The Wedding Chronicles Part Three

I'm back in Bombay now, wondering how ten days could've gone so fast and wondering how to sum up the last three days into one little blog post. There's still fading mehendi on my palms, that sickly orange colour that looks like a skin disease. My future mother-in-law (and I feel for that poor, unsuspecting woman, I really do) clearly will not love me. But, as a faithful chronicler of my life and times, I suppose I should do this properly. I'm not in an excellent mood though, today, my brand new budding relationship ended, quite fittingly, on the last day of the wedding festivities, right before the bidayi, where everyone wept and said goodbye to Leela. So this week, I'm wallowing in self pity, trying not to think too much.

Volt came down for the wedding though, and he was my date for all of the events, which was nice and when we look at the photos twenty years from now and sigh over how young and pretty we once were, I'm sure it'll be a happy memory. For the most part, it was happy. The mehendi was at Leela's house which was where we had to do our item number, which I chickened out of at the last minute, because the steps looked so damn coordinated and I was sure I'd fall and trip over myself. Plus my mehendi was still wet, and I really, really had to pee, which was hard, because it involved yanking my churidar down without touching it with anything except my thumbs. I'm sorry--was that too much information? Tough. I've never seen such a happy looking couple though, Leela and Ishan were supremely chilled out, hugging people, dancing, and looking at ease with the whole concept of getting married. God, married. Imagine Leela being someone's wife.

The next day was the sangeet at Ishan's aunt's house, which is this ENORMOUS white bungalow near Connaught Place, which all of us duly marvelled at. It takes so much work to make a wedding, I realise now, it's not just all pretty clothes and flowers, there were valet guys and a DJ and caterers and stuff, and I clearly need to start saving now for a wedding I'll have when I'm 45. The sangeet was the night everyone got completely out of their mind hammered. There was so much alcohol and the most vile shots I've ever drunk in my life, some strange pink concotion that everyone was throwing back into their throats with great gusto, and which made me retch thrice, so the next time someone handed me a shot, I pretended to drink it and then replaced it back on the bar counter. Luckily, by this time, everyone was so drunk that no one noticed. And there was much dancing. Around one in the morning, Leela came up to me, and said, "By the way, the chooda ceremony is at my house at nine tomorrow morning, and you have to be there." "Nine?" I said, laughing sardonically. "If I have to be awake, you have to be awake," she said, in somewhat puzzling logic and sashayed away leaving me yelling after her, "But you're the BRIDE. No one's marrying ME." By the time I finally got home at four am and murmured to my mother that I had to be woken at eight, I had pretty much forgotten all about the chooda.

That is, until eight am, when my mother came in going, "Wake up, wake up! You're going to be late!" I was so late, I didn't even have time to look for an appropriate outfit, so I put on a skirt and a tank top, expecting there to be an intimate ceremony, with just her family and friends. Um... again, I was proved wrong. My first sign of this was a tent where brunch was being laid out outside her house and by the time I got to her terrace, the priestess was in full flow with a bunch of people I had never seen before. My other partners in crime gave me wan smiles from where they sat on the diwan, looking demure despite being rollicking the night before, and you wouldn't have been able to tell any of us were ferociously hungover, except we must have consumed about five bottles of water between us. The brunch was excellent though, and we all ate like pigs. There was all sorts of chaat laid out, so I began with the gol gappas and made my way through aloo tikki and channa kulcha. I was so full that sadly I had to forgo the papri chaat and the aloo puri, both of which looked very tempting. But the wedding was at six and everyone had to leave and get ready (read: nap). I went to hang out with Volt before the wedding, and wound up falling asleep till four when I rushed home, rushed into my sari (which was still much too long by the time I got to the wedding and I kept tripping over it) and made it to the wedding by the skin of my teeth. I was so sure I had missed the actual ceremony because Leela and Ishan were having photos taken, something I associate with the end of the wedding and Bani looked at me and mouthed, "Didi's going to KILL you." So, I was pleasantly surprised when they made their way to the little mandap and sat down to be properly married.

