10

1. I went back to driving a car.

2. Met my newest blogger friend :)

3. Saw the sun rise.

4. Took Kanani around for good chaat in Delhi.

5. Wrote something worthwhile after really long!

6. Did some brainstorming too!

7. Deleted useless movies and music from my system. Swetha, still hold you responsible for that 9 GB of unsorted music! Grrr!!

8. Got back to the job hunt after a good 10 days!

9. Met my old love, brown Telugu Hyderabadi no-more-skinny Mansi!

10. Got tarot card reading done for fun. The results made me regret going for it!

Road Trip to Amritsar

My brother and his wife had planned a two-day trip to Golden Temple, Amritsar right after the wedding. But something got into them and they asked all cousins on both sides to accompany them. They insisted, and the party got extended by two more days.

We were 20 people in four cars ready to drive all the way to Amritsar on 24th morning. A very eventful road trip, it had accidents, flat tyres, loud music, lots of laughter, even more sleepy heads, chaat, lassi, punjabi radio, crazy bus drivers, crazier truckers, insane video recordings, and endless drama.

Both ways the drive took longer than expected because of various reasons. One obvious one being way too much coordination required between all the cars.

For a few scores of kilometres, while my cousin Nidhi drove one of the cars, I exchanged places with Swaroop and sat in the seat next to her. The drama that followed led to me showing the finger to one of the many assholes that didn't give way or acted crazy simply because we were two women in the front. Other ways of getting back at them included not giving way after overtaking either. :D

It was my first visit to Amritsar and to the Golden Temple. As expected, there was a great rush and no peace. We stayed there till the time Guru Granth Sahib was 'put to sleep', and then headed out for some nice dinner. The restaurant we ate at, Crystal, also had a bunch of typical punju boys celebrating a birthday over food and drinks. From a distance itself they met the stereotype so beautifully that it amused us. The 'pangebaaz keeda' in me was itching to have some fun but I succumbed to pressure of behaving in front of family members. :P

I did not see the Wagah Border, didn't have any Amritsari kulche or papad, or even buy any punjabi jutti. But I do not know if I'll ever go back there again. Way too much chaos to handle!

One good thing - my monthly tripping is going well. I would like to tweak last month's entry in the list by putting a Pune-Delhi trip on it. :P

Rest is all good!

Oh oh... while we were going from our hotel to the Golden Temple, I saw a man on a cycle-rickshaw enjoying a can of Carlsberg. His wife sat next to him. :D

The Big Fat Punjabi Wedding

Relatives from outside of Delhi came over about a week in advance.

A lot of chai happened even though the temperature was going through the roof.

People noticed every single thing that the groom's immediate family wore at every function.

People checked me for not wearing make-up.

Everyone danced like crrrrrazy. Danced to the beat of the dhol, live music, a DJ, the baraat band, and to whatever else you can imagine.

In spite of a lot of planning and colour-coded Excel sheets, there still were things that we forgot at the last minute and had to run about for!

Chikan and daaru happened!!

Jealous relatives made their presence felt too.

The groom's cousins & friends did compete with the bride's cousins & friends over dance/joote/sarcasm and all things mindless.

Most cousins did not sleep before 6:00 am on any of the days and I hated sleeping earlier than the rest but the day-time responsibilities did not leave me with a choice.

The baraat was not on time.

As our guests increased during the pre-wedding days, the cooks shifted their set-up to our backyard and played punjabi music through the day too.

Bahut saara meetha tha!!! :D

But almost as expected, my parents and I hardly ate at any of the functions or even otherwise. So while people came and told us how the food was, we did not quite taste most of it.

A female cousin of the bride stared at my un-waxed arms at the wedding.
a) I did not have time for that stuff.
b) I had (and still have) sunburns all over both my arms because of all the running around in the heat. :-|

The groom was the calmest person in the house on the day of the wedding.

The whole house was nothing better than a railways platform. Things we managed to keep away before people came, lived. The rest - left shoe of a pair, right shoe of another pair, that watch, those papers, those clips, that charger, and a whole lot of other stuff - is yet to be found.

Power cuts did not cause the kind of problems voltage fluctuations did.

Paisa paisa paisa... so much frikkin' paisa got spent that I killed my age-old fancy for a fancy wedding for myself.

AND the maintenance of a double chin-less face is going down the drain as I am putting ALL the left-over juices/carbonated drinks/mithai/chocolates in my system!

Another back injury

Say hello to another injury of the back before you leave!

Aaargh!!!

Gaah!!

Today I reached the next level of health-related crap. My dentist made me a case study for his resident students. Must tell you it does not feel funny to lie in the dentist's chair and have more than one people looking into your mouth! :-|

Apparently I have teeth of a 40-year-old. Yet again, for no fault of mine. Apparently my stress/anxiety makes me grind my teeth at night and all the grinding over the years has resulted in me having a now useless set of canines with a fair bit of damage to other teeth too. Ugh!

I personally know that it is not just my teeth that have reached the 40-year point. Maybe I should speed up life and do all that I plan to real quick 'coz my body seems to be aging a lot faster.

Come on baby, now don't just give me a job, make me your CEO! And then soon I would like to become a supermom CEO who travels the world for leisure for six months in a year. Who's listening? *puppy face*

Nivea Ugh Deo!

I saw the ad for one of the variants of Nivea men's deodorant on TV today. A guy gets out of bed, sprays on a lot of the deo, and slips back into bed with a woman feeling fresh. And the woman can seemingly sense the freshness too. If I could, I would puke on the makers of this advertisement.

Whoever the fuck came up with the word 'fresh' there! There isn't a more yuck feeling in the world than have someone wear deo like that. Yuck yuck yuck!!!

Bottomline: There's no one place for stupid brains.

O Koi Gal Nai!

It is a little funny, but almost irritating to count the number of functions in a punju family wedding and figure each time that you're still short on clothes even after having shopped like crazy! When the wedding was scheduled for April and was going to clash with my end sem exams, I had done my share of shopping when I had come home in winters, having only accessories left to be done later. When I came home this time, we figured there were a few other occasions for which I need more clothes. So I shopped more. And today, when one of my excited-for-the-wedding aunts was over to talk about all the preparation, we figured that I am still short of one suit. Reaching the point of being slightly irritated with the whole jazz, I thought I'd just stroll into Dilli Haat and see if I can find something there so that I could get done with it asap! The first stall I stopped at had a gorgeous gold coloured suit. It was all gold, and yet very sophisticated. But I decided to walk around a little more to see the available options. And I landed at another store which had authentic punjabi phulkari dupattas. Now let me tell you that even though phulkari is supposed to be only thread work, these artisans can make such incredibly pretty clothes out of it that you won't believe your eyes. And you know I have always been the more silk/threadwork kinda person as against shiny sequins stuff. But sometimes (when it is your own brother getting married) you are compelled to buy the brighter stuff because you cannot afford to look under-dressed. Bleh. So I got so confused between the two that I came home empty-handed. [New feat achieved in my shopping history - coming home without anything in spite of it being a need-based shopping outing AND me finding more than one thing worth my money!!]

"Kisi friend ki shaadi pe kaam aa jayega."

Now quickly tell me which one of you is getting married soon enough for me to go back and buy that gold thing so that I can wear it to your wedding!!