Wedding Madness

So friends, I did not see Indiana Jones nor did I see any of the season finales tonight. Instead I chased down beetelnut leaves in a suburb of Buffalo, NY. None of this involved shirtlessness, and I am feeling a little bit blue. Actually, I am feeling a little bit of ethnic rage, but only a very little bit because I am so tired.

My brother is getting married on Saturday to a very nice girl from the Mormon church, and you can only imagine that a union between the two is very complicated. Actually, even a union between two Hindus is very complicated because the people in charge of the uniting do so in Sanskrit, a language which no regular Hindu understands. So we commonfolk are left to the mercy of priests who tell us what to do and get. Our Hindu priest is very nice, and I'm sure he was not lying to us when he told us that we needed beetelnut leaves for the ceremony that we are having tomorrow morning. The poor man ended up on planes, trains, and automobiles to get here, and we are very grateful. The ethnic rage was caused by the Indian grocery store owner who promised to save 25 beetelnut leaves for the ceremony, and then when we went to pick them up this evening between dance lessons and dinner had actually given all of our leaves to a florist. My brother thought that perhaps my mom had indeed taken a valium because she took the news so calmly. She went back to her dance lesson and told Kevin and I to try the Korean grocery, because sometimes other Asian cultures like the same things that we do. In our travels to find the Korean grocery, we actually found the florist that had taken our leaves. So I went in and demanded our leaves back. For a 5'2" Indian woman, I can be quite persuasive, and I emerged with 14 beetelnut leaves in a plastic bag. I am still mad at the Indian grocery store owner. I could have spent the time I used looking for leaves to look at a shirtless Eddie Cibrian. My only condolence is the extreme high I felt in extracting the remaining leaves from the florists' assistant with a technique that I call "State your needs and then smile until someone gives it to you." I literally refused to speak until he said something helpful like "Maybe I should call the boss to see what to do." Then I said, "Yes, that's a good idea," and smiled some more. It took a lot of smiling, but my orthodontia paid for itself tonight.

So this all has very little to do with shirtlessness. All I can say is that I will have a very exciting report when I finally do get to watch the finale. In the meantime, I have polished my brother-sister rhumba, and feel that in the highly unlikely eventuality that I do see some good shirtlessness this weekend in Buffalo, NY where it is literally 52 degrees and raining, the I will be well prepared. Until then, I am...

Yours in shirtlessness,
Nandita
President
IMS