It's been so long since I've cried, I think I might've forgotten how. I felt like crying at many points, when they walked around the fire, when we tossed rose petals on them and cheered, when I watched my friend, who looked so incredibly lovely, turn her head and smile at something. And despite the fact that she's been living abroad for many years and that the two of them have been dating for ages, marriage changes something, it made her look so young and yet so grown up. But she was remarkably composed, only breaking down at the very end when she hugged us all tight, and whispered, "Bye." Humour is my defence mechanism and so I babbled on through everything, even while all the other young girls around me got teary eyed, even when Volt and I broke up, I smiled as broadly as I could, I laughed when she clanged her bangles over my head (legend has it that when one of the dangly things, the name of which I have forgotten, falls on your head, you'll be the next bride) and I knew she was trying extra hard to get one to dislodge over me. But it didn't. Oh well.

I didn't want to worry Leela on her wedding day, so I didn't say anything about the break up or why I had been AWOL for the last couple of hours before I finally rejoined her table. "What's wrong?" she asked, and I shrugged, hoping that through my own unhappiness she could see how much I loved her and how much I wanted her to be happy.

Weddings are a funny time, really, especially if you're at a certain age. They're a time of contemplation, of what-do-I-want-next, of oh-will-this-ever-happen-to-me. They're a time of beginnings, sure, but they're also a time of endings.

When you read this, Leela and Ishan, post your honeymoon and when you return to London, know that my heart brims over with all sorts of congratulations and good wishes that would sound completely cliche if I vocalised them.

Just look at us being all grown up.

The Wedding Chronicles Part Two

You guys know how much I dislike dancing, right? Oh, not drunken dancing, not the under my umber-ella, ella, ella, ay, ay, ay gyrating when you curve your arms at the elbow and stick them up and move only the lower part of your body, feeling confident and sexy and knowing that amidst the strobe lights and the smoke and the noise, no one is watching you move except for who you really want to watch you. And it is for them you dance, your hips moving, your mouth singing along, your entire body just saying see, this is what it could be like if you and me got together. That's not the kind of dancing I'm referring to. Drunken dancing, like drunken sex, has a certain loss of inhibition, whereas when you're sober, you're acutely aware of all the awkward right angles your body is making.

I got slightly coerced into dancing for this wedding. The songs are fun, in a nightclub, I'd be grinding with the best of them, but in the afternoon, when your moves are choreographed, it's fear inducing. It doesn't help that two of the dancers are pros and the one we practiced with demonstrated the steps with such ease and with a smile on her face that it looked super easy, until I tried it. I just can't get my legs and my arms to move at the same time, and I'm totally directionally dyslexic so lefts and rights are a problem for me. (Seriously, when I'm giving an auto directions I have to pause before I say left or right just to figure out what hand I write with.) Punjabi weddings are all about the dancing. Not so much in the South, at least, neither of the communities I belong to, and even the one Gujarati wedding I went for didn't have much dancing, but Punjabi weddings would be incomplete if there wasn't a shava, shava thing happening. (What IS the meaning of shava anyway?) Last night was the shagun, which I will helpfully Google and give you a link for, so you're not as confused as I was when I got into the neighbourhood and found instead of the quiet house party I had imagined, a tent, with singers. (Okay, here we go). And there was dancing, more specifically, that song, you know the one where the singers call on different members of the family to do a little jig? I was skulking in a corner, smoking my cigarette and hoping no one would notice me, but no, when the 'friends of the bride' portion came on, I was dragged out there, where I smiled weakly, did my thing and went away as fast as I could towards my Old Monk, only to be pulled back for 'sisters-in-law of the groom'. Then Bani, Maya and I totally got into the spirit of things and when Leela and Ishan finally got their section of the song, we crashed it, but we were shoved away unceremoniously. Hmph. Make up your MIND, I either dance or I don't.

