Saturday, the day of the wedding. We had the whole morning to ourselves and so we used it to go and check out some of the apartments provided by the State Department (while we are in DC for training before shipping out to post, we will live in corporate housing provided by Oakwood in Arlington, VA). We quite liked them all--all had swimming pools and very swanky feel to them. And guess what (I did let out a little squeal of joy)--we get maid service once a week! Oh boy! Why am I so excited about that? Well, have you ever noticed that a good deal of your fights with your beloved circle around house chores? It just always seems to me that I do all the house work, and it magically seems to him that he is spending his weekends scrubbing and vacuuming. Well, he ain't. So, it will be fantastic to have someone help us with the cleaning and resolve the cleaning ratio conundrum. At any rate, we decided that we'd love to live in Roslyn. We will know where they will put us in on July 15.
Then we dropped off Son at our fabulous friends M&M--they have a son who is the same age as Son (if you remember, they visited us last week for the good-bye party and their car was vandalised). They took Son and apparently had a party with a bunch of other kiddos that evening while we ran away to the wedding. M&M are awesome and we love them!
Well, we had a lot of fun. Our night stated with a Hindu and a Christian ceremonies, followed by copious amounts of Kir Royals, a fabulous Indian buffet, an unforgettable sight of scores of Indian aunties swaying their sareed hips to the tune of "I Gotta a Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas, and finished with a particulalry peculiar and hysterical discussion of Funyuns (no, they are NOT funny bunions; turns out they were simply onion chips). At 1 am, we dragged our weary, partied-out butts to bed.
On Sunday, we went for a (completely unnecessary) shopping spree at Kohl's where Son spent a blissful hour running and hiding around the racks of clothes while I was trying to find what I need, chase him around to his utter delight and stare fiercely back at other irritated shoppers as he was rolling on the floor giggling. After about 63 hours in traffic and amidst Son's inhuman yelling, we stopped for a brief but refreshing visit at (another) one of Diplomat's cousins house in NJ. They fed us copious amounts of tea and bhel poori (good people!) and sent us mercilessly back on our way to NYC. An hour and half later and more yelling from the back, we were finally back. Gosh, it is good to be home.
The way you have presented made us feel as if we were present during the wedding; it is a natural happening in our marriage festivals (!); when a large number of witnesses assemble and with nothing else to do (they cannot obviously be part of the ceremony)they team up and compare notes on their spouses children so called achievements, social upward mobilities in thier families, and live on vicarious things of the past. Indians erase their self and live for the kids and dominate kids in the beginning years and get dominated by the happenings in their kids' lives till end of their life. There is nothing like living for personal space once there are kids, and for their sake they even stick together in marriage till end.
ReplyDeleteAmma does a good reading of your blog musings, especially when the kids of her own talk less and write the least. Now you have beome the only soulof the family who communicatees effectively, cogently and cater to all her possible questions.
Incidentally who was the NJ cousin of my son who served Bhelpuri and chai for breakfast/lunch!
By the way Arlington should be a good place to live, (not because it houses the arlington cemetry made famous by the memorable JFK Jr's photograph taken on the eve of his father-president's burial!) more because of the greenary surrounding the locality.
Please continue your blog and one day you may be able to present an interesting book about the travails as well as the short term pleasures involved in managing a growing up toddler for the benefit of other young mothers!