Yee ‘O Lost Souls

Today I had the honor of carrying the gifts for an engagement ceremony. The guy’s mother has been my mom’s tailor for over twenty years and the tailor asked that we follow their entourage. I felt kinda weird. I mean, doesn’t she have any young relatives of her own? We’re not even related. I don’t even know her engaged son.

But I went anyway. With my sisters. Truth be told, this wasn’t the first time I join an engagement entourage. The first time was pretty impromtu. My neighbour’s youngest son was getting engaged and it was just a small, night ceremony at their house so only their very close relatives and us were invited.

You see, these ceremonies go like this: First, both the bride and groom to-be’s families give gifts to each side. They will agree on how many ‘trays’ (small round trays. you know what I mean!) usually around ten to twenty. Depends. Since I was on the groom’s side, there was one tray of ’sirih junjung’ or something/ You know those sirih leaves old people like to chew on and they turn red? Yeah, those. They make like a tall monument of those leaves and it hardly fit in the car that night. Anyway, in addition to the leaves, was a tray of the engagement contract, some money kinda like a brideprice, but just for engagement, and the engagement ring.

When you’re in an entourage, the ring and the leaves go first and the others follow behind them.

So the groom’s family, excluding the groom, will go to the bride’s house where they will be waiting with their own set of gifts for the groom. So we got there, put down our stuff and wait for the old people to read the contract and the groom’s mother or grandmother will insert the ring onto the bride’s ring finger. Then we take the groom’s set of trays and go back home.

Done.

Of course, there was plenty of food to be had in between. But that’s basically how things are.

Today was the second time I did it and there were more trays than the carriers. Everything was fine when we got there, but on the way back, there were STILL more trays than the carriers!

So we had to stuff some at the back of our car. It’s a Lexus so it has a big behind. But I was concerned that they trays’ sharp edges would damage the car so I suggest removing the gifts from the tray and lay the tray upside down with its leg on its head for steadiness’ sake.

And you know what those old people say? I shouldn’t because I would disecrate the engagement.

They went on to say there’s a lot of ‘pantang’ going on in a ceremony such as this. To save me from more blabbering, I relented and put the stuff back in order, but told my sis to drive carefully.

To my agony, it didn’t stop there.

Imagine, for the next fifteen minutes or so the old ladies hitching a ride in our car went on to talk about how some couple’s ’sirih junjung’ topple over during the engagement and after a while, their engagement was broken. They didn’t say why. And how someone dropped the ring from the tray and the groom later died.

And all that crap.

I mean really! Would YOU believe in such a thing??

Get this: While on the way to the groom’s house this morning as we left home, my sis pointed out house of her friend and her ex-fiance. Even though they were engaged, they didn’t buy the houses to be together. They just happen to buy houses in the same neighbourhood.

My sis said they are no longer engaged and that the guy was a childish idiot. He suddenly SMS’d the girl one day saying he’s breaking their engagement because she was fat!

Your mind might immediately wonder if their sirih junjung topple over on their engagement ceremony!

The girl was a doctor. Or at least, learning towards becoming one and it was the guy’s kid bro who talked him out of the engagement.

If you ask me, if say, my sirih junjung fell on my engagement day and my fiance believes it to be a sign that our marriage will not come or something along that line, trust me, I will dump him then and there. Then he’ll see that our marriage won’t ever come because of his own idiocy. Not that I’m asking for it, but you know.

Seriously. Would you marry a guy like that?

Human relationships are not as simple as ‘if your sirih junjung or your trays are all in order during your engagement day, then your marriage will be fine’. Its just those superstitious old people. Believe them if you want, but I prefer to be more practical in these things. Marriage is something you work out on. Not what other people want you to believe.

Heh! Even if I had left those trays upside down in the car, is it my fault then if the guy happens to fall for another girl during the course of their engagement??

Then all those old people would be pointing their fingers at me "Its because you turned the tray upside down that the groom is going out with another woman!!"

I have desecrated the holy ceremony. Forgive me and my tray. The groom need not worry about explaining it to his fiance. He just have to explain it to the fat end of his mother’s baseball bat.

Man. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous this seems. Anybody has any thoughts about this? I would love to hear from you guys.

Ta’ra.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 23rd, 2006 at 9:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.