Saturday, January 14, 2006

cousins in conjunction with the holidays

To be utterly, brutally honest here, I wasn’t too happy when my cousins came down on Christmas day. I think it wasn’t a question of me being unhappy with them, but just irritated that they had taken so long to decide and to confirm their holiday in Colombo. I really wanted to organize our New Year’s Eve plans at this place where we knew where everybody would be going but I couldn’t obviously because they took so long to fucking decide. So eventually when they did decide to make that relatively short air-commute to good ol’ Colombo, all the tickets for this party were sold out... However, I am by nature prone to overreaction and everything just turned out fantastic. I was pretty bummed out that another cousin didn’t come but I play with whatever cards I am dealt.

First of all, an introduction… Rits.. She’s 18 and beautiful. So beautiful it scares me sometimes. Having a beautiful sister of my own, I am well aware of the lecherous looks any pretty girl gets, especially on the streets of India or Sri Lanka and by constant exposure to this frowned upon behaviour I have learnt to tune out a world where women are put through sick, sexual fantasies in some random person’s mind. However, Rits gets way too much attention and that is what terrifies me. I try to look as if I am her boyfriend (breaking all the rules for ‘appropriateness among relatives’ I am sure) but that never stops men from looking at her. Oh well, ego boost to her. She is also crazy!! She will laugh at anything for hours on end with her faithful partner in crime and fellow cousin and crazy loon- Mr.MC. I will come to him later. I appreciate Rits because she’s an intelligent bimbo and laughs at all my lame jokes. And even though one is obliged to love one’s family, with her, I don’t have to try hard at all. The bitch left on the 30th but I forgive her coz she’s a bundle of fun.

Mr.MC. Like I said before, he’s Rits’s Yin to her Yang (although there isn’t much peace when they’re around). He’s extremely intelligent and ultra-competitive when it comes to anything… academic or otherwise. Even though Mr.MC and I don’t hang out that much, he has the knack for making just the right amount of small talk to help put you at ease!! He is the perfect social lubricant, second only to bloody alcohol. Ha ha. He loves to gamble and from what I have heard, is quite lucky at it!! Some people are just lucky, but Mr.MC is very hardworking and I believe, a celebrity of some sort in the making!! Perhaps a talk show host or a professional Master of Ceremonies…..? Who knows? He’s certainly entertained us in the past with his skills in being the perfect pageant host so here I am, immortalizing how good he is at his thing!

Teens. Come to think of it, all my cousins are beautiful. Now that doesn’t mean they are only beautiful in my eyes and they’re trolls to the outside world. Teens’s 25 (almost marriageable age much to her displeasure) and a complete sucker for anything philosophical! I admire her dedication to what she loves. I also admire her ability to be relatively unaffected by the things that goes around her (a skill I think she learnt from having such a, shall we say, ‘different’ extended-family). Water off a duck’s back. I’ve grown closer to Teens over time and in some way, that has enhanced my life.

Verbosity is my thing. Deal with it.

Also I realize, that if one of the above ever wanted me to write them a testimonial, I could just copy and paste. Verbosity has its advantages.

There were three highlights to their trip. One was going to H2O with them. Yay. H2O is the latest club in Colombo and predictably, the place to see and to be seen. It’s pretty huge, very nicely decorated, very good service, reasonable prices and a decent-enough DJ. We got through the ordeal of being interrogated by the damn adults relatively unscathed but only after pouring out a great deal of honey to placate their wet blanket selves. I realize I still refer to them as adults but that is only because we are still treated as children… I also realize that these are our parents and we will always be their children, but come on, they expect us to provide for and take care of them when they grow old but are not willing to give up their hold on us with regard to certain kinds of behaviour, such as, drinking, smoking (but this, I think their displeasure is justified), love-marriages and pre-marital sex which is of course, blasphemous to the entire Sindhi race and just about rapes the family name…. Oh dear, I have digressed. Anyhow, the night was fantastic. Rits and I rode the wave of a beautiful state of tipsiness and danced on the floor while the rest socialized and made up… Notice I used the phrase ‘made-up’ and not ‘made-out’ , so get your minds out of the gutter! Quite an ordeal to get the three cousins up to their room afterwards but we finally did it and with no problems from the adults! Super night!

The second highlight was when we went down-south. Sri Lanka’s beautiful beaches must be experienced only after dappling in gorgeously illicit substances, which we might or might not have done. Lunch was ravenously eaten and followed up with another taste (of dessert, silly) and we drove home, utterly satisfied. Grains of sand vibrated, one of us felt one with everyone, including the sea and the grain of sand that vibrated… On the way back, we ate some Kandos chocolate (which Rits pronounced as Kandoos) and got home utterly exhausted but in equal amounts content as ever.

The third and final highlight was New Year’s Eve. Myself, sister, Mr. Say-Nothing-Bad-Will-Happen, his sister, Teens and my friend from university went to Trans-Asia. We were put through another ordeal by the adults before going (this one being a little more serious as one of us actually started crying!) but thankfully got there before 12am.As usual we got thoroughly plastered and I have no recollection of anything after 4.30am!! Apparently on the way back, I thought the radio in the car was actually my sister talking to me!! Fortunately, we all had fun and nothing too bad happened except for me losing my blazer and Teens taking a fall which she made worse by dancing with me for…er…god knows how long!!

These were the highlights but hanging out with them was fun too. Lots of family lunches and dinners laced their trip and I am sure they had as much fun as I did!! How terribly inarticulate I sound huh?

Jamba-jungle fun times!!

P.S- Forgive me for the less than mature nicknames I have given my cousins. It's this damn new Blog Search I am afraid of. I know some of the ''adults'' have some rudimentary knowledge of the net and since I am by nature a risk-averse person (some people call it cowardice), I needed to do this.

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