Okay, this is the reallllllllllllllly girly section of this post, so don't say I didn't warn you. Can I talk about my outfits? I really love them, I do, I do. My grandmother and aunt turned up yesterday with all my new clothes, and I have been making loving noises over them. Last night I was wearing my aunt's 36-year-old purple sari, very transparent, in fact so transparent, I wondered why this outfit was considered more "modest" than my jeans and t-shirts. With it, they got me this lovely purple brocade blouse (more like the top half of the blouse, clearly, my family wants me to get some) with beads embroidered on it. Then there's this black and copper salwar kameez that I'm wearing to the mehendi, another naked ghagra choli in white and red for the sangeet and finally, for the wedding, a beautiful pale pink sari with silver embroidery. I'm done being a chick now, so you can continue reading.


Besides wedding stuff, it's been a pretty busy week for me. I met with the Saminder for drinks at Flames.... (minus the apostrophe, plus the ellipses), where we discussed parenting, for some strange reason (it's wedding season, I'm all teary and feeling my biological clock tick tock warningly), I met with Rohini and Fortunata from the old office at The Big Chill (yay! Penne with bacon!) and then a bunch of people later at good ol' 4S. Ah, Delhi. It's so good to be back and this AWESOME weather, slightly nippy, smell of woodsmoke in the air, god, why do I ever leave?

The Wedding Chronicles Part One

I don't know when weddings became fun. Certainly, as a child, I never enjoyed them much. I was always dressed in hot silks, told no, I could not take a book, and since I was never one of those children who ran around screaming, I usually just sat, dangling my feet off a chair going, "Can we go now?" More boring than that was the shopping for the wedding, endless salwar kameez shops, where the saleslady looked at me like I had a tropical disease and my mother and my aunts debated on which identical looking sari would be best suited for which function. Bor-ing.

Now that I'm all grown up, I LOVE weddings. (Though remembering the torture I went through as a child, I'm never going to force my kid to go to one) And since my oldest and dearest friend is getting married this week, I've thrown myself into the celebrations with gusto. Leela and I, you might recall, if you've been reading this blog for long enough, knew each other when we were two and a half, and then ten years later when we were 12, we met again, perhaps the snottiest pre-teens in the entire world. But when a friendship is meant to be, like ours obviously is, a little snottiness doesn't get in the way of fate. Our mothers recognised us and were very excited, we sort of shrugged, since we were neighbours and all, and then proceeded to fall madly in love. In fact, she should just be marrying me. But, since she won't, I guess Ishan is a good second choice. I don't know him as well as I've known Leela's other boyfriends (since I was mostly single during my teen years, I practically dated the guys she dated as well) but I do like him. Last night, at the non-bachelorette party (non, because there were BOYS and no strippers) I plied him with much alcohol and we have many photographs of the top halves of our faces.

I'm in Delhi, by the way, for the next ten days, well, till next Monday, doing wedding-y things. Tomorrow there is a brunch type thing after which apparently we (the young girls on the bride's side) are supposed to converge at someone's house and practice dancing. This, I am going to avoid. Instead, I will whisk Leela away and we'll go shop or something.

