Indian Trip, Part V: A tour of Delhi & a wedding reception
On Monday, Anwar and I actually made it out of bed in time for breakfast, and then got back on the bus for a tour of Delhi kindly arranged by Iona's family.
We stopped first at Qutab Minar, in Lolcat (OK, Lalkot...), which turned out to have been a centre for female emancipation in, er, very long ago times. The tower itself was fantastically impressive and beautiful, and I have a lot of photos; it was also a lovely day, warm and sunny but not too much so, and we saw a lot of squirrels!
The bus then took us to an 'Indian fusion restaurant', although what it was fused with, I really don't know - the food all seemed to be Indian to me, with the exception of the last half page or so of the menu, which was Chinese food (no fusion).
We drove past India Gate, but didn't stop - just as well, as it looked very busy! - and stopped at Humayun's Tomb on the way back to the hotel, where we prepared for the reception.
This time, I actually managed to tie my sari myself, although I don't think we'd long arrived before it was adjusted again...
The evening was good. There were speeches: from Iona & Shim, from Shim's brother and father, from Iona's cousin, and also, by popular request, a lovely speech by Iona's dad. Iona's cousin also gave a speech in Hindi, thanking his & Iona's Dadi-ji; I understood a few (very few!) words of this, which was exciting.
As well as speeches, another of Iona's cousins performed several dances of a style which I'd never seen before, but found much more engaging than Western ballet - all graceful movement and fluid, descriptive hands; it was amazing. Finally, there was a fantastic sketch from various of Iona and Shim's relatives, parodying Iona & Shim's meeting and courtship (with Iona supposedly reading 'Doctor Who for Dummies', and Shim, 'Wikipedia for Idiots'!)
Delicious food and drink were on hand amongst all this, before the meal proper was served from the courtyard where it was, rather unfortunately, alternating pouring rain with thunder and lightening!
I got myself a large plate of chocolate & walnut pudding, which Iona looked at longingly before asking 'what is that and where can I get it?' This was quickly followed by 'what I really want, is for someone to tell me its OK to give upon my plate and skip to dessert.'
'Iona,' I said. 'It's your wedding reception. You can do whatever the hell you want. Give up on your plate and skip to dessert!'
We also had a fantastic conversation about Hindi and the problems posed by aspirated vs. unaspirated consonants (from the perspective of someone whose native language largely doesn't make such a distinction). Iona asked me if I could differentiate between [word beginning with क] and [word beginning with ख], and I could! So perhaps I am not too old after all.
(Iona declared me a linguistic marvel, which I think is higher praise than I deserve; and followed it by declaring me an awful human being, which Colleen backed up. 'You can sing,' they said, 'you can do maths, you can do languages, you're nice... You make us sick!' I think this is one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me, honestly. I kind of want it written down beautifully to look at on bad days.)
Later, Colleen and I ventured onto the dance floor for a moment, purely so we could say we had danced in saris. We had been on the dance floor for all of 10 seconds before they started playing Gangnam Style, so, that's a thing that happened: I have danced to Gangnam Style, in India, in a sari. Yeah.
We stopped first at Qutab Minar, in Lolcat (OK, Lalkot...), which turned out to have been a centre for female emancipation in, er, very long ago times. The tower itself was fantastically impressive and beautiful, and I have a lot of photos; it was also a lovely day, warm and sunny but not too much so, and we saw a lot of squirrels!
The bus then took us to an 'Indian fusion restaurant', although what it was fused with, I really don't know - the food all seemed to be Indian to me, with the exception of the last half page or so of the menu, which was Chinese food (no fusion).
We drove past India Gate, but didn't stop - just as well, as it looked very busy! - and stopped at Humayun's Tomb on the way back to the hotel, where we prepared for the reception.
This time, I actually managed to tie my sari myself, although I don't think we'd long arrived before it was adjusted again...
The evening was good. There were speeches: from Iona & Shim, from Shim's brother and father, from Iona's cousin, and also, by popular request, a lovely speech by Iona's dad. Iona's cousin also gave a speech in Hindi, thanking his & Iona's Dadi-ji; I understood a few (very few!) words of this, which was exciting.
As well as speeches, another of Iona's cousins performed several dances of a style which I'd never seen before, but found much more engaging than Western ballet - all graceful movement and fluid, descriptive hands; it was amazing. Finally, there was a fantastic sketch from various of Iona and Shim's relatives, parodying Iona & Shim's meeting and courtship (with Iona supposedly reading 'Doctor Who for Dummies', and Shim, 'Wikipedia for Idiots'!)
Delicious food and drink were on hand amongst all this, before the meal proper was served from the courtyard where it was, rather unfortunately, alternating pouring rain with thunder and lightening!
I got myself a large plate of chocolate & walnut pudding, which Iona looked at longingly before asking 'what is that and where can I get it?' This was quickly followed by 'what I really want, is for someone to tell me its OK to give upon my plate and skip to dessert.'
'Iona,' I said. 'It's your wedding reception. You can do whatever the hell you want. Give up on your plate and skip to dessert!'
We also had a fantastic conversation about Hindi and the problems posed by aspirated vs. unaspirated consonants (from the perspective of someone whose native language largely doesn't make such a distinction). Iona asked me if I could differentiate between [word beginning with क] and [word beginning with ख], and I could! So perhaps I am not too old after all.
(Iona declared me a linguistic marvel, which I think is higher praise than I deserve; and followed it by declaring me an awful human being, which Colleen backed up. 'You can sing,' they said, 'you can do maths, you can do languages, you're nice... You make us sick!' I think this is one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me, honestly. I kind of want it written down beautifully to look at on bad days.)
Later, Colleen and I ventured onto the dance floor for a moment, purely so we could say we had danced in saris. We had been on the dance floor for all of 10 seconds before they started playing Gangnam Style, so, that's a thing that happened: I have danced to Gangnam Style, in India, in a sari. Yeah.