Get Set Reddy

Recently, less than two months ago, I was visiting Hyderabad to attend a cousin's engagement. He was getting engaged to a reddy girl. Now, I do not know what that means but I am told, it is a Hindu caste. After finishing engineering at IIT Delhi, my cousin went to US of A, to pursue The All India Famous American Dream.

During his stay in New Jersey, he met his fateful femme fatale. After spending 23 years in India and merely two years in USA, my cousin appeared to have change for the worse.

• He insisted we only eat at fine dining restaurants and order dessert after dinner.
• He always carried a water dispenser (water from NJ) where ever we went. Apparently, he was susceptible to water hazards. This made it extremly difficult for us to lug and take it into pubs.
• He carried a utility bag around his waist, the size of a suitcase.
• He had a Delhi-Yank drawl obviously. This was terrible.
• He showed pictures of his fiance and him at Niagara Falls with his fiance dressed in a salwar kameez and trainers. I had a laughing fit though he considered it very rude.

Sometime in the month of April, my parents, missus and I and a whole bunch of people I do not know and want to know, headed to the IT Das Kapital. I wasn't fully aware, in the month of April, Hyderabad is a phlogiston. I had packed a few woolens and many perspiring clothes for the engagement party. I had myself to blame for this huge blunder even when my wife clearly saw it on National Television that the temperature in Hyderabad was perilously close to 40C.

The entire trip had a bad beginning with my cousin's grandfather forgetting his box of, this is true, suppositories and realising this half hour before take-off. Shit. The flight was delayed for two hours due to technical difficulties and when we finally landed in Hyderabad, my cousin's family had already arrived and left.

Apart from a few life-threatening mishaps that failed to execute, we were all in Hyderabad in one piece. I insisted that we (parents, wife and I) stay in a hotel, while my cousin and his fiance insisted we stay with them in their bungalow in Jubilee Hills. Unless I know the people I am visiting very well, I prefer staying in hotels after one bad experience.

This was a few years ago when my wife insisted that I stay with her uncle on a trip to Mumbai. So did her uncle insist. He was very warm and receptive, like all normal families are, until the next morning. Apparently, her uncle practised AOL (Art Of Living) passionately (I wasn't warned about this earlier) and wanted to institutionalize me into this art form. Not only did he wake me up at an ungodly hour of 3:30 hours, but also insisted I take a bath with cold water and fart loudly. We performed Sudarshan Kriya and many other tongue-twisting yogasanas till 5:00 hours. At 5:00 hours, he promptly left me in the living room and went back to bed. I couldn't get any sleep after this rigorous exercise, I was ver sore and unable to go through my day long meetings. At 7:00 hours, he offered me Dahlia seeds with milk for breakfast. After that one instance, I have never met this uncle again.

The bad experience continued with my cousin's fiance's grandmother who isn't educated was screaming, I kid you not, Randi! Randi! on spotting us. We were all taken aback, until my cousin chuckled and said, everyone in Sunita's family is that. The hosts were kind enough to provide us, a chauffeur driven car. After buying stuff worth a few Nizam Jewels, we got back to the bungalow for dinner. I have to tell you, we were all very pleased not to find the grandmother in the front yard.

The entire next day we spent like crazed tourists seeing the sights & sounds of Hyderabad. The only choice of food available at restaurants is birayani & biryani. I wasn't particularly complaining but my mother was summoning the chefs at every eatery and teaching them the art of roti making. At that point, I feigned, I didn't particularly know her. That evening was the big function.

My wife was dressed up in a kimono and I was wearing a muscle tee and shorts for the engagement. I am kidding. I was wearing an unusually heavily embroidered Sherwani while my wife made many failing attempts to wrap a sari around herself. I was so well-dressed, I had a few strangers come by and congratulate me on the impending marriage. This process continued until I moved my wedding ring from my ring finger to my middle finger.

The party was in their compound with the entire house lit up with fancy serial lights. It was beautiful until the real tamasha began.

• The guest list contained more people than the population of all the Scandinavian countries put together. Apparently, my cousin's FIL is a highly influencial Reddy. I think for their wedding, they will book the entire Pragati Maidan.
• There were absolutely no pretty women in the gathering. Most were below 16 and the rest were above 60 with innumerable kids thrown in for nuisance value. I was informed later that reddy girls of marriageable age are not invited to functions. It is a hoodoo belief, I think.
• The place looked like a remake of Mackenna's Gold though the actors were fat, ugly and dark. I wondered where Mr. Omar Sharif was.
• I have never ever in my entire life seen so many dhotis and ghunghats slip. This appeared to happen naturally causing very little alarm among the people in the vicinity. The bad part was neither of them were stirring anything in my underbody.
• Most of the men were dressed like parole convicts while their respective partners were extravagantly dressed. If anybody wants to rob gold for a living, this was the place for it. So much gold, even a blind man could lay his hands on some.
• Some high profile ministers were also invited for the engagement, which ensured that there were lots of fat men in Safari suits and dysfunctional guns surronding us. Occasionally, a sniffer would come by and smell my unmentionables.
• I am not bigoted but my wife believed a lot of people in the party were wearing tacky Chiffon and Georgette saris. She claimed they couldn't carry them off. I do not know what the expression means.
• She also claimed, most of them were putting-on-an-Hyderabad-Yank accent until she had to tell them all that we were not from The States. They were all a huge source of entertainment for me.
• The food was an all south-indian affair. I did not recognize anything but an array of vegetable salads. The food was extremely spicy and floating in oil yet very tasty. I ate most of everything without prejudice. I spotted my mum having a crash course on roomali rotis while my dad was chatting up some heavily-clad aunties. With my dad, language is the least of his worries.
• My cousin seemed to have taken a liking for the reddy clan instantly. Not that he had much of a choice but my belief strengthened when I saw him gifting dime-a-dozen use-and-throw razors to some of his fiance's uncles.
• The bride-to-be was dressed in a traditional south-indian sari. The sari was so scintillating, I was gently reminded of J.J Thomson's Alpha-Particle Scattering Experiment.
• During the entire party, the responsibility to take care of my cousin's grandfather was shouldered on me. He kept chewing me up on buying him suppositories until I fed him some mango pickle. I think he will always remain grateful to me.

The hosts were extremely garrulous yet courteous. The next morning we left Hyderabad with oodles of weight and a burning ass. My cousin wants to move to Hyderabad after marriage and involve himself in land-grabbing activities.

The only thing that is still bothering me is, after the party a lot of members of the reddy clan walked over to us ( wife and I) and as a parting nicety with a smile on their face said, rape randi...

Yours sambasiva reddy.