Theme for a Dream

(Because that's the best title I could think for this post).
If you have almost the same set of people on your invitation list as the party before and after yours, how do you make your party 'different'? The easiest way is to go for a theme party. Apart from the weddings and pre/post wedding parties, December is turning out to be quite a month of theme parties:

• T didn't want her anniv party in the middle of December to be one in which everyone turns out in jackets and coats and mufflers. She wanted to see skin [and show some ;) ] So I suggested a 'Skin, Sheer, Shimmer' theme Had people thinking for sure.
• A little known entrant in Lucknow's social circuit is organising a Bollywood theme party. Yeah, some people are so original!
• Another couple is throwing a party next week. Theme for the party is tentatively Bollywood of the 1970s! And yeah, I know that's not original either but since they're good friends, I'm pretty excited about that one. My Twitter friends have come up with some suggestions for what I could wear. Let's see how it works out.
• And then there's Poo who's doing a Christmas eve party and predictably, wants us to turn up in red and green, colours I do not have in my winter wardrobe :(

So there's a mad scramble in my head for what I'm wearing when. And if you think I'm going shopping for these parties, you're mistaken. Being the recessionista (oh yes, I love that word) that I am, I'm just going to recycle some of my stuff. And hope the results are good enough to share with you soon!

Social Calendar of a Busy Bee

Despite the ups and downs of life, partying continues uninterrupted. Here's a look at what my days ahead are filled with:

Nov 30: Engagement and sangeet of a friend
Dec 1: Wedding of that friend
Dec 2: Cousin R1's reception
Dec 3: Friend's sister's wedding reception
Dec 4, 5, 6, 7: REPRIEVE
Dec 8: Another cousin, R2's mehndi ceremony
Dec 9: R2's engagement party in the day, Nutsy's bachelor's party at night (and girls are going too) and somewhere in-between, our anniversary :)
Dec 10: R2's wedding
Dec 11: Nutsy's engagement
Dec 12: Nutsy's wedding
Dec 13: Nutsy's wedding reception in the afternoon, T's anniv party at night
Dec 14: Two couple friends' anniversary and at least one of them will invite us, I'm assuming ;)
Dec 15: A friend's son's first birthday.

Please contact for appointments after Dec 15!

Some days you just NEED to be out!

This is what a week that I began on the I'll-stay-at-home note ended up as:

Monday: I was invited to judge an event for the Direct Marketing firm Amway. They were having a Mr. and Mrs. Amway contest and said it wouldn't take more than 2 hours. I reached the venue punctually at 5:00 pm and knew right from the onset of the programme that with 20 couple contestants, there was no way I was going home before eight. I was so wrong! The programme ended at 10:00 pm! Five hours of judging that left me ravenous for good food. The Guy and I ended up going out for dinner that night, but more out of necessity than anything else.
Tuesday: Was supposed to be a stay-at-home for sure. The Guy and I had gone to check out stuff at a furniture shop in the evening and were supposed to be back in an hour and a half. But Destiny had other plans for us. My sister received an award that day for her contribution to the cause of street children and my nephew wanted to celebrate it with an outing. My parents were roped in without a hitch and there was no way we could have refused. Nay?

Wednesday: My friend M had planned a dinner at her place for our newly-wed friends (eight months into a marriage is still newly-wed!). It was a well arranged but informal gathering that we thoroughly enjoyed.

Thursday: The only day this last week that we were home! The Guy and I have been fasting on Thursdays for Sai Baba. Thankfully, unlike the past few Thursdays, there were no invitations this time and we spent the evening constructively by eating healthy and staying at home.

Friday: Technically, we did spend this day at home but with friends coming over for dinner, it didn't quite feel like what a day at home feels like. It was a dinner, I thoroughly enjoyed hosting! I had planned a sizzler party because with only six people to feed, I could do justice to the idea. I wish I had pictures to show you how much pains I took to lay the table, but there was just no time for clicking! But please let me describe the details and feel good. The starters included, sunken submarines, galawat kebabs (outsourced), paneer fingers and corn salad followed by vegetarian and non-vegetarian sizzlers. I added a slight drama by printing out tiny menus for everyone and I can show you at least what they looked like.



My friends loved the idea though I was fully prepared to have it laughed at. I was doing it for fun anyway!

Saturday: Two more freelance bylines for me! A friend of mine and colleague also made her freelance debut in the same issue of the same newspaper. And that was cause enough for us to get together for dinner! Actually, it was a long overdue dinner: my friend and her husband have also recently launched their own placement consultancy and that's quite a big deal that we wanted to celebrate! Finally managed to do it this Saturday.

Sunday: No reprieve on Sunday either because it's the weekend - the official outing day. I stepped out of home at 11:30 in the morning and returned at 10:00 in the night! A hawan to welcome the latest addition to our family - my pretty li'l niece - at my parents' place was followed by lunch. We went shopping for The Guy after that. In the evening, we went for Kaminey with our friends and decided to try out a new eating place with Awadhi cuisine thereafter. Came home and had another couple drop in for coffee and discussion.

All of this happened in a week I was intending to spend at home :) But tell me, which one of those things could I have avoided?

