architecture orgies and wedding season

this end of december seems like its going to be crazy. not only have i just attended two functions in the past few days for gautams wedding, the coming week there are four events planned.

i hung out all day at andheri on friday so that i could attend gautams big party at sea rock in the evening. i was helped along by amit who came with me to the big materials and construction show at bandra kurla complex. this humongous event has a reputation for promising the world and delivering some dirt. this year the list of presenters was like a whos who of international architects, and finally we had some local architects showing some of their work. ainsley and a few students attended from the fourth year. they seemed to enjoy themselves.

the rest of the college, i.e. almost the entire 2^nd and 3^rd years have gone to ahmedabad for the other big architectural fiasco of the weekend. 12 x 12- it calls itself- hordes of architects thronging to the self proclaimed mecca of architectural education in india to show 12 minute presentations to each other. sounded like one huge architectural orgy to me; could not stand the thought of being in a place where so many egos would be vying for first place in the strange war between ideology and practice. samira, manoj, shantanu, vandana and pinkish are going too. best of luck to them.

but back to the wedding parties. the sea rock hotel to me was a tacky monstrosity that hung to the tip of bandra, until the new taj lands end came along. the last i had heard of it was that the place had been run aground. i was surprised when i heard that gautams party was being held at it. i arrived there alone wearing my fancy new priyadarshini rao shirt and met the bhats in full flow. vikram, his wife and kid, radha, bhau mama, rekha mami, gautam of course- and some of deepals family. the crowd was mainly gautams considerable friends from work and school and the neighbourhood. the party seemed to be rocking really hard and though i tried dancing with the handful of people i knew there to the bhangda and the bollywood remixes that were playing, my dancing partners were constantly thwarted in their attempts by crying babies or just plain shyness. frustrated, i left- still waiting for meghana who was at a nearby club and refused to come and save me. i have not forgiven her yet for that.

these evening functions tend to take a toll on my mornings. yesterday after college, some design work, a huge kitchen shopping expedition at tardeo, i had to attemd another function for the gautam-deepal wedding. this time it was a singing program at vanita samaj, dadar- just off shivaji park. shamelessly wearing the same shirt as the day before i arrived having learnt my lesson from the earlier night, a little late.. and was still one of the first people there. mom, usha maushi and dharmu mama were sitting the plastic moulded chairs in front of the stage prepared for the occasion but most of the rest of the place was empty. i was dying of hunger and though i could see the good marathi food to the rear, was forced to be polite and wait for the program to end before eating. the singer chose beautiful songs and went ahead and massacred them one by one. in between he regaled us with trivia and history of the singers and composers that we, quite frankly, could have done without- if the man could sing. give me an indian idol contestant any day. the marathi food was good.

and for all you ‘nach baliye’ fans i also met my cousin aditya after a long time. he works for ‘star one’ and he told me that the varun rajeshwari fumble was not rigged and sachin and supriya actually won the show fair and square. he also gave us some real juice on the back stage happenings of the show- that i am far too bored to mention here.