The Great Indian Wedding

I was busy making the invite list for Didi’s wedding... given that it was the first wedding in our family in a long time, missing out any one’s name either by choice or by mistake would be nothing short of committing hara kiri...

Mayank, the bacha of the family, who had been watching me sit with all family members for their list of guests one by one, came to me one fine day with an extremely pained look on his face & said ‘When are you going to sit with me for my list of guests’?!?

Amused, I apologized to him for my grave oversight and asked him to rattle off the names right away to make amends...and so he started :

Mayank : 1st name : Shubham.
Me : how many guests?
Mayank : 3...shubham, his papa and his mamma
Me : ok, next?
Mayank : wait... make that 4 guests from Shubham’s family...he has a 2 month old baby brother. Even he will come for the wedding na...

The rest of the family members by then had given up all semblance of working and were hopelessly trying to eavesdrop into our conversation...

Mayank : 2nd name : Keshav
Me : Ok...How many guests?
Mayank : 7... err make that 10
Me : 10 !!! who all?
Mayank : Keshav, his parents; Jatin his parents. Shlok with his parents and Pranav
Mom (at this point in time, just couldn't stop herself from intervening) : Who is Pranav? I am hearing his name for the 1st time. Pranav kiska beta hai?
Mayank : Mamma, Pranav Keshav ki mummy ka beta hai
All of us : to bol nahi sakta ki Pranav Keshav ka bhai hai?
Mayank : to Mamma hi to poochi ki Pranav kiska beta hai !

Just how do you argue with this logic :)

& the wedding preparations go on…

Chaotic Order

Chaos is

1. When your home is getting renovated and you postpone putting away your stuff in the new almirah till the last minute.

2. When suddenly the workers descend upon you and ask to remove your stuff so that they can take the remaining old furniture apart.

3. And because of lack of time, you have no choice but to dump your stuff in carton boxes. But you promise to throw away all unwanted things, stack all the important things neatly and immediately to avoid any repeat of Point 2. However, the only thing which is done immediately, is stacking up the boxes (rest assured, neatly) in the dumping room err, drawing room and adding to the chaos.

4. When your friend asks for the book that he had lent you months ago and your sister’s joining date at her B-school is in the middle of all this (the coming Friday to be precise). And she asks you for the Anti-virus CD to install it in her laptop.

5. And you realize with horror that the CD and the book is in one of the umpteen boxes which you still haven’t touched.

But, Order within the Chaos is...


When in the first box you open, you not only find the Anti-Virus CD with the serial numbers, but most importantly, also get the book to return to your friend! I hope I survive this renovation to write a post on this some day :(

Kids Speak

After dilly dallying for a long time, my sis and I finally decided to catch Ishqiya on 14-Feb (ya ya the V-Day). So, to avoid the V-Day rush, even though the show was at 10 am, we got the tickets the day before. But sis woke up with a terrible pain in her ribs (doc later pinned it down to her recurring cough) and so the plan was shelved. My bro and I decided to go to the hall to sell off the tickets (small liberties, as the hall is 5 min away from my place)…As expected, the place was teeming with couples, who wouldn’t have given a damn if Wolfman was being played instead of Ishqiya. I spotted a young couple in the line for the tickets and approached them to sell my 2 tickets. The following conversation unfolded:

Me: Hi, I have 2 extra tickets for Ishqiya. 3rd last row. 80 Rs each. Would you 2 be interested?

Guy: which seats?

Me: C8, C9 (the centre seats, 3rd last row)

Guy: Mmm… let me check if the guy at the counter can exchange the seats. (he checks, turns out the exchange will depend on the empty seats)

Given the morose look he gave me, I asked him to buy his own tickets and started looking around for some other people willing to buy the tickets...

I soon spotted another guy who agreed to buy the 2 tickets... Happy to have sold off the tickets, I was on my way back when my bro (all of 10 years), asks me ‘Why didn’t the 1st guy buy the tickets from us? These were like the best seats..centre of the hall, 3rd last row, plus we weren’t even charging him extra!’.

I tried to diplomatically tell him that maybe the couple was looking for seats in the 2nd or the 1st row. My brother gave me the look which only kids can and then quipped: ‘Aahh now I get it… those people wanted the corner seats so they could watch the movie without any disturbance!’I sheepishly pretended to be completely absorbed in the poster of Karthik-calling-Karthik and moved on…

What a match!

I finally managed to achieve what I have been planning for a long time now… watch a match at Eden – the mecca of cricket! For the ongoing India – Sri Lanka one day series, Dad somehow managed to get 2 tickets…given that I had office that day, he decided to accompany my kid bro for the 1^st half, with me replacing him in the 2nd half...

The day started with my boss announcing to everyone that he was in a very bad mood. Reason – for the 1^st time, he didn’t have a ticket for the match! Oh o I thought.. wrong time to disclose that I was going to Edens. However, once he came to know I had passes, he became more excited than me and was perfectly fine with allowing me to go to watch the 1^st innings as well J this reminded me of the IPL match between KKR & Mumbai Indians where Manish allowed us to run away from office to watch the match!

Tracking the score on cricinfo, I was aghast to see Sri Lanka run away to 315. Anyways, with the incentive of being at Eden Gardens and watching Sehwag / Sachin play, I entered the stadium to watch the 2^nd innings. My brother, who had been sitting through the 1^st innings, had by then, stocked the plastic water packets (water bottles were banned inside the ground) and even managed to patao a man sitting next to us to use his binoculars!

