a grandmother's story...

Very funny story. Priest stole dhals and his wife stole the vadai form her husband the priest. Because of theft, the priest became a murderer. so the moral of the story is not to steal. But your grandma narrated it very well. since I lived in a village, I can visualize the well etc.

Happy New Year. ( I want to eat vadai now)

 

1. I have heard a similar version of this story while growing up in Chennai.The version I heard contained only the middle part -- the wife makes a lot of vadais but eats all but one of them while waiting for the husband to come home; the angry husband asks her "How did you eat them all?" and she shows him by gobbling the last one.

2. As for the thieving priest, one of my close relatives is a vadyar.[ [I escaped that background mostly due to my drive, ambition, and of course more than a dollop of luck.] I wouldn't put something like this past him. He somehow got hooked up with some folks from Tamil film industry. Whenever, they had problems, they would call him to perform rituals (praying for altruistic things like rain in the world; asking directly for resolution of their problems was a no-no; however, while responding to the rituals and causing rain, if the almighty were to ease their plight, that would of course be okay). Most used car dealers could learn a thing or two from this guy.

Once, after I had been living in the US for about 7 years, I was under enormous pressure. [No, I didn't run to this guy asking to perform a rain ritual ] I get an aerogram once from him with a note that it was opened and inspected by Security Department in Delhi. They opened it because it was from a village in Thanjavur but addressed to a US address. I was very lonely at that time. I am the oldest and was waiting for my female siblings to be married off and my male siblings to finish college, so hat I can get on with my own life. (I was of course paying for their educations and wedding expenses.) Those living in the US can appreciate how lonely it can get. I also had to cook and clean in addition to working hard at a competitive job.

Anyway, I opened the letter. In the letter, he was pretending to be the elder of our entire family and wrote "My daughter is going to college only for your younger brother". (This younger brother had just got into IIT. This vadyar wanted to make a deal before any other people came around. I was not married. There were a couple of the IIT brother's older sisters who were not married. He didn't care about any of these.) He was also buttering me up saying "Whenever I go to a temple, the first archanai is always for you". I heard that he came to my house with a coconut and trying to seal a wedding agreement. (He is my mother's younger brother.) The sad part is that neither my father nor my father would kick out a close relative. (I would, in a heartbeat.)

Of course, I never wrote back to him. However, I have always felt that I should have reacted more strongly -- I didn't know how. I was and am quite sensitive of his daughter's feelings. She didn't do anything wrong, except being born to a jerk. If I was in Chennai when he brought the coconut scheming for the wedding agreement, I would have tempted to break the coconut on his head.

I am not religious at all. My friends ask me whether incidents like this have made me non-religious. Actually, I became non-religious way before this. These incidents only confirmed my disbelief.

 

Hello Bagya,
if I remember this story is from the folk tales[ i am not sure]. My father used to tell this to my sister, and by reading this write up, went down memory lane. I always beleive that the person who steals will not understand the original value and he would be left with nothing.

 

That was a very nice story. I too have heard of something similar to this but without that climax.
Probably my mom was reluctant to tell me about the woman hanging in the well.
It brought back so many memories. So many stories for which we always had an ear how many ever times they were repeated.
Thanx for sharing..
And oh.. I love your blog name..thumbsup

 

Thanks for letting me use your space to write about this uncle [ex-uncle to be more precise ] The thieving priest in your story provided a natural segue. I wondered for a second whether I should write about this on my blog instead of in a comment here but decided against that. [If I chose to go that route, I might not have taken the time to go through the actual writing.]

> And being the eldest in the family can make one mentally old and tired - i know it being the eldest in my family .

You got this right

I feel like I have basically lost about 10 years of my life. Around 1979, some people asked me "I have never seen you so happy. What happened? Did you win the lottery or something?" What happened was that the last of my sisters just got married.

I felt more like a carefree kid during my forties and fifties compared to my twenties and early thirties. All I had to take care of was my own children.

> In your case, don't grudge the poor man. as long as he doesn't harm you, you can be magnanimous.

No way. I expect much higher standards of behavior from people around me/people in my life.

> You always have the option of rejecting his offer.

I don't think that there was any real danger of the offer being accepted. [My father was stupid but not that stupid, to be quite blunt.] However, I am outraged that it even came to an offer. I wasn't there. I came to know about the details only several years later. However, I came to know that this was going on from his letter to me -- he was trying to politic and get me on his side, by offering me the first archanai for the rest of my life. [Of course, I didn't accept. I am stupid but not that stupid ]

> religion and spirituality

IMO, one can be an upstanding citizen without being either religious or spiritual. I am fortunate to personally know a few [alas, only a very small few] men like that.
***********************************
Moving right along, I also used to hear a Nalla ThangaL story, growing up in Chennai.

 

hi bhagyachinu

Anyway, the priest did not deserve the vadas for the way he procured the dal.
And the wife was too greedy

ha ha, nice story

cheers
suresh