Groan!

Groan, groan!

I am soooooooooo hungover! And I don’t even drink!

Last night, we had a little party at home to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary and my birthday. Just a few friends.

Hmmmmm….

By the time we were rolling, we had something like 50+ people crawling over our lawn!

We decided to invite our neighbours as well from all around – after all they have to put up with our noisy events, so this was the least we could do. Turned out to be a great idea – nice people all around. Shubha knew most of them, of course, but I met many of them for the first time.

But let me rewind a bit….

We had originally planned to have a little barbeque on the lawn, with everyone pitching in with the grunt work, led by Sony (our resident cooking expert . But as we planned things, we realised that this would result in chaos, so we chickened out and went back to catered food from Mrs.Bali.

Towards afternoon, we began setting up things. One corner of the lawn near the house was the music section, where we set up amps, mixers, echo chamber, CD players, mikes guitars (just in case anyone was in the mood to play). We hired bunches of gareden chairs and sprinkled the lawn with them. One end of the lawn was set up as the buffet, with an impressive looking bar beside it.

Major battle with lighting. We didn’t want to flood the place with light, but we did need more light than we had. So we got a huge halogen lamp in and hung it from the roof, but that turned out to be a bad idea – everyone was blinded in seconds. Thankfully, the engineer in me woke up just in time, and we turned the lamp to face the building (which is painted white), resulting in the light being diffused and reflected, creating the perfect lighting effect.

The new amplifier (yep, got it exchanged, it is now a Stranger PM100) delivered major thump, and once we hooked the CD player to it, we had a great sounding music system.

Suddenly, the whole place filled with thick, dense smoke! Total panic. Turns out that someone down the road had a snake problem, and decided to burn down his compound! That is all good and fine, but we couldn’t possibly party in gas masks, could we? Luckily, they saw reason, and doused the flames. While I had every reasonto be hopping mad about the incident, we quickly realised that they had actually done us a favour – the smoke had driven away all mosquitos in the area! Hurray!

Caterers came in on time, and by 8pm, we were ready to party. All we now needed was our guests.

And they showed up in droves! Apart from two of them, every invitee showed up, including our neighbours. Within 30-40 minutes, the lawn was full.

Gopi was the barman, and he had his job cut out. Apart from those dried up sponges from Exocore that needed soaking , quite a number of the people decided that it was time to tipple. And those who said “I don’t drink alcohol” had no clue what it was that made the chocolate mousse taste so good – Mrs.Bali did not spare the rum on that concoction!

A major chocolate cake suddenly made an appearance, and Shubha and I were required to cut it. I could see from the way Gopi was keeping open flames away from it and firmly resisted any candles that this cake too had Mrs.Bali’s “magic touch” in it

By now, most people were shifting from one foot to the other, with expectant looks on their faces. I have a reputation for pulling a stunt at such parties, and I wasn;t going to disappoint them.

First, a long and winding speech. After a while, people were pointing at their watches, then started holding up calendars.

IAC, I put them out of their misery by announcing that my gift to Shubha was a 5400 sq.ft. (500 sq.m.) 60′x90′ (18.2m x 27.4m) site for our own house, located on the road to Anjali’s school and the new International Airport. Thanks to Gopi and Avinash (who pushed and prodded me into making this commitment), and Swati Kiran’s expert advice (she is going to be the architect of the house), the papers were signed the day before. If all goes well, we should start building some time this year.

We then pounced on the food, which was judged “fabulous” by the vast majority, and “marvellous” by the rest. No complaints in that department!

Somewhere along the way, Jessie’s hubby Josh grabbed a guitar and started playing, and I joined him as well. Finally, I stood there and sang a few solos myself.

For those of you who are wondering how the dog took all this – the answer is “not very gracefully”. We had to tie him up at the other side of the house, were he first barked, then howled and finally sulked. Surprisingly, Honey The Cat decided to be a major party animal, and was seen mingling with guests! Not bad for a major bulging momma about to deliver the goods!

Finally, around midnight, we decided to wind down. Guests departed, and the Exocore gang helped clean up the place. Chairs were stacked and put in the garage, tables were folded and packed away (and Sony almost lost a finger there), equipment was packed off, and we collapsed into chairs to catch our breath.

Vaibhav, Sony and Shanu then joined Anjali, Shubha and me for a major yack session, talking about house designs, bitching about various assorted people and generally ensuring that the clock struck 2 a.m. before we finally crashed out!

OK, and in the end – here are some photos! Enjoy!