Mysteries of Indian life and love explained

KERALA, India — India is filled with mysteries that baffle the Western mind.

I'd been saving up some questions for Santhosh, 34, our homestay host for our last night in Kerala.

The Thannikkatt family — Santhosh; his wife, Sreeja; and their two daughters, Kunjava, 3, and Saalini, 1, are Brahmin Hindus, members of the highest caste in the Indian system of class divisions.

They live with his parents in a 150-year-old traditional, wood-and-stucco home, surrounded by ginger and rubber farms, in a quiet village about 12 miles from the Kochi airport.

Sharing Indian culture with foreign visitors is their passion, and after spending an afternoon and evening with the family, sharing meals and talking together under a ceiling fan on their porch, I learned the answers to some questions that had been on my mind.

Reading the stars

When it comes to arranged marriages, how can you tell in a five- or 10-minute meeting that this is the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life?

"Love" marriages were in fashion for a while in the '80s, Santhosh explained, but a high divorce rate convinced many young people to return to the old way of allowing their parents to hire matchmakers.

Santhosh and Sreeja, 27, met each other once for five minutes and another time for 15 minutes before they became engaged and then married three months later.

They were attracted to each other, but how did they know they would get along, or what the other thought about important life issues?

That's where astrology comes in, Santhosh said. Everyone has their horoscope done before they begin looking.

Santhosh had other requirements. He's Brahmin so that meant he had to find a wife of the same caste. He's also 6-foot-3, so he had to find someone who wasn't too short.

But if the stars don't line up, nothing else matters, he said.

"Our horoscopes told us everything we needed to know."

Bangles and more bangles

Indian women wear lots of bracelets on both arms. I noticed that Santhosh and Sreeja's girls wore them, too, mostly for decoration, Santhosh said, but also to help their wrists grow round instead of flat like a man's.

The girls also wore gold chains and earrings, but silver bracelets around their ankles. Why silver and not gold?

Gold is worn for decoration and and is considered like money in a bank account no one else can raid, but gold also is a sign of devotion to Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth.

The lower the body part, the less respect it commands in the Hindu religion. The ankles are near the feet, thus silver instead of gold.

Keeping cool

What's a coolbar?

Among the roadside stalls and shops stocked with rows of hanging bananas and bottled water in Indian towns are places called coolbars.

These are not hip drinking establishments, but rather the Indian version of 7-Elevens.

A coolbar, Santhosh explained, is a shop that has a refrigerator for cold soft drinks and soda water.

The best also have limes, salt and sugar for making a delicious, low-cal thrist quencher called lime soda.

There was so much more I would have liked to ask Santhosh. In our short time together, he took us to a temple where I was fascinated by a man, dressed only in loincloth, sitting on the floor, chanting something over and over, oblivious to anyone around him.

Santhosh manages a yoga center, and he and his family also know quite a bit about ayurveda, a holistic approach to health using herbs and oils for which Kerala is known. In our room was a tube of toothpaste made with plant extracts and a bar of soap made from essential oils.

The family is vegetarian, and Sreeja makes excellent pickled mango, coconut chutney and lentil curries.

So much to learn. So much to enjoy.