Is it just me or is it odd for everyone when their first friend gets married? Suddenly, our lives together seem to stretch so very far away, being twelve and in the same government colony, in the summer, smelling the wet khus of the coolers and lying on our stomachs chatting, did those things really happen to us? The eM and the Leela who were fourteen, fifteen , sixteen, hang around ghost-like now, their arms around each other, giggling and saying, "What happened to you guys? When did you get soooooooo... adult?" Even her little sisters, the closest thing I have to little sisters, Bani (formerly known as Dearmost) and Maya, have jobs now, with free spoons. (Don't ask, this is apparently the high point of Maya's career) and last night they both looked so, well, sexy and grown up, I wanted to cry. But then, I wanted to cry at many points. I'm emotional like that. We all looked glorious last night, I must say, even though I was in my self designated party Nazi role. Basically this meant that I made everyone who came in drink this shot made of vodka, guava juice and tobasco (No, no, it was an EXCELLENT shot, it set fire to your throat and then all the way down your body, leaving these tendrils of warmth in your veins. Mmmmm.) and then I made them say three things about themselves. People got quite into it too. And then, at one point, when conversation was flagging, I introduced drinking games (people who know me are at this point rolling their eyes so hard they can see the back of their brains, but fuck off, everyone had fun) which were very successful. Neeti, whose house it was, another friend of Leela's, had gone all out for this party, so there were these round tables with candles on them on her enormous balcony, a guy rotating kebabs, a hookah and an improvised pole, which by the end of it, the boys took over and swung themselves around it very happily. I tried, but it made my palms hurt, which is when I called Volt drunkenly and murmured suggestive things to him, but I think I woke him up. (And, as I wrote that, he called. Like, totally, ESPN.)


Up next is the wedding weekend, next week, the mehendi, the sangeet and the actual wedding, where everyone will bawl like babies, and dance a lot and eat good food and why did I not like this as a child? Weddings rock!

But, I digress...

*Ahem*

One thinks it might be time for one to change the subject. Although one loves posts with many, many comments (as an ultimate validation, one is, after all, an only child) one realises there is only so far one can milk it. Unfortunately, despite recent media attention, one has been having a rather dull week. One has been ill, no, not a viral this time, this was less pleasant, if that's possible, and in the process one made many friends eye roll by being ill and refusing to see a doctor. One does not like doctors, you see, (oh fuck this) okay, so no one likes doctors, but I have a particular distaste for them. I'm usually dependant on my "strong Andhra peasant gene" to get me through things and (can I blame this on my mother and get away with it? I think I can) my mother was never one to give me like medicines and stuff when I was sick. Well, only if it got worse, but in the first day or two of a fever, I'd get half a crocin and a day off school, which suited me just fine.

I think it might also be a living alone thing that makes me so lazy about looking after my health. The last time I was ill, two months ago, was the fifth time I had gotten a viral infection since I moved here. I ignored it, popping a crocin if it got too bad, till one rainy morning, I couldn't move. Not only that, I had to switch off the fan and pull two extra quilts out of the cupboard, and still, I couldn't stop shivering. This next bit is the irony of it all, even though I hate going to doctors, and think anything can be cured by a good night's sleep and a glass of water, I am a hypochondriac. So, the other day, I'm sitting at Deepti and Neel's and holding a white cushion and I coughed and there were red spots on the cushion. Everybody else carried on with their conversation, and I was sitting for like three minutes, staring at the cushion, planning my funeral, thinking of cancer treatments, thinking of what wig I was going to buy to replace my hair and then Deepti noticed I was quiet and asked what happened. Fearfully, I showed her the cushion, my eyes scanning her face for the obvious distress and sympathy that would follow. She looked at it, looked at me, trembling in my corner, clutching the cushion to my chest, and said, "Um... you're drinking tomato juice."

Soooooo, yeah. Hypochondriac and averse to medical treatment. What a pretty pickle! I imagine it's some sort of mutated gene, a survival of the fittest thing that makes some of us dislike doctors and be inherently lazy, and others who go to doctors when they fall down and skin their knee. Us, the lazy, hating doctor type, will eventually die. This proves one of two things, depending on which side of the creation debate you're on. One; early man evolved into homo lazius and homo doctorus. The only problem arose when both homo lazius and homo doctorus took to golf. The planet was overpopulated! Therefore, clever Evolution Genie (whose name was Oho, making his initials what, class?) (Fuck, these antibiotics clearly contain pot) made all of homo lazius redundant, leaving space for everyone else , (namely, homo doctorus). Or two; God is a doctor. But when you take resessive gene one, laziness/doctor aversion and team it with resessive gene two, hypochondria, you get, well, me. An oxymoron. (Which reminds me, how many years ago, Pieces and I were talking and I think the word 'oxymoron' came up and I said I was unsure of the meaning, and she bit her lip and looked around for an example and then said, "A smart surd is an oxymoron." (we meant no offense really, my soul is Punjabi, balle... balle? No?) which now is the sentence that always swims into my head when I use the word. That and Defence Colony, early evening in the summer, both of us in tight t-shirts and blue jeans, leaning against a Maruti Esteem.)

