Thursday, November 11, 2010

About cakes in faces and kicking asses at my birthday party

Once every year you get reminded of your age. No matter how old you feel or look, this number is not waiting for you and increasing permanently. The strange thing about it is that the older I get, the more I realise that an old man must still be the same little child in his inner self. The reason for this thought is that besides you are going through different periods of your life, which also change you more or less, at the end, you still recognise yourself! You met yourself on the way. Surprisingly for me, the inner self doesn’t change as fast as the number of your birthdays. What about, if the old man also doesn’t feel like 70 years? He noticed that his body was aging, that his mind maybe got a little slowed down, but from my point of view today, I think he is still wondering about similar questions of life, apparently why everybody looks up to him, treating him different then people treated him 43 year back.

Anyway, my 27th birthday was coming along and I didn’t have any clue how to celebrate with my friends. Definitely I wanted to do something active, where everybody can participate and that it’s not just the usual weekend party. I also knew that with respect to Incredible India’s broad variety of amazing to do’s, it wouldn’t be so easy to find a proper answer on my question. After calling heaps of bowling alleys, I found out that some of them didn’t even exist anymore, were closing right at the time when most of us are just about to leave work or we located somewhere behind the moon. The fact that none of them would have served beer didn’t matter at this point already. This option was gone. Plan B was also not to feasible, because I had to ask myself, if having a picnic with some music in the ruins of the District Park would have been too crazy for India, especially since the park is locked and secured after 8 pm. A commonly known picnic place was the area surrounding India Gate, but celebrating at one of the most famous landmarked sites, the party probably wouldn’t have get started. At the end things are mostly simpler than you think before, so we were having a BBQ at our veranda. Back in Germany, we used to have grill parties almost every weekend in the summer and I was actually missing it very much in India. Thus, I kind of made myself a gift by deciding to invite my friends for my first BBQ party in India.

Arranging a grill and chalk coal should have been the next issues, although interesting and funny ones! While having lunch in our beloved small street restaurant, I guy passed by his bike and were delivering the restaurant with a bag of coal. That was my chance, but due to enjoying the food too much, I forgot him and he was gone. Therefore Karan, Jakob and I were going on a mission to find a coal service shop, which required quite some time. Soon after Jakob dropped out, we actually found a place, where hills of chalk coal were being produced, but nobody was there for selling it. Well, at the time being we had a lot of fun with “looking at the features of the close environment”, but we didn’t get any coal and had to go back to the office. After work I tried again and got an insight of the chalk coal supply chain for small businesses in India. People were queuing up to deliver tiny little tree trunks and branches, as well as wood peaces they found on the streets. Obviously they were getting money for supplying the governmental coal store. Others were burning and smoking the wood, while again other were weighting and selling the product. At a rate of 22 Rs/kg (0,30 Euro) I bought some kilos and prevented the coal on being delivered by bike within its last level of the value chain. During the day I was also talking to Alex, who was offering his grill. The only problem was the question how to get it to my place. Without much discussion we agreed on doing it the Indian style, jumped on his motorbike and were manoeuvring the dismantled grill, fixed around my body, through Delhi’s crazy rush hour traffic! It was so much fun. On the way home, I bought chicken and mutton and if we would not have forgotten the gridiron, we could have started the BBQ without improvising. But as an engineer is not hustling with such minor issues, a solution was found very easily: two deformed metal trivets made my day!



After burning one peace of coal on the stove in the kitchen, the whole grill could have been set on fire and soon people were having corn, naan (bread), rice and grilled meat to accompany the beer in their stomachs. Afterwards an Indian birthday tradition took place and I was not aware of it before. I was supposed to cut a peace from the chocolate cake and hand it to one of my fellows. Then I didn’t expect to get it right back, but into my face! Karan rubbed it as good as he could; through my face and hair! Right after that, four of them were throwing me 27 times into the air and I literately could not hold me from laughing ;-) … it was such great and unforeseen fun, especially when you consider the final of the Indian styled birthday. Whoever liked could bump my ass with her/his feet, because I was still hung up by the four guys. Hilarious! Fortunately I was able to share some of the cake from my face with the other when I was hugging them ..haha…



Thanks for all the wishes and great moments we could share! I’ll never forget that funny party with all of you!