Gaurav's Birthday Party 2009

Birthday Party 2009

It was 00 hrs on 3rd Oct, I was reading the novel, Life of Pi, when Vinita came in the room and wished me Happy Birthday. I was pleasantly surprised to find a decorated yummy vegan chocolate double fudge ganache cake surrounded by candles. I was not yet out of the surprise when Vinita asked me to dress up properly because Aparna and her parents were about to come for the celebration.

This refreshed the memories from last year when she surprised me similarly by getting a tasty vegan cake in Austin. I clapped on my birthday song and carried out the rituals. You can find the happy surprise on my unshaved face in the pics as well. While we were talking, Aparna asked me a question about the party next day. Yet another surprise, but this time I realized it. Vinita had called about a 15 people for the birthday party at our home today evening.

Happily we slept and woke up pretty late the next morning, amid the online freshly baked wishes from people on skype, gmail and gchat. This was the time to plan for the big party (calling 15 people at home at the same time is one of the largest parties that we have done till now).

We listed the works to be done. Vinita did have a rough menu planned but we needed to buy almost all the things and had to finalize the menu. In between she met with Aparna, who told her about an Indian restaurant which caters to such parties. Vinita talked to the lady, let’s call her Pinky aunty and really liked this option compared to the other option, Pizzas. I was relieved that we had now outsourced the work and that we just needed to buy a very few things on our own and the whole dinner would be ready. This was an addictive feeling, alas! destiny had some other plans for me. We decided the menu and placed the order for tonight. Atleast our Indian friends would probably won’t want to hear about the mouth watering menu. So I wouldn’t mention it here.

We cleaned the apartment and went with Aparna to get the sodas, juices, salads and a few other things. We got ready for the party and I went with Aparna to get the food at about 6:45. When I called Pinky Aunty from outside her house and told her that I was there to get the food, she informed me that she was away to a party. Shocked I asked her about the order for tonight and she told me that she thought it was for ninth. I remembered an episode from How I Met Your Mother which I saw a few days ago, showing the marriage of Lily and Marshall. Things can possibly go wrong, but you got to take it easy.

So here I’m, waiting to get the food for my birthday party that Vinita planned, just to know that there is no food. Rather than losing the mettle I just told Pinky Aunty to cancel our order for tonight. I hope she heard ninth again. And I believe she did. Sometimes you just hear what you want to, and it works.

It was time to move to Plan B, which as Aparna puts it, is always Pizzas. I called Vinita, and possibly stopped her short of freaking out, asked her to order Pizza and garlic breads from Domino’s. One would think that all that had to go wrong had already gone wrong, but wait, no, more was yet to come. We like the thin crust pizzas from Domino’s and Vinita forgot to tell them about the thin crust, atleast the toppings were right.

Nevertheless we got the pizzas and reached home at 8:15. I was exactly an hour late in my own birthday party.

Ofcourse, only 5 of them had arrived by then and Vinita was trying her best to entertain them and to keep them busy with the starters.

Did you think this is it? No. Majority of the people were yet to come and slowly they did come, but we did not realize that pizzas without the covers of the delivery boy’s pizza bags, were getting cold. I later felt that people have eaten very less and were not enjoying the food. But now some games began and people started enjoying and it got better as the night progressed. I still felt some people were left out, but not significantly. Later I did heat some pizzas, but people were probably too busy to play and did not notice the pizzas. But they did relish the popcorns, cake, ice-cream with coke, coke and sprite ofcourse, chips, garlic breads etc. Some people may have missed non-veg pizzas or hard drinks, but sorry guys!

In between, the dark force inside guys and some girls started clamoring about the birthday bumps. And then I had to suffer, but thanks to Vinita and some to my weight, I was spared after a few bumps.

Blunders apart, it was a great boisterous party. At one point, someone told me that police can come if you are too loud after 10 and got me scared. But hell ya, I thought, though we did not have alcohol but we did have pizza to offer.

Thanks to Vinita for planning and arranging most of it. Thanks to Aparna for helping execute most of it. Abhinav was at his self today but might have missed speaking Marathi. Vikas did forget the occasion, but later made it unforgettable for us. Harsh was a master story teller and thanks to Jimmy that we all realized it. Palak Shah ofcourse, Anu and have you met Devyani?, Anoos teammate, made awesome Pictionary artists team. Thanks to Ashlesha for the games, otherwise Khushboo would relentlessly have made us play either Country orOne-Up One-Down. Suhas seemed to be in good hands with Reshma, until the no-objection certificate for birthday bumps. Thanks to all, for the friendship, wishes, and gifts and for making it one of our best and noisiest birthday parties I had.

How about getting together for a party, say once every month?

By the way, link for pics is here.