Matches made in Hell...

I hate marriages, I hated them as a child and with age it has only increased. Well you need not jump in shock and kill some 1000 innocent germs under your feet at this statement of mine. I can give you 10 good reasons why I cannot stand them. Ok that later first let me narrate the marriage that I attended yesterday. It wasn’t a marriage actually but one of the 101 pre-marriage functions that take place in a typical Sindhi family marriage. This particular function was the mehendi and lada, for those who are not aware of the second term it stands for LAdies DAnce function (well what in heavens name happened to gender equality I mean why are the guys not supposed to dance). Anyway as I reached the hall I realized I was the only person around, no there were others actually but they were leaving from the previous function. The fact is that we sindhis have a habit of starting our functions late and the later into the night the function goes the better it is supposed to be…anyways coming back to the function, I was alone and bored. To make things worse the food hadn’t started yet. Luckily I found a juice counter at the corner of the hall and from then till the end I gulped so many glasses of juice that the juicewala bhaiya seemed to have become sick of my face and I was actually getting worried that he was mixing something in my juice so that I never come back, but unluckily he did not get respite. After sometime some starters were being served, I guess the caterers took sympathy to my innocent always hungry looking face. So I helped myself to some pakodas, but the cameraman kept focusing his camera on me time and again as if I was some Osama bin laden in Abhishek-Aishwarya wedding. Well not his mistake considering I was the only guest around and he needed to do some preparation before shooting the actual bride and groom, but a camera on top of you is a very discomforting feeling especially when you are eating or may I say hogging big time. So there I was alone again and this time not even eating anything…

Well you would think that as the guests started coming in I would feel better, but that was far from true. As more and more people entered the hall, I started wondering if I had come to the right function as it was hard to recognize most of them. This could be attributed to 2 reasons: one that I do not attend too many family functions and two I have a pathetic memory especially when it comes to names and faces. So I had to face many situations where fat uncles and fatter aunties came up to me and asked in very apnapan type voice “pehchana kya??” for those who have been in this situation before I need not explain how tricky it can be, anyway what my 1 year of MBA has taught me I suppose is to bluff easily and this came in handy even during such times as I confidently would reply “haa aunty aapko kaise bhool sakte hain” the trick is to say it with 100% conviction and eye contact and run away from the scene immediately to avoid any further cross-questioning. One good thing about marriages is the pretty girls around and especially Sindhi females are known to be beautiful (well I was considering use of some not too decent word in this context but then my blog being a karan johar movie type family blog I would keep away from such things, promise!!). but then again the problem is most of the girls I don’t even know. For those of you who know me well would know for a fact that I am such a shy and innocent boy (ikdam meri mummy mere saath rahegi types) that I would rather sit alone and watch a documentary on Doordarshan rather than start conversation with a girl I do not know. So we are back to square one, I can only look at the girls and with my family around I better not stare continuously, come on yaar I have a reputation to keep up.

Well what follows is the part that I can not stand at all. This is when the music starts and people start dancing. Dancing comes as naturally to me as English comes to our Laloo Prasad Yadavjeee. But the thing is my cousins love me a lot so they cannot se me standing in a corner of the room twiddling my thumbs, so I am forced into the Akhada time and again to show my skills. Now what follows is some display of motion so complex and so visually unexciting that would make Sunny Deol think of himself as Miachael Jackson. For those of you who haven’t seen Sunny Deol dance, just try the following step and you know what he does: lift your left foot bring it to the side and stamp it on the floor so forcibly as if you were killing some deadly lizard, now repeat the same with your right leg and now about the hands …well who cares about the hands when the legs are doing so much already. The most important thing is your facial expressions which should be a cross between extreme anger and extreme constipation…that’s the Sunny Deol dance perfected!! Anyways coming back to yesterdays function, I was being shy at the beginning, but then a couple of beers later the feet started moving by themselves, not to mention the after effects of my little jig were 2 ladies getting badly punched in the mouth and a few others suffering from indigestion and sleeplessness after seeing my awkward movements.

After dancing for sometime, I started feeling hungry again. The food was so oily that I struggled to find the paneer pieces in the plethora of oil. Well I am not one of those calorie conscious persons who would freak out on seeing the smallest amount of oil. But this was getting a bit too much, plus the food was hardly anything but delicious (I hope my cousin whose marriage it was is not reading this and if she is then let me also add that the ice-cream was really awesome sachhhiiii). Then my uncle sent me to get a cake which he had already ordered for the function. It was one of those huge cakes which had 3 layers hence required me to carry 3 huge boxes. The difficulty I had in handling those huge boxes on the way back reminded me of Saurav Ganguly facing Shoaib Akhtar on the pacy Perth pitch. Lucky bastard Saurav at least he had pads and a helmet. The only good thing was that the girl at the cake shop was kinda cute and she smiled at me and before u say anything, no I was not wearing torn pants neither did I have anything funny written on my face to make her smile. It was a genuine smile, ikdam dil se!!! so then I came back and we cut the cake and after a lot of pushing others and abusing I managed to get really close to the cake which ensured that for a change I am not left only clapping while the ones at the front end up eating the cake. I am one of those who believe in having my cake and eating it too (this is the silliest phrase ever, if you have a cake why the hell would you not eat it) Anyway by now my torture had ended and we were finally headed home. Home sweet home yay!!! But jyada khush nahi honeka because this was just a pre-marriage function the real event is yet to follow, I cannot help but feel that if I enjoyed the net practice so much, the match would be nothing less than spectacular.