class tends to be programmers, project Managers, advertising executives and private and foreign bank tellers who cannot ever go late.

Secondly, the weekday marriage itself is a thing of the past. The bride and groom themselves shoot down any proposal to wed on a working day because of the inconvenience to their own colleagues.

Third, the breakfast culture, non-existent till the mid 90s among Tambrams who ate lunch as early as 10:30 on Sundays, is now considered de riguer by medically informed yuppies. So no one wants to eat lunch at breakfast time.

For another, rising incomes has meant the breakfast served in Tambram weddings is now substantial. From a meagre fare of steamed idlis and coffee, today it includes dosas, upma, pongal, vadai, jangiri, tirunelveli halwa, coffee, tea and Horlicks. So even an office-goer can tuck himself on all these goodies. So it is neither practical nor required that the caterer serve two substantial but different meals at the same time.

I decided to eat lunch amongst the office-goters even though I was not so hungry as to wolf down a full meal at 8:30 in the morning. The change was representative of the overall metamorphosis that happens to society, any society over a period of time. It is inevitable but that knowledge does not make the pangs any easier to bear.

The office goers batch is on its way out...gone the way of so many other rites that formed the early days of my existence -

1.Fried Appalams - banished at the altar of cholestrol and monounsaturated fats and replaced by roasted poppadums (completely ruins the sambhar-rice combo)

2. Ladies in Dooram - When women were kept out-of-bounds for the three days in a month. Regressive or useful, the defendants are arrayed on both sides. But what killed the idea was working women and nuclear families

3.Nine-yard saree - "My mother-in-law died last year and no one else in my family knows how to..."

I wonder what is next - Amavasya Tarpanam, Avani Avittam Sacred thread changeover, who knows.

To me the office-goers batch represents a certain way of life . It was about eating a proper lunch if you go to a marriage. Going up to the bride’s father and appreiciating the payasam before leaving. About asking each guest if they have eaten fully knowing that they have. Paper envelopes with Rs.101 inside and marked “From Sitaraman and fly (Pfizer, Madhu Mahal, Matunga)”.

It is not something important enough to try and preserve, but is still beautiful enough to care and write about. It would be tempting to sepia-tint what I saw as a courageous, last surviving bastion of an era or to dismiss it as a vestige of an abomination that is way past its sell-by date.

In truth, it was neither. It was just a glimpse into an age that was beautiful, not for any innate aesthethically pleasing attribute, but just because we were once a part of it, and because we embellished it as much as it moulded us.