Divine and royal, but can’t fly

My son, who got married last year, is settled in San Francisco. The festival season is on. We have a series of festivals commencing from Nagara Panchami Mangala Gowri and Varamahalakshmi in August and gathering momentum with a number of other big festivals: Krishna Janmashtami, Gowri Ganesha, Dasara, Deepavali, and Christmas till the year end.

The newlyweds, as is common among those settled abroad, wanted to perform pujas and celebrate festivals with devotional fervour and grandeur. After a series of video calls regarding puja dates and standard operating procedures, my daughter-in-law and wife finalised an exhaustive list of mandatory puja saamagrigalu. My responsibility was to buy all the items on the list, which was appended with a bigger list of snacks, and courier them to the US!

As a devout husband and a good father, I was a meticulous shopper. One visit to Satish Stores in Gandhi Bazar, Bengaluru, had all the items on the puja list ticked off. A stop at Srinivasa Bakery and Iyengar Bakery was a must to buy the snacks—congress groundnuts, chakkuli, muruku, mixture, and sweets—not to forget shenga chutney pudi from Sri Rama Traders.

With the quantity and quality audit done and compliance cleared by my wife, the items were carefully packed in bubble wrap and carried to the international courier service outlet.

The real trauma commenced from here.

The executive in charge of the courier service inspected me and my wife thoroughly, as though we were shipping drugs and narcotics! He made me open the carton box for physical inspection of the items. He deep-dived into his system and began his research of checking our items on his ‘prohibited and restricted’ commodities chart.

God was the first casualty! The small silver Ganesha and Saraswathi idols were gently and sacredly picked from the box and kept aside as ‘non-fliers.’ Next, the pattada gombegalu or the ‘Royal Dolls’ for Dasara, came up for scrutiny. What wood are they made of? Are they fumigated? Are they new dolls or old? Where are the receipts?

Unfortunately, our ‘Royal Dolls’ are priceless treasures passed on from from generations—from our great grandmothers—and have ence there were no supporting documents. These dolls also found their place next to the silver gods! Divinity and royalty had failed the scrutiny.

My heart sank. I was wondering, if gods couldn’t pass, what would happen to the puja items and snacks? Most of them—cotton wicks, camphor, betel leaves, copra, kumkum, protein powder, which was nearing expiry, a chocolate box mistaken for a kaleidoscope, spectacles—were all declined for shipment.

All the delicacies however made it to the ‘ok-to-fly’ list: Karachi biscuits, Guru Sweet Mart Mysore Pak, groundnuts, chutney pudi, homemade sweets, and khara shankarpoli!

Our 15-kg spiritual shipment was reduced to a 5 kg carton!

We quietly made our way to our travel agent to book our flight tickets to San Francisco. Nothing beats personal delivery! At least we could reach them before the festivals begin.