Eat, drink and be marry!

How to survive the endless round of parties to celebrate everything  from weddings to Christmas to the New Year Yes, it’s that time of the year again. The time when, between weddings, Christmas and the looming year-end, life turns into one big party. Which sounds all nice and lovely when the party season has just about kicked off, and there is a certain novelty value to getting all blinged up and heading out for an evening of drinks, dance and (a very late) dinner. But after about a fortnight or so (or a week, in my case) this whole festive whirl thing begins to pall. And the very thought of dressing up yet again, putting on a full face of make-up, and slipping on those high heels for another evening of negotiating mad traffic, loud music and indifferent food strikes terror in your heart. Well, at least, it does in mine. So, if you are anything like me, here’s a ready primer for getting through this season and surviving to party yet another year. •       First off, eat before you leave the house. And I don’t just mean a quick snack to take the edge off your hunger. I mean a proper meal that will keep you going till around midnight when your hosts will deign to serve dinner. That way you won’t be tempted to stretch a hand out for all those deep-fried monstrosities being served up as canapés to accompany the drinks. (I have a friend who actually downs a whole glass of Isabgol so that her stomach is so full that she can’t eat one unhealthy morsel when she’s out. But frankly, I wouldn’t go so far.) Then, when dinner is finally on the table, you can tuck in with a clean conscience. •       Pace yourself when it comes to drinks. It is tempting to keep knocking them back as you struggle to make yourself heard above the thumping beats provided by the DJ. But do try and resist. You don’t want just as thumping a hangover the next day. If you’re drinking wine, have a glass of water for every glass of wine you down. If you’re drinking spirits make sure to dilute them with lots of ice and mixers. And if you don’t want to drink at all but don’t know to repel all those “Arre yaar, have one whiskey, na!” there’s a simple way to do it. Get a glass of water, add lots of ice and lemon and claim that you’re drinking vodka. Nobody will care enough to take a sniff of your drink to confirm. •       Have a buddy system going with your friends, in which each of you pledges to rescue the one who has been pinned down by a party bore for more than ten minutes. It helps if you have worked out a few ‘Help Me!’ gestures in advance instead of just looking around wildly for rescue. If you don’t have anyone you can depend on (because they are all getting steadily sloshed in the corner) fall back on the tried-and-tested ‘startled look, smile and wave’ technique. This involves taking a quick look beyond your torturer’s shoulder, widening your eyes in surprise, smiling delightedly, waving wildly to someone in the distance, and excusing yourself with, “Sorry, but I must say hi…” Scamper off quickly before the bore follows you across the room. •       At wedding receptions you couldn’t do worse than adopt a technique that I have perfected over the years. Get there early so that enough people can register your presence. Grab a drink if you must. And then queue up to greet the newly-wedded couple as they stand on stage. Once you get there, hand over the envelope/present, pose for a picture (thereby leaving photographic proof of your attendance), bounce off the stage, do one whirl of the party greeting everyone you know and head straight on home. On a good day, you can be in and out of the reception in 20 minutes flat. •       If small talk isn’t your thing and the prospect of making inane conversation with social acquaintances strikes you as a mind-numbing waste of time, well then, treat parties as your own personal workout session. Hit the dance floor as soon as you can, and then stay there all night long, jiving away until it is time for dinner. (Wear your fitbit if you want to know just how many steps you have notched up and how many calories you have burned; you can then go to bed in a self-congratulatory haze.) •       And that brings me to the most important survival trick of all: comfortable shoes. That doesn’t mean you need to wear flats. It just means that you should steer clear of those vertiginous stilettoes (which have a way of sinking into the wet ground at every outdoor event, pegging you in place in the most embarrassing of ways). Instead, opt for platforms or wedges or even a block heel that wont make your feet ache by the end of the evening. If it makes you feel any better, remember your shoes are not visible beneath that sari or lengha anyway. And even if they were, in that crush nobody would even notice. So dance the night away; and survive another day in the mad scramble that is the annual party season.

Wedded bliss

How to celebrate through the wedding season and live to tell the tale

If you have a large extended family, the chances are that you are currently neck-deep into the excesses of the Big Fat Indian wedding. And even if you don't, you have probably been inveigled into attending the nuptials of your office colleagues, neighbours, business associates, old college friends and the like.

We all know what that involves, right? Yes, an endless round of parties, much drinking and dancing, and a succession of outfits, each blingier than the next.

And then, there's the food. The buffet spreads take in everything from Thai to Chinese to Indian food, the canapés are an endless stream of deep-fried delights, and the desserts are best described as a heart attack on a plate.

So no, it is not easy surviving the Indian wedding season, with either your bank account or your digestive system intact. But I am here to tell you that it can be done, with some handy tips dredged from my own experiences in the trenches.

* Pick and choose your outings with care. Just because someone is celebrating their wedding with a dozen parties doesn't mean you have to attend each one of them (unless it's your best friend or immediate family, in which case, of course you do). Choose a couple of events to mark your presence, preferably those with a smaller guest list so that you can be noticed among the crowd. So, choose a mehendi, which is a more intimate gathering over a reception in which the guest list could run into thousands.

* If you do choose the reception, negotiate it on  the revolving-door principle. Enter the party, head straight for the queue leading up to the stage where the newly-weds are ensconced, get your picture taken with them to mark your presence, climb down from the stage and head for the exit. Nobody will be any the wiser that you were there for a grand total of 15 minutes. No, not even your gentle hosts.

* Don't bankrupt yourself in the process of finding the perfect new outfit for each occasion. Instead, try recycling some of last season's wedding wardrobe by adding a new dupatta or a different kurta. Though frankly, you can also get away with recycling the old outfits. Trust me, no one else remembers what you wore to Pappu's sangeet or Sweety's mehendi. No, seriously, they don't. Consider this. Do you remember what your cousin wore for your neice's wedding? No, I didn't think so.