Surprise to a T

M and I brought in T's birthday with a surprise party on Wednesday last, as some of you may already know from here. In which case, you will also know about my swollen foot and the super duper success of the party. But heck, that's not half the masala there was! And everyone kept gushing at what great friends we were to be throwing T a surprise bash. M and I, modest as we are, brushed aside the compliments with a 'Touch wood!' for our friendship.

The masala mix began right when we decided on the guest list. Because our darling T is the perfect socialite, we had all the difficulty deciding who to keep and who to lose on the guest list. And considering that this party had three names attached to it (M and mine, because we were hosting the party and T's because it was her birthday), there were bound to be people who'd be offended for not being invited but really, it was impossible to accomodate friends of all three of us in a single party! So we tried to keep T's friends in mind (all of the one we like and some of those we're indifferent to!) and managed to come up with an invitation list that wasn't bursting at its seams and was made up of only fun people.

The venue was booked, the food and drinks taken care of and the only thing we weren't sure about was how we'd get T to the venue with her husband Appi. M came with the brilliant idea of asking another friend - K - to call up T and invite her for the party we were throwing! And K did a great job, sending late minute reminders to make it look all authentic.

We somehow managed to keep the surprise under wraps until the last moment so that when T walked into a party full of people singing Happy Birthday for her, her expressions were worth a million dollars. From dazed to shocked they went in a matter of minutes!

A lot of hugs and kisses later, came the tequila shots. M had 6 of them and was fell asleep in the middle of the party. T had some shots and two vodkas and refused to go home after that. Trip 1 was in the kind of shape that made it impossible for her husband to leave her side. Trip 2, in her drunken stupor, decided to take some pot shots on my dress, which I fended off with such aplomb, she forgot she was drunk! Her pati Ash is a sweetheart when he's tipsy and I must tell you he was a sweetheart that day. Ash 2 - another of our friends - was very very upset when the music stopped playing at about 2 am! Forgivable, considering how 'happy' he was otherwise!

We sound like such a party of bewadas, don't we?! But hey, take my word for it, three tequilas down and I was as sober as I was when I came in.

I was the official photographer for the day, toting my handsome camera! You want pics? Oh well, how can I disappoint you?!

My favourite shot anytime, the shoe shot:

Readying the tequila shots:

Last but not the least, me:

Thank you, thank you! :)

Old wine, older bottle.

We went last night to check out a new lounge bar that’s opened in our city. We small town people crave big town stuff! We do, I admit. Like we want more nice places to hang out at, want more places that dish out more than good food, a little more variety to spice up our night lives. The sad thing in our part of the world is that a pub/lounge bar/ disc doesn’t run successfully for more than six months, by which time there’s another new joint to try out but when you finally make up your mind that the old one was better, the old one doesn’t exist to go back to! It’s already shut shop by then. Really sad.

But I digress. What I was telling you about was this new lounge bar called Aura that we went to try out Saturday night and came back wondering why someone would put in so much money into something so half-hearted. It’s an oblong shaped place, with the DJ console at one end of the oblong and the entrance at the other so that when you enter the lounge, you feel like you’ve been thrust into a time capsule - one that takes you back in time. Seriously, because it’s so un-innovative, this place, that you have to be really stoned to like it.

The lighting and the smoke did make it difficult for me to say I like or dislike the décor of the place because I could barely see any of it, but the sound system sucked, even by Lucknow standards. And the aura of the place was really weak. It just didn’t get to me. And frankly, it just wasn’t me. Everybody there looked bored and ready to leave by 1 am (that early!) and find a more chilled out place to spend the rest of the Saturday night at, even if that alternative was a friend’s home.

I didn’t try the food there, because we were at a dinner before heading to Aura, so I will not comment on that. But the only thing I liked about last night was that I got to catch up with the whole gang, you know, the gang that you see at all the good parties in town and the gang you love air-kissing and making inane conversation with. Some of that gang is my friend too.

Snag an Invitation

Gatecrashers at parties no longer gate crash; they just get themselves invited. Beg, borrow or steal an invitation and save the trouble of gatecrashing!

Having observed this growing tribe of people, I've put together a list of the Top Five Ways people use to snag an invitation to a snazzy party. I'm sure you're not that desperate, but which one would you pick if you were?

1. Call up the host and tell him you're throwing a party next week, the date and place is tentative but that they should keep themselves free around that time. The host may feel obliged to return the favour you haven't done him yet.

2. If it's a party being thrown for an occasion like a birthday or an anniversary, call up the hosts a day in advance just to confirm if you remember the date correctly. Say something like, "I just wanted to be sure - your birthday IS tomorrow, right?" Yeah right, dude! That generally does the trick of making the host feel bad for not inviting fake friends who remember birthdays/anniversaries only because a party is being thrown.

3. Call on the day of the party. Make small talk. And then shamelessly get to the point, "I heard you're throwing a party today?" What do you think the retort will be? "Ya, and you have to come!" Unless the host is just as brazen as the caller and can get away with, "Ya, I'm just calling a few close friends over."

4. Send a bouquet/bunch of flowers on the morning of the party, if it's a party being organised to celebrate an occasion. Again, the host may just feel embarrassed enough to call and thank you adding how he's put together a last-minute thing and that you're invited.

5. Plan in advance. After someone's thrown a great party, tell them all the good things you've been hearing about it. And sign off with, "I would love to be there next time you do something like this."

Come across any of these ways?

What we wore

On my birthday...