My 9/11

9/11 has a certain ring to it since terrorist hit America that fateful day in 2001. There are certain aspects of this date which are worth observing. If you are in America, 9/11 would mean 11th September. In Europe, India and a lot of the wider world, 9/11 would mean 9th November. So all depends on how you write your days and months.

My 9/11 was very interesting because it was wedding day for me in Jaipur. While the whole day and night, and following day was quite surreal, there are some observations which I thought I will share with the readers:

1) Clearly, dancing is not the forte for a majority of people who do end up dancing in an Indian wedding. It definitely does not come naturally in my family, proof being awful dancing by my father and I can definitely match him step by step for some awful steps. There were quite a few on the wedding day, especially Rob, who did try but was awful. I guess he should be given the benefit of the doubt because it was his first Indian wedding. If you had seen Bhupesh grind, you could see that he doesn't dance a lot but is super with wedding numbers...so take in some alcohol, get inspired a little and shake it for your friend somehow managing on top of that cranky horse.

2) India has a big eunuch problem and our party was not going to escape this menace. They do their job well and have you by your balls at the very time when you would definitely not get into an argument with them. Their deal is simple: give them good amount of money and they won't do what they can(too shitty to describe here). Not so easy for us...this one came to us and asked for money...my dad offered some which was much much below his expectation...and the nuisance started...somehow we managed to get away but not without our share of embarrassment.

3) Finally, a lot of people offer cash as a gift to the bride and the groom( Unlike some who really find and get time to come up with something really innovative). So we got our share of envelopes and believe me, the number of these envelopes during the period of the ceremonies can be quite substantial. I am wondering while sitting on stage( because after some time, what is happening becomes quite repetitive) what would be an average contribution if you take out the outliers...I am thinking somewhere between 150-200 rupees per household. I am also thinking with th total crowd around us that the number of households would be around 200. So that makes it around 40,000 rupees in gifts. Now this number does not seem very big to me and I am wondering if my mind is already in the recession mode where it has already factored in the suppressed desire of the participants to gift cash and save money in this turbulent time!!!