* In case you are loath to do that because your friends and family are insanely vigilant, you could try the outfit swap. You will need a close friend, a cousin or a neighbour of a similar size. If you have one, you can exchange outfits for the wedding season, effectively getting four for the price of two. My cousin and her sister in law once managed to go through an entire wedding season with four outfits apiece which they swapped -- along with matching jewellery -- for functions hosted by their respective families.

* Get a workout in during the course of the day. It doesn't have to be an intensive session in the gym. It could even be a short run on the treadmill or a brisk walk in the park. But do get at least half an hour of aerobic exercise in. It will compensate for your dietary excesses later in the day.

* One good thing about Indian weddings is that they provide enough opportunities for a workout in the course of the festivities. You can dance off those glasses of champagne at the sangeet by boogying late into the night on the dance floor. You can burn off a few hundred calories by dancing in the baarat procession. Seize these opportunities when they present themselves. Your waist line will thank you for it.

* Stop stuffing your face compulsively. Just because the tray of mutton kebabs passes by you every five minutes doesn't mean you have to help yourself every time. Turn down the canapés and save room for dinner instead. Alternate every alcoholic drink with a Diet Coke or a glass of water. Your liver will thank you for it, as will your head the morning after.

* You can go completely over the top where your outfits are concerned. But remember to wear comfortable shoes. Flats are ideal. But if you feel you need a boost of a few inches, opt for wedges or platform heels rather than stilettos. Even kitten heels will do at a stretch, so long as they allow you to stand comfortably for long periods of time. Of course, once the music kicks in, you can always kick off the shoes, and burn up the dance floor. You do have that dal makhani to work off, after all. And that chocolate cake is not going to eat itself.

So, as the saying definitely does not go: eat, drink and make marry. You can always diet another day!

I am getting married in the morning...

If the wedding season comes, can the Bridezilla be far behind?

Whenever the wedding season rolls around, I am always put in mind of that TV series that was aired a couple of years back in India. Bridezillas, it was called, to reference brides and Godzilla, and it portrayed what monsters some women turned into in the run up to their weddings. The to-be brides featured made insane demands of their families and friends, micro-managed things until they had run everyone mad, and in the process, spent ludicrous amounts of money that they could often ill-afford.

The series rang true with me – and no doubt, for countless other Indian viewers – because we have all been witness to a bride or two (okay, let’s make that an even dozen) going into overdrive, and then into meltdown, as she prepares for her Big Day (yes, it is always spelt with capital letters). 

And now that the season of wedding madness is upon us again, I find myself surrounded by more Bridezillas than I can keep track of. There’s the one who insists on flying down to London to buy a white lace wedding dress from Alexander McQueen – just like Kate Middleton, you know! – even though she will only get to wear it at a pre-wedding cocktail party (the wedding itself stars a Abu-Sandeep red lengha; or was it Tarun Tahiliani? I can’t really keep up!). There’s the one who is planning a bachelorette party (don’t you dare say ‘hen party’; that’s so infra dig) in Ibiza, and flying down all 36 of her close friends for that (Daddy dearest picks up the tab, of course). There’s the one who has changed the entire décor of a chateau in Champagne, so that it fits with the ivory and gold theme of her wedding dinner. And so it goes…

I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to take these young ladies aside, pour them a cold glass of water (or champagne, if that will do the trick), and ask them to calm the hell down. It is a wedding, for God’s sake, not a Karan Johar production!

But maybe that’s just the problem. We have been force-fed so many images of extravagant weddings set in exotic locales in our Bollywood blockbusters that we feel obliged to recreate them in real life as well, no matter what the expense or inconvenience involved. So, everything must be ‘designer’: from the wedding hall, the mandap, the overall décor, the outfits of the bride, groom, and their immediate families. And just like in the movies, everything must be colour-coordinated to within an inch of its life. Why, even the menu must be ‘designed’ by some celebrity chef or the other, to keep in with the overall theme!

Far be it for me to begrudge any happy bride her big day, but I wonder if perhaps she would be happier if she relaxed a tiny bit; if she went with the flow instead of playing the control freak?

Well, if any of these soon-to-be-married ladies want to take the less-stressful route to marriage, here is my two cents worth of advice to them:

• Keep that wedding lengha nice and light. If you need to support it with heavy-duty suspenders, then you don’t need it. (Those bruises will be difficult to explain on your honeymoon anyway, when you are sunning yourself on the beach in an itsy-bitsy bikini.) If you need two attendants to hold it up so that you can walk down to the mandap, then walk away from it now. Be as blingy as you like; but keep the fabric and work lightweight. You should be wearing that outfit; the outfit should not be wearing you down.
• You’ve probably already blown the budget on the wedding. So, at least be sensible about your honeymoon. Do you really need to buy two first class tickets to Los Angeles? Cancel that and use the money to book yourself into the best suite at the best hotel in Udaipur or Jodhpur (or even Agra; it does host the most famous monument to love, after all). People fly into these destinations from all over the world for special occasions. Don’t turn up your nose at them just because they are next door.
• Keep your mom and grandmom’s jewelry just the way it is. Don’t reset it in some hideous new-fangled design. Believe me, you will be glad you left it well alone a few years down the line. And if you are buying new stuff, then choose well. Buy one heavy-duty piece if you must, but be warned that it will live thereafter in your bank locker anyway. So try and invest in pieces that you can wear for parties and dinners rather than weddings; you’ll get the biggest bang for your buck with these.
• Most of all try and remember that it’s not all about the wedding; at the end of the day it is the marriage that counts. And beginning married life plain broke, frazzled, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown is the not the best of starts at all!