Muthusamy's Sathabhishekam

Muthusamy is a first-generation clan member who worked all his life and retired in Pollachi. He is 81,and is about to 'get married' to Swaranambal, all over again later this month. They call this marriage Sathabhishekam; it is to be performed by their children.
The long-wedded couple - Swaranambal and Muthusamy Iyer - ready for re-marriage.I took this photo specifically for this blog, when my wife and I visited them during our recent Pollachi trip.

To be entitled to re-weddding, you need to have been happily married for decades, till the husband attains the age of 60. Muthusamy said he didn't have it done at 60. Now that he is 80 plus his son Giri and his wife want to celebrate sathabhishekam . And Muthusamy and his wife are pleased to oblige them. For them it represents an occasion for a grand family re-union. The family priest was consulted and an auspicious date fixed - May 25. Formal invitation has been sent to relatives and friends.

Though he is elder to me by a decade, our relationship have all along been so friendly that I address him as Muthusamy, as I would any close friend. My earliest recollection of him is that of a tall, lanky young man on a bicycle, who visited my many uncles at our house. I was then a schoolboy in Coimbatore, and used to visit Pollachi to spend vacation at thatha Chakrapani's spacious cottage-like house, located at what was then the fringe of the Pollachi town on Coimbatore Road.

Muthusamy's father - Krishna Iyer - was my thatha Chakrapani's elder brother. Speaking of him Muthusamy mentioned that his father spent his retirement years in Tirupur with Venkatanna, Muthusamy's elder brother.

Incidentally, Venkatanna had been instrumental in initiating our matrimonial alliance. He was a neighbour of my wfie's Senu chittappa, a sub-registrar in Tirupur, in early 70s. It was through the good offices of the Tirupur neighbours that our horoscopes came to be exhanged between parents, and our wedding was made possible.

I must recall here a touching incident relating to Venkatanna, whose face I remember because of distinctive pock-marks left by a severe attack small-pox in his younger days. As newly marrieds, on our way from Coimbatore to New Delhi by train, we were pleasantly surprised to find Venkatanna at Tirupur railway station with a parcel of my favourite jelabi. We were touched by his gesture . Venkatanna , being so elderly, thought nothing of the trouble he had to take for such a brief meeting with us at a wayside railway station. The train halted barely for a few minutes at Tirupur.