Journey to India

Allo, Hola and Namasté

 

So, just a reminder that the kids' have a great blog at http://www.moghog.blogspot.com and that in my posting "Down and Out in Andal" there are a couple of good controversial comments that are worthy of a much longer conversation.

 

We all went out looking for a drink and Christmas company on Christmas Eve. We didn't find it, but we had fun. We took a couple of autorickshaws, aka as "tuk-tuks", to a fabulous rooftop hotel restaurant/bar, complete with a green lawn, but alas, there wasn't a soul there, so it was hard for us to get into the spirit .... the relucant manager told us to go to the Taj, a chain of five star hotels in India. We got there only to find that the place was swamped with soldiers and eager looking tagalongs who were fawning over the Minister of Railways, whose name I forget. We made our way to an empty dance floor in the back, where a well intentioned rock and roll band were churning out old western hits. Much to our dismay, we found that that neither Mehdi or I had brought our credit cards, so we had to make do with about 1500 rupees, which is normally a fortune, buit not at the Taj. A beer cost 165 rupees... mind you it was a big domestic Kingfisher beer.

 

So after a little beer, and lots of snacks which were on the house, Mehdi and I danced, all alone on the dance floor which had these funky square lights.... between the Bollywood moves, bellydancing, blues-y dancing, chacha, salsa, Ricky Martin moves, we just had so much fun.... the staff were really appreciative as they had otherwise had a really slow night. They smiled and waved and egged us on. So did a Japanese couple who appeared to be on their honeymoon, and said my dancing was better than the singing. I invited the railway minister to join us, but I don't think the waiter actually gave him my message. . The waiter also volunteered that perhaps the minister was too fat... too bad for him. It would do him good. At some point, Bashu and Zaman asked if they could perform, and since it was a slow night, they said yes.

 

We took the tuktuks home, as they had been waiting for us. The streets were deserted, and we crawled into bed, exhausted and happy that we had made ourselves a great Christmas Eve. :-)

 

Merry Christmas....