They offered huge dowries and family connections but we thought to stand against Jerry’s wishes would hurt him. I flew to the US and saw the Indian American girl. To our surprise the girl did not belong to Indian Christians settled in the US but was a Hindu who originally hailed from Madras.
She was very pretty and broad-minded and did not have any objection to conduct the marriage in a Christian church but Jerry objected. He said that he believed in everyone’s right to follow one’s own religion. He also said that God was only one and there was no Hindu God or Christian God or Muslim God. The quarrels in the name of religion were wrong and then he pointed out my own books especially on Sree Narayana Guru in which I had said that being a good man was more important than being a person who quarrel in the name of religion and hurt people.
I could not but give in to his arguments and agreed his wishes would be fulfilled. In fact the marriage was conducted in Anu Rajaraman’s place in USA according to Hindu rites and in Ernakulam, in accordance with the Christian style. The reception was held at Avenue Centre after conducting the marriage at Bannerji Road in the Christian Church there. Because Anu Rajaraman belonged to the Brahmin community the food had to be vegetarian. Avenue Centre had no vegetarian food and the food was ordered from a vegetarian Brahmin restaurant nearby.
The vegetarian restaurants were so popular that even Muslims used to become vegetarian recognizing the power of vegetarianism in preventing diseases. Our friends who were Christians, Hindus and Muslims in fact enjoyed the vegetarian dinner in Avenue Centre. Jerry, our son continues to be a vegetarian.
Soon he had posting in Delhi. And he came to New Delhi as Consul after a few years. Anu became the Director in USAID, a programme for helping the poor, financed by the US Government. Because of their involvement they did not have time for bringing up children and only after 10 years they had two daughters.
As of now Jerry and his daughters are in Delhi. It should also be mentioned that all our grand children are boys and only Jerry’s two children are girls. So we are very happy that we not only have boys as grand children but also girls.