Ding-Dong!
“Aarabhi, will you get the door?” asked my husband,
Vasistha.
I opened the door to find our apartment watchman on the
doorstep with a memo in his hand. It was intimation from our Apartment
Association’s organizing team about the New Year celebrations which are held
every year. I signed for it and strolled back to our room reading its contents.
“Vashu, this year’s celebration starts at 8pm on Dec 31st. No stage arranged this time.
Same goes for the music system and loudspeakers. But, there’ll be food and games!” I said.
“Oh! Last time was fun, wasn’t it? Remember how I won the
chess competition?”
“Yeah! How could I
forget that, when I lost dismally at it?” I joked.
Last year we had had games, like chess, carom and shuttle-cock
organized for all the weekends in December. But quite a number of our regular participants
had either moved out or were busy with other things this year. This ritual was
entering its 4th year and the novelty had worn off for many of the residents.
Especially, most of the teenagers, youngsters and kids were missing. Hence, the
simple celebration.
Given all these odds stacked against it, I really had not
expected it to become an enormous success. But, I was proved wrong.
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| Praying to Lord Ganesh |
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| New residents: Suma and family |
A small group of people turned up in the basement and the evening began with a prayer of Lord Ganesha, sung by my mother-in-law Rajani and few others. This gathering then became a nice platform for the newcomers to the apartment to introduce themselves and mingle with the others.
Then, the fun and games began. Poornima and Suma had organized
One-Minute games. So, we had to do things like peel maximum number of peas,
blow more balloons, stack apples etc.; all under one minute.
Stacking the maximum number of apples was a challenge for most of us. Out of the 15 people who tried, only 4 succeeded in stacking 5 apples at a time. Nobody succeeded with the sixth.
Stacking Apples
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| Hum Honge Kamiyaab… |
Interspersed with the games there were entertaining songs sung by our resident singer Vinay and few others. The surprise came when my normally shy niece, Sameeksha volunteered to sing a song by herself. She boldly walked up to the host and bravely stood in front of everyone singing the patriotic song “Hum Honge Kamiyaab, Hum Honge Kamiyaab ….”
The solos concluded by her performance, we took a break and
headed off to dinner. It was a simple meal of north-karnataka’s Bhakri (roti),
Yennagai, pulav, curd rice and Maddur vada. Taking turns in serving each other,
we were all smacking our lips at the wonderful taste.
Following the meal, Ravindranath took over by singing the funny and mouthwateringly described “Uppinkai, uppinkai”. Keeping beat by clapping, we were soon all cheering him on in singing this fabulously rhythmic song.
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| Uppinkai, uppinkai! |
As the evening progressed, the atmosphere became highly charged and more jovial by the minute. We began a modified version of the children’s game “Pin the Donkey’s tail”. Our “Donkey” was a picture of Aishwarya Rai Bachan and the “Tail” was a Bindi for her forehead. It was exceedingly funny watching our blindfolded friends fumbling to find “the Spot” for the bindis. Our Aishwarya ended up looking like she had a bad case of Chicken-pox at the end of the exercise.
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| Aishwarya Rai with her Chicken pox of Bindis |
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| Singing the Golden Oldies! |
Following this rousting sport, we all settled down into
groups to play Antakshari. Since not
many youngsters were there, most of the songs sung were the golden oldies. The
time passed quickly with lots of joking and laughter and soon the clock struck
12.
Sameeksha cut the cake and we all spread around eating and
chatting heedless of the passing hours. Looking at my watch some time later I
discovered it was nearing 2 pm! Time flies when you are having fun!
Wishing Au revoir to everyone and a happy new year, we went
back home after a surprisingly fun beginning to the New Year.
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