Where was I? Are you still around? Are you secretly judging me for having totally lost my ability to write coherent sentences and paragraphs that actually relate to each other? Well, sit right back, my judgemental friend, light yourself another cigarette, and prepare to be even more smug, because I'm not done. (Writing 'light yourself another cigarette' just made me fumble around in my bag to pull out mine. Product placement bastards. They're taking over the world. I just watched Thank You For Smoking, which you should absolutely watch) I was telling you about how I'm unwell with a Secret Painful Infection (not an STD, but you can feel free to speculate on any others) and how my friends were annoyed because I hadn't gone to a doctor in the five days I suspected I had the SPI and how on Friday night it escalated and I was really not very well at all. I spent the night with the concerned friends, and my phone was low on battery and so when I got back from the tests and the diagnosis the next day around four, and turned on my phone I got many worried text messages asking where the fuck I was and whether I was dead and if I was dead could I at least do them the courtesy of informing them. I made the last one up, but, no, really, since I was feeling like shit, I was all misty eyed at the concern. This will add totally new dimensions to the funeral in my head next time I play it out.

This was actually supposed to be a post on living alone and the Toll It Takes On Many Of The Things You Take For Granted, which it isn't anymore, and this is a fucking long post so I can't go into that now, but I will make you a list.

Living Alone And The Toll It Takes On Many Of The Things You Take For Granted

1) There is no milk.

2) There are unemptied ashtrays.

3) You bathe with cold water for three months because you're too lazy to fix the geyser.

4) Ditto on the light in your room.

5) In fact, ditto on any household thingamajig that doesn't work.

6) There is dust, lots of dust.

7) There's an almost about to explode carton of grape juice in your fridge.

8) Your clothes are wrinkly.

9) There are home delivery boxes everywhere.

10) You skip breakfast, because you're "not a breakfast person." You so are a breakfast person, it's just easier to go straight to lunch.

11) Your fingers recognise the snooze button even when your eyes are closed. I don't know about you, but my mother likes to wake me up by beginning a conversation like I'm already involved in it. For instance.

Me: (asleep, in dreamland, lalalala)

Mother: (many loud noises, some gragefigeoifgksnv;loebclqwhnw)

Me: Uh?

Mother: And so I said I thought you'd love to do it.

Me: Yur?

Mother: abekbvlkeb;gwlbg4egn lglr4ng...what do you think?

Me: (just about opening one eye) Huh? What? Coffee?

Mother: You're not answering me.

Me: (realisation dawning, because this has happened many times before) That'sbecauseIjustwokeup.

Mother: How long can you sleep? It's a lovely day! The sun is shining!

Me: Evidentally. It's morning. Can I have my coffee now?

Post coffee, I ask her what it was she was talking about and we have the coversation again. Where I can make more legible noises. She doesn't have a snooze button. But that house always has milk.

(This is a compilation list, by the way, and should in no way be reflected entirely on either Shark Tooth or Small or Dee. They're all pinaccles of perfection and perfectly beautiful flatmates and anyone would be lucky to have them. This is all me, not so much a pinaccle of perfection, but they love me, so I guess I get by.)

(Insert Sex And The City-esque Reference Here)

So, I've come out of the closet.

