Today was day 2 of the wedding festivities. We were excited to go eat more biryani, but more than that we really just wanted to see Aysha happy…for our ease of mind as much as for the success of her marriage.
We were supposed to leave at 8, but it started to monsoon. So we ended up hanging out in the dining center with Biju and his daughter Irene for an hour and a half when it almost stopped raining and we decided to go for it. However, on the way there the monsoon picked up again and we had to pull of the road and seek shelter under an awning in a sketchy part of town so we wouldn’t get soaked to the bone (we were on Sid’s bike). But after a short while Sid got scared so we left (luckily the rain settled down a bit too) and continued our rainy journey. I remember as a kid loving driving in the rain because we would go through puddles and huge rooster tails would shoot up as if we were waterskiing….yeah, that’s not quite as fun on a motorbike J so basically we laughed the whole way there as we maneuvered through puddle and realized that we needed to embrace the wetness rather than fight it – we may as well have gone off-roading. Which I actually did because at one point the water became so deep that I had to get off of the bike and walk on the sidewalk…only to almost get run over by a motorbike that had decided to drive on the walking path (Sid claims that watching that happen was his favorite part of the night). We were in a race against time, because the wedding would probably finish around 11…but if we weren’t going to get there by 10:30, we needed to forget the wedding and find someplace we could have dinner before all establishments closed at 11. We got so close – half a block away from the palace grounds and it was 10:31 – when an old man started waving his arms at us from the sidewalk. I first wondered if Sid knew him, which he didn’t, and instead Sid took it as some kind of warning, a “Don’t keep driving!” We turned the corner and quickly found out why: the road was a lake, and there were so many cars clogging the road an ambulance couldn’t even get through.
We made the unanimous decision to abort the wedding plan (we were so close, but so far away) and made it our mission to find a restaurant. And then we realized that neither of us had our wallets. Lucky for us, Sid randomly had 210 rupees. Generally you could find something to eat for that much, but at 10:35 pm there are slim pickings. I suggested that we wash dishes, but Sid didn’t think that sounded as fun as I did. We passed some shady joints, and then luckily stumbled upon Sid’s favorite restaurant of all time. We stumbled in, wet and with helmet hair, and Sid started coughing. Sid has asthma…but of course, his inhaler was in his backpack with his wallet. We were quite the pair. We scoured the menu for a meal we could get for 210 rupees, including tax and tip, and tried hard not to laugh because that would only make him cough. I was crying from laughing/trying not to, he was coughing from laughing/trying not to, and we both looked a mess. We got a pretty good meal, though, naan and ghee rice with butter chicken masala…they even gave us a plate of cucumbers for free. But when we got the bill Sid opened it and gasped. “What? Is it too much?” “210 exactly!” he replied, “It’s perfect! We’re perfect!” to which I sang, “So we’re perfect together!” and then we both laughed thinking about retelling this story and ending with, “and then Jen and Sid burst into song when they received the bill and had enough money to pay.” Which means I ended up crying, and he ended up coughing. Oh man. We got back to Visthar at midnight, but honestly neither of us wanted this night to end. “what did you do last night?” “Oh, you know…rode around on a motorbike in the rain trying to get to a wedding that we never actually got to.” Yup, we both decided we’d do it again. Even if we do get pneumonia.
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