Be careful who you give flowers to…
December 13, 2006
This is a photo of one of the great temples in south India (note the elephant). It is called Tiruchendur and is located almost all the way down the east coast of Tamil Nadu just north of Kanyakumari, the southern tip of India. It is a temple primarily for Subramanyam (also known as Murugan), the son of Shiva and brother to Ganesha.
It was also the site of several amusing events…
On one of my earlier trips to India, Narasimha and I had hired a car and driver to take us to a series of temples where we were going to enjoy various pujas and yagyas. Unfortunately during this trip, we had a horrible driver. He’d bump me out of the way inside the temples, take the garlands and put them on the hood of his car, and was generally a disagreeable fellow.
So, when we were at this temple, we were treated to a special puja where we were standing right up front, as close to the deity as people were allowed to stand. And afterwards, the priests took a garland right off the deity and placed it around my neck. It was a very nice honor.
As we were walking out of the temple, I was determined not to let the driver take this one. So as we were walking out, I took the garland off and had it in my hand ready to give it to the first person I saw before the driver could ask for it.
As fate would have it, there were two police standing there, one an man in his mid-30’s and one a young woman. Well, I wasn’t going to offer a garland to the policeman…so I held it out to the police woman. Innocently enough. But the look on her face was one of sudden shyness and and the look of amusement on the face of the policeman told me that I had crossed some cultural boundary…unbeknownst to me!
So I dropped the garland into her hands, and ran off after Narasimha. When I explained what happened, he and everyone with him burst out laughing! As it turns out a marriage proposal is accompanied by the placing of a garland around the neck of your intended. So, through his laugher, Narasimha’s sage advice was “be careful who you give flowers to…unless you have an extra ticket home.”