Yes, it's true, for all twelve of you who don't know my real name, now's your chance! It all began one fine sunny Friday morning, when a journalist called me from Delhi, saying she wanted to do a story on me for the Telegraph UK. I've been in blogging stories before, but mainly as an aside, you know, anon bloggers, women bloggers etc. This was going to be a profile on me. ME. Of course, faced with this immensely flattering (and somewhat puzzling) proposition, I agreed to do it. "We'll need to use your real name," she said. "Really?" said I, "My real name? Couldn't we just go with eM or The Compulsive Confessor or something?" "But when your book comes out, people will know your real name anyway," she said reasonably. I couldn't think of a convincing argument to that, and besides she said this was the Telegraph in the UK and it was unlikely many people in India would read it. (To which I now say, HAH!) Anyhoo, I spoke and she wrote and ta-dah, pretty profile duly came out on Sunday.


(For the sake of complete honesty (and really, what else can I hide here anymore?) I confess the hair was only temporary. I'm thinking of getting it bonded though, but right now it's standing out in a rebellious afro around my face. And the identity of that shoulder, heh, that goes with me to my grave. Though, not Volt. That much I can tell you.)

Moving on. I thought only I had read it and some friends who I forwarded the link to in great excitement, but Monday morning and my Facebook inbox was full of people asking whether it was "really" me. And then I saw two other links on my referrals, one from Alootechie, which is followed by some very kind comments here and one from Sepia Mutiny here. (With not so very kind comments, a choice selection of which I think I shall add here just in case you don't feel like reading the whole thing.) Bouquets and brickbats. The price of stardom one supposes, my dahlinks. Well, this whole thing should only last another ten seconds, according to the fifteen minutes of fame theory, so I might as well enjoy it while I can.

(In another puzzling quandry, I'm debating whether or not to leave this post up, now that I'm so easily Googleable. What do you think?)


Comments from Sepia Mutiny, for your reading pleasure (because everyone loves a good snark)


I'm a Sex and the City addict, but these postings just didn't do it for me. The charm of 'Bridget' and 'Sex' is that they are able to capture a town, a city, a culture. The postings left so much to be explored. Take for example, her relationship status post. Isn't the fact that this woman could only effectively inform her social network about her new relationship via facebook more important than her updating her status with a little heart? She needs to leverage her fodder, if you ask me. But that's just my two cents.


unless her book has stunning revelations about murli manohar joshi's syphilitic saffron balls, i'll take cutler's washingtonienne any day.
meenakshi's blahg is as inane as carrie's confessions to her trusty mac, and i hope that her navel doesn't wither away under all this compulsive gazing.

I don't doubt that she could write well. If you go through her archives, you might notice that too. But unfortunately (or at least so it appears to me) she writes about sex and alcohol and men and feminism not because she really has something to say, but merely because it fits with the image she's created for herself. She seems to pick a topic only because it is controversial or scandalous (and therefore, might translate into 45 comments). But because she has a good grasp of the English language, because she knows how to be funny, she initially got away with what was just repetition. Sure, she probably gets 400 hits a day. But if those readers are merely people who visit her blog for their daily cheap thrill then eM should perhaps re-think her writing strategy.


Would anyone be proud to have someone like this as their sister or daughter? Maybe some of you women would...I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. I haven't read her blog but based just on what's being described here.

Sigh. There's no going back now, I suppose, unless I delete this blog and start an entirely new one.

ps: By the way, guys at Sepia Mutiny? I'm totally kicked that you linked to me. Thank you. :)

UPDATE (More weigh-ins, leave your link in the comments if you had something to say)

Sakshi's post here on Traditional Good Indian Womanhood.

Melody's post here where she overcomes bravely her prudishness! :)

Now I remember why I used to use song lyrics as post titles, headlines are tough. Therefore, this post title is: Life Goes Easy On Me

> Can you believe it's October already? Today is Puja's birthday, 26 this year, but for us, always twenty. If I were in Delhi, I'd be at her house, for the chanting and the meal and the chatting with her mother and assorted friends who gather twice a year--sometimes more--to celebrate her memory. Grief gets easier with time, it's simple now for me to focus on the happy stuff. To lose two friends in five years is hard, but then at the same time it reminds you of how transient life is, how it could all vanish in an instant. Thanks to Puja, thanks to Shakti, I love harder now, and I say what I feel always. I know my other friends feel this way too, or maybe it's just us mellowing over the years, we don't squabble and if we do it's brief and fleeting. We, most of us, think of our friends as part of our extended family, I know I do, but not in the taking-for-granted way, in the I'm-so-glad-you're-in-my-life way. I'm so glad you're in my life.