Sehwag & Sachin entered the field to a rapturous welcome. The 1^st boundary from Sehwag’s blade had everyone up & shouting. Sitting near me were 2 gentlemen who were obviously Eden veterans. They were perfectly content to just sit and watch the proceedings. They continuously kept their commentary going, but otherwise, never did they once get up and cheer a boundary or a shot well played...they just politely clapped.. This was in sharp contrast to a group of college students sitting in front of me. Every shot and every run saw them standing up and cheering like mad. This had a Bengali gentleman sitting behind me completely agitated and a shouting match ensued between the 2 before sanity prevailed. The group’s final comment to the gentleman were ‘picture thodi na dekhne aaye hai jo seat par baith kar rahenge’ :D

Suddenly, Sehwag gave catching practice to the fielder and departed. Crowd got restive, but no worries, Sachin was still there. Horrors o horrors, soon Tendulkar also joined Sehwag in the dressing room. There is literally a pin drop silence in the stands. Out walked Kohli and the general chit chat going around me is as follows:

‘aaj to gaya India…’

‘Juvraaj hoto to jeete jetaam aaj ke’ (If Yuvraaj was there, we would have won)

‘Dhoni nei, Juvraaj o nei – kichu hobe na Indiar aajke' ( No Dhoni, No Yuvraaj...nothing will work for India today)

As Kohli’s batting statistics were being displayed on the electronic screen, somebody commented

‘arey dekh iska career best 79 hai’

to which someone replied ‘abey to aaj wapas thodi na 79 maarega!!! ’

But, Kohli did hit 79…infact, bettered it by a mile… Each run from Kohli and Gambhir was cheered and any appeal from the bowler had the crowd booing loudly. And the atmosphere when the two got their centuries – one simply had to be there to witness the madness …Just when Kohli reached his century, the Eden veteran sitting near me, suddenly stood up… Ah..finally he gets up to cheer, were my thoughts… But, he took the water packets safely stored with him, opened them a bit and threw it high in the sky in front to celebrate the centurions J

Kohli fell to a good catch on the boundary but with the target within reaching distance, the crowd welcomed Dinesh Kartik and gave a standing ovation to Kohli. Just when we were 4 runs short of victory, the veterans stood up again…this time however, everyone was ready and ‘packet rain’ followed in the chill of December night as Gambhir hit the winning runs… Slightly soaked, but super charged, we made our way out of the stadium, having witnessed history today J

Pujo time

Pujas were just around the corner – a time when Calcutta completely transforms. Each area puts up a pandal for welcoming the goddess and she is kept in all finery for 5 days. Each pandal tries to outdo the other in their budgets and creativity to get the maximum crowds and the all important awards to establish their supremacy. Every year, my family goes for pandal hopping - a recce of the Puja at different places. It’s an all nighter with junk food and the works…don’t remember how this tradition of going for pandal hopping each year started at our place, but the festive atmosphere is surreal and each of us look forward to it.

This time however, I was in a slightly different frame of mind as we approached the Pujas. Aagh…its that time of the year again I thought. Teeming crowds thronging the roads, bumper to bumper traffic. My mood was not helped by the fact that 45 mins after starting from office, I was still almost half way from my home, a distance which I generally cover in 30 mins. Add to this my anxious colleague who through the days, kept thinking & talking (very loudly) only about the preparations for the Puja at her building complex. I was royally bugged and so all in all, the only saving grace for me was the 4 day holiday for Pujas…

Given my aversion, I was determined to give the pandal hopping a complete miss this year. Holidays started from the Saptami…sheer bliss J my day was panning out just the way I had planned… sleeping, movies, crossword etc etc…I could see the coming 3 days. Then in the evening, my Dad dropped a bomb shell…this year, there would be 2 rounds of pandal hopping – one within Salt Lake (a satellite residential township) & the 2^nd outside Salt Lake! Just as I was about to launch into my well rehearsed speech of not going along with them, came the next bomb shell… my driver would not be coming and so I would be the designated driver for the Salt Lake trip…Damn…all the lines about ‘if you want God to have a good laugh, tell him about your plans’ went through my mind…

Anyways, we started at some 10 pm and 5 mins onto the road, I was badly cursing all the cars in front of me… we were crawling at a snail’s pace and there was absolutely no place to park the car. We finally managed to find a place to park the car and still cursing, I got down with others to see the pandal…the melee of crowds at 10 enthusiastically moving to see the Goddess further irritated me (a pandal is a pandal and a goddess is a goddess! What’s the need to visit so many pandals?? were my words). But, the pandal was a work of art and the Goddess was divine. We then moved to the 2^nd and then the 3^rd and so many others. The enthusiasm of the people was infectious and soon I found myself enjoying the experience. The feeling of being truly blessed when you are looking up at the Goddess is too hard to describe in words. One simply has to be there to experience it. And yes, each pandal and each murti was unique.

To cut a long story short, the night and the next 2 days turned out to be simply fantastic experience. I fell in love with the city again…hats off to the karigars at kumartulli who modeled the Goddess such that no two pandals had the same type. The police and civic volunteers worked through the night to ensure that everyone had a good time. Kudos to them for this as the arrangements this year were just amazing. And as I tucked into an aalu dum at the famous Lake Kalibaari, my thoughts were ‘aaste bochor aabar hobe’