14th April = 25th Wedding Anniversary

On 14th April 1986 the bells of our lady of Dolores forane church Mundakayam tolled announcing our wedding. Suja was then a first year MBBS student at Chengelput Medical College, Tamilnadu. Her father V.J. John (recipient of the first K.M.Chandy award instituted by the Rubber Board for the best rubber planter in the country) was my father’s college mate at St. Philomena’s, Mysore. (Ref my post: genes of mischief and variants of punishment.)

The wedding was solemnised by my Botany Professor and HOD and Principal at Christ College Bangalore, Rev. Fr. Mani Giles who later went on to become Bishop Emmanuel Pothanamuzhy of the Syro Malabar Diocese of Manathavady in Wynad district of Kerala state. Sadly the Bishop succumbed to Cancer a few years later.

Two boys George and John were born to us in 1988 and 1993. George has finished his mandatory three and a half years of articleship with Deloitte Haskins & sells, Chennai and is appearing for the CA final exams in November. John plans to join an engineering college next month.

April 14th 2011

Looking to the next 25 years

Silver Jubilee

Men in DGs

The Heir & The Spare

The product of 25 years

Lunch at Kumarakom Lake resort

Girls call the shots

Click on the page to enlarge and read

The observation by Kalathil Ramakrishnan in Regional Notebook , “The city-educated girls do not prefer agriculturists in villages though they may be earning more than what the technocrat-engineer-doctor bridegrooms may earn in cities” has nothing to do with skewed sex ratio and is not only confined to the Brahmin community but across the board.

The sons of agriculturists in villages are forced to abandon the family profession and take up glamorous profession like medicine, engineering, chartered accountancy, law etc because it is the girls who are calling the shots these days. They are unwilling to marry boys settled in villages with unglamorous jobs like planting.

As a result lazy boys who are ill-equipped to go for higher studies are forced to do so by their parents. The words of Kerala Education Minister M.A. Baby at the inaugural function of the recently concluded School youth festival that parents look at education from a marriage angle is true for both boys and girls.