bring the night on

Yesterday was ridiculously fun! First things first--as you know, I had ordered tshirts for all the expats, based on whether they identified with being a hillbilly or a posh suburbanite. I was convinced that they would not be ready in time for the scavenger hunt, but they were miraculously ready early yesterday afternoon. I had a little adventure going to pick them up--the store was located in a back alley in Secunderabad, about an hour away from my apartment, and rather difficult to find. Ansari got me there without incident, although I was a bit concerned when we drove over a bridge that had a sign with a skull and crossbones and a warning that said 'Dilapidated Condition. Drive Slow.' Considering how dilapidated things are in general here, a bridge with an explicit warning about poor safety is alarming to say the least. However, we made it, and the shirts turned out really really well. I had just enough time when I got home to mess it up in true hillbilly style (by cutting out the neck and by slicing and knotting the sleeves like a poor attempt at 'fashion'--see photos below) before the game began.

And boy, what a game! We split into three teams: one Banjara Hillbillies team (me, Josh, and Regina, who was surprisingly born as a hillbilly before her complete transformation into a shopping machine), and two Banjara Hills 90210 teams (Jessie, Nick, Saamra, and Rohit on one team, and Salim, Katzman, and Lauren on the other team). Then, we parted ways. My team got a lot of great shots; unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures of dogs, which should have been free points, but we were looking for quintessential veg and nonveg dogs, and that cost us the whole game. We lost by one point to Salim/Katzman/Lauren, who took the 'one point for every empty beer' rule serious and drank twelve beers in their car--they also got lucky and found a bigger-than-usual autorickshaw with about ten people in it, and so they got 22 points between the beers and the rickshaw photo. Oh, well. I don't like to lose, but a) there was no prize, and b) it wasn't a serious game, and finally c) we all had loads of fun, and so I can't complain.

Also, I kissed a water buffalo, so it will be interesting to see whether I get a weird lip fungus from my momentary lapse of judgment. I picked a good water buffalo to kiss, since its horns were curled and so it couldn't gore me--but it was a little skittish and started to move away, and then I panicked, lunged, and faceplanted into/kissed the water buffalo's rear flank. It apparently ran away at that point, but I was too busy closing my eyes at my own stupidity and wiping dirt off my face to notice. I'm very very happy that Regina and Josh snapped the picture at exactly the right moment, because I would have been really sad if we didn't have photographic proof of that moment. We went back to the car and I rinsed off my face and then smeared Purell hand sanitizer on my lips, so hopefully I'll be okay. The drivers definitely think we're insane, though--Ansari claimed to have fun, and he definitely laughed a lot over the fact that I kissed the water buffalo, but I think that we're not doing a lot to improve the image of Americans in the world.

We saw lots of stuff in the city, as well as some parts that I've never seen before--it is criminally stupid of me that I haven't been to Charminar or gone shopping in the old city. By the time we got to Charminar (a mandatory stop), it was dark and raining and we were running out of time--but as we drove back towards the new part of town in the rain, I realized how gorgeous the old city is. Christmas-style lights were strung everywhere, and gorgeous Ganesh statues would suddenly appear next to Muslim clothing stores. The rain was not slowing down commerce, and made everything seem much fresher than it usually does. I may only have one weekend left in Hyderabad, but I'll have to spend at least some of it in the old city.

We reached the restaurant just in time; Ohri's has terrible service (it took them almost two hours to bring out mains after we ordered them), but they do have private rooms, which was vitally important since we were all on the verge of raucously drunk [note: to my underage nieces and nephew--Auntie Sara is not an alcoholic and is actually a rather responsible adult, and did not start drinking until college, so don't even think about drinking until you're in college or I'll rip your heads off]. Dinner was great fun, especially as I got to have my favorite Hyderabad cocktail--the Drunken Shaolin Monk. It actually isn't that good (it's just rum, pineapple juice, and a splash of grenadine), but it has a sparkly cocktail umbrella and a creative name, and so I'm loyal to it for those reasons alone. They brought the birthday cake before any of our appetizers, and said 'surprise cake!', which was a surprise to everyone else as much as it was to me since they had asked them to wait. We didn't eat the cake until after dinner--and by 'we didn't eat the cake', I mean 'I didn't eat the cake', since my coworkers essentially force-fed me half of the cake and then abandoned the other half when I reported that it wasn't very good. I don't have any pictures of the cake-eating right now, but I'll post them when I find some.

Basically, it is some sort of tradition here to feed cake to the birthday person--and someone came up with the brilliant idea that they should all feed me cake in different creative ways. So, I ended up sucking cake out of both a straw and a shot glass, licking it off of people's fingers, and eating it off Salim's bicep, just as an example. The cake was pretty nasty, and it's a wonder that I didn't throw up, but I have remarkable physical tolerance for self-destructive stupidity (probably because of my hillbilly genetics), and so it all went off swimmingly. I also liked being called 'birthday-madam' by the waiters at the restaurant; the head waiter even yelled at one of the other waiters for not giving birthday-madam enough eggplant, which made me laugh.

After dinner, we came back to my apartment, went through a bottle and a half of arrak and a prodigious amount of ice and pina colada mix, and watched/judged the photos from the scavenger hunt. Then, we set off fireworks at one a.m.; it likely woke up everyone in Madhapur, since Salim bought the set of 10,000 firecrackers that seemed to go on forever. Then, I went to bed with the amusing realization that I had thoroughly celebrated my birthday before my birthday had even started in the States.

I woke up today much less miserable than I deserved to be and made it to brunch at the Taj Krishna; now I'm home and writing in my blog so that my parents won't kill me, and I'm contemplating taking a nap before going to Angeethi for dinner. This is definitely the best birthday that I've had since 2001, which I suppose isn't saying much, but I'm glad that it's getting easier to celebrate on September 11 than it was in previous years. Of course, it helps that I'm halfway around the world. And of course there's the possibility that something bad will happen again; Regina put flowers in my hair yesterday (and later added cocktail umbrellas to the mix), and I was thinking that the last time someone decorated my hair for my birthday was when Emily put ribbons in my hair about half an hour before we found out about the twin towers, so we'll see if there's a causal relation between the two.

Now I should probably call my parents--pictures of Swampfest 2005 are posted below!