Garbhology and the art of social discourse

Whew - the Dandia and Garbha charity event I attended last weekend at Copeland school in aid of social projects in India were frantic. The charity event was organised by the Lotus Trust in aid of Vrindavan Food for Life and Bhaktivedanta Hospital in Mumbai. Over five hundred people danced their way through traditional devotional music well through the night, glittering in colourful silks and exotic jewellery. And yes, even the men – the youth in any case - seem to favour silk kurtas and all kinds of silver jewellery embedded in odd parts of the body that makes no sense to me. It must be a sign of my middle-agedness,

I am not exactly an elegant dancer, but one of those 'getting-along-in-a-moderate-way' types. But my friends Rishi Kumar and Sanjeev Patel were like twins who were born to dance or something like that. They whizzed past everyone in intricate twirls and synchronised steps, with their Dandia sticks whirring in the air like some helicopter come to pick strawberries, leaving the rest of us gasping for breath.

And then there was my good friend Prash. He suddenly decided to spring one of his unknown acquaintances on me. The acquaintance was quite harmless, but rather boring in a manner of speaking – boring because when the first words of greetings were exchanged, none of us knew what to speak to him.

My other friends Amit, Devesh and I were just warming up to some chilled-out debates around the latest Pirates movie, when Prash must have decided that we needed to be punished for not including him in our male-bonding prattle. Prash, who is known as the original nalayak in my friend circle, conveniently disappeared two seconds after dropping his acquaintance on us. Exactly ten seconds later, Devesh and Amit politely excused themselves and planted their tactful selves one row ahead of me.

Politeness personified that I am (he he he), I stuck around rather bravely with Prash’s harmless friend, trying to break ice. The only problem was that the ice was as hard as South African diamonds, and there was no thaw in site.

Luckily for me, Shyam, who has just come fresh from India, walked by with a warm greeting. I managed to dump Prash's harmless friend on him - whew- and almost felt like one of those fortunate blokes who had just managed to break out of Alcatraz.

One of my mates wants to get married in an honorable sort of way (identity protected so his position is not compromised. Well to be honest, I am protecting his identity for my own protection – he would probably give me a black eye if he saw his name in print here). The poor bloke gets twenty elderly maasis descending on him at every social event, trying to match him with single girls at events like weddings and Garbhas. When my mates were pulling his leg in a humorous but honorable way to make a move and talk to some of the two hundred single girls single girls dancing and prattling around the hall, a young man who had just come from India overheard the friendly banter.

"Do you know how I can meet someone too?" he whispered to me in all earnestness. "I do want to find someone to get married to.'

In the meantime, my son Neel kept popping up every 5 minutes between his fledgling dance steps to take a sip from a mineral water bottle I held in my hand.

Fifteen minutes later, the man who had just arrived from India announced, 'Hey I am going to join that group with that aunty in that pink chaniya-choli. She is teaching some groovy moves to the guys and gals dancing with her.'

An elderly man sitting nearby came down heavily on us and said sarcastically, 'Soooo? All of you have left your wives on the other side of the room and you are having fun here by yourselves, are you?'

‘Kaka, don’t preach,’ sniggered someone. I felt a bit guilty and tried to look away. One must respect elders after all, not to forget spouses.

I managed to look to the far end of the room and noted that all the spouses were having a great time dancing with other women – none of them seemed to be missing us and seemed to be having a great time anyway.

I got home tired and weary, way past midnight - only to be woken up at an unearthly hour, at the crack of dawn by Leela maasi - my wife's elderly mentor at the temple. She wanted my wife to get to the temple early in the morning to help make samosas for the shop (that is my wife’s weekly seva at the temple).

'Maasi?' I croaked half-asleep. “”Whadya want?'

'Deepali chhe?' she demanded in a voice of authority that no one else in the entire temple could even attempt to muster.

I dared not tell Leela maasi to stop calling so early in the morning, and just passed the phone meekly to my wife.

Talk about paper tigers!