> October also means it's Leela's wedding in about three weeks which is terribly exciting, and also for me, the first friend's wedding that I've attended. Knowing someone from when they were two and half to now, at 26, means that there should be at least three extremely sentimental moments. Bring on the tears! I've been planning the bachelorette party, which really shouldn't be called that because there are *gasp* BOYS attending. I threw a huge internet hissy fit, to which Leela responded by email saying, "Boys are (mostly) not the enemy." Hmph. I wanted the Jat stripper! And the blown up condoms! And the penis shaped cake! If you're a girl friend planning on getting married soon and planning on asking me to help organise the bachelorette party; let me warn you, I will use all these things. I'm not going to be cheated out of a Jat stripper TWICE. (Yes, apparently there are male strippers in Delhi, this one was on Pieces' reccomendation, and apparently he's quite dishy.)

> Being in a relationship for me always means I'm writing reams and reams of bad poetry. Don't worry--it's SO bad, I'm not going to inflict any on you, but it's sorta fun to indulge myself in the whole our tangled limbs lie across your bed thing. You know, when you were a preteen and in the throes of your first crush and you doodled their initials over and over again? Similar. Incidentally, my first crush's initial was A, and to this day when I'm doodling I make fancy As and tiny as and As with shading in them and then write M, m, M, m everywhere. That and snails. I do a good snail.

> The Bagel Shop now stocks Goan Pork Sausage bagels, which is dreadful because they are so good. And so full of calories. I'm not normally a calorie counting person, but in the last week, two people have watched my eating habits and shaken their heads. "You'll be fat someday," they both warned, and I can see the day when I'm all large assed and bloated, grease running down my chin but still it only makes me eat more while I'm still skinny.

> And because I haven't done a party round up in a while, here's what my last week has been like: Sunday, a heritage walk around Crawford Market with Deepti and another friend, Himanshu, and then, because Himanshu's cool like that, we toddled over to the Press Club and the rest of the evening was spent in general debauchery. I woke up the next morning with a stamp on my wrist and no idea where it had come from, which made me puzzle for a while till I remembered us briefly staggering giggling into Polly Esther's and dancing. Yeah, it was one of those evenings. Monday, I went with Sameer, Chrisann, KVA and a bunch of other people to Soul Fry to sing karaoke. I volunteered to sing Fever, but what I didn't realise was that one of the people with us, an old friend I haven't seen in ten years, Ostrich, in whose honour the evening was organised, was actually a rock star. No, I mean it. I forget what she sang first, but she did this version of It's Raining Men that made people actually dance to her singing. And yell out "Encore!" So, yeah, when it was my turn I declined, but Chrisann made me. But thankfully, she sang too. We did a nice job. Or, it just helps that we have boobs. No one boos you if you have boobs. Tuesday, I went to spend some time with Volt, after watching Loins Of Punjab Present with Chrisann and KVA (sweet movie, you should watch it). He has a flu and is like most of his gender, rather grouchy during it all, but we watched yet another movie (The Princess Bride) and did other fun couple things. (Although, I think I caught his cold). Wednesday, I went out with Sameer and Ostrich to Zenzi, where they most unsmartly chose the outside non-AC section (which to be fair is where I normally sit, but yesterday was like a tropical rainforest). "Air conditioning," Ostrich got out before she collapsed across the table, so we took her to *ahem* Janata, where there WAS air conditioning and where we drank much cheap alcohol and speculated about the table next to us which had two oldish men and one blonde child, who looked about 12. (We came up with: toy boy, business partner, albino, really, really young looking 25 year old). Whatever is the world coming to?