That’s right – it’s a King Kong Ganesha! Peter Jackson Jaikishan ain’t got nothing on this, baby! Here are some more pics by Ravi of the grand spectacle.

And here’s a totally unrelated one (also by Ravi) of a GaneshKrishna or a KrishGanesha. Or something. Don’t complain though, you’re getting two gods for the price of one.

Ever since I have known him, Shirzad has been involved in some kind of musical activity. From threatening blows to defend the Beatles’ early years in the fifth or sixth grade, to singing Herman’s Hermits’ ‘Leaning on a Lamp Post’ in the eighth-grade talent contest, to conducting his school-house choir singing Billy Joel’s ‘For the Longest Time’ soon after his twelfth grade. His love of music ranges from classical to pop, from jazz-rock fusion to Indo-jazz fusion. And I should also mention that he has an opinion on everything in between. If by chance, you tap your plate with your fork while eating dinner, there’s a good chance that he’ll tell you it was slightly off, and proceed to demonstrate the correct note.

Almost a decade ago, he focused his musical energies and took up to playing the bass guitar seriously. Taking lessons from a professional musician, I saw him practice diligently for more than a few hours a day. This might not seem like a big deal, but Shirzad has a full time job as a consultant. Ultimately, his diligence paid off when he met Michael Rennie and Nick Turner, two South African musicians, and founders of Mikanic. They asked him to join as bassist for the band.

Mike and Nick, respectively, a violinist and an acoustic guitarist (both are also vocalists), formed Mikanic in 2003, and were fairly well-known on the South African music circuit. In fact, “well-known” might be an under-statement, since they founded Sons of Trout and with that act, headlined every major music festival in the country as well as releasing four albums and opening for various international acts. They released their first album as Mikanic, Swimming with the Women, to critical acclaim and it served to help them hop over to this side of the Atlantic, to New York City.

Mikanic’s music is difficult to box using conventional labels, and is hard to describe with words. But I consider this to be a Good Thing. Their sound is without boundaries, and dances around from reggae to rock to African to bossa to jazz. In fact, probably the only word that gets close to describing their style is ‘upbeat’. Their website says, their “universal appeal lies in the sincerity and positive energy of their music.” You better believe it.

The line-up is like their music – boundary-free – with Mike and Nick from South Africa, Shirzad Khusrokhan from India, Yasuhito Sasaki from Japan on lead guitar, and Alex Beckmann from the USA on drums. Certainly, the international flavor seeps right into their music and enhances the universality. Their cultural differences serve to enrich their music by giving it a wonderful sense of humor. One could say that the music almost has a twinkle in its metaphorical eye. Their tunes help you to relax and take it easy, but at the same time make you want to groove to the beat. If that doesn’t make any sense, go ahead and take a listen (some more songs at the bottom of the post). Or better yet, see them live.

Watch Mike and Nick talk about the band, along with some neat concert clips.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Mikanic plays at the Leonard Minoy Thalia at Symphony Space (Broadway and 95th, in Manhattan) on August 9th at 8pm. Get more event info, or visit the Mikanic website.

Listen To The Music
Listen to ‘If You See Me Walking > President’
[audio http://www.mikanic.com/MP3/20060413aceofclubs_walking_president.mp3] (April 13, 2006 – Ace of Clubs, New York, NY)

Listen to ‘Naked Man’
[audio http://www.mikanic.com/MP3/20070212bassline_naked_man.mp3] (Feb 12, 2007 – Bassline, Johannesburg, South Africa)

More free downloads.

My buddy Nikhil over at The Simple Leaf just let me know that his company is now carbon-free. What does that mean? Well, for one thing, they offset all of their carbon emissions. But go over to the ‘carbon-free’ page on their website to find out more. And to see how you can help.

Being that progressive, they just moved from Chai 2.0 up to Chai 2.1!

After a slight delay, I continue talking with Nikhil Roychowdhury, Founder-CEO and President of The Simple Leaf, an online start-up that sells tea.

For those of you just joining in, this is the third and final part of an interview in three parts. Part One can be found here. This part continues from Part Two, here.

In this, the final part of the interview, we get up close and personal with Nikhil and he gives some advice to the young ‘uns out there, talks openly about some of the mistakes he’s made along the way, and ends by telling us a little bit about tea itself.

Nikhil has made heavy use of Web 2.0 in his start-up, and apart from del.icio.us, Squidoo and Fanpop, he also has his own blog (of course!) on which he posts interesting tea-specific factoids.

So let’s get right to it.

Do you have any advice for young Indians, and young consultants in general out there who have been playing around with the idea of starting their own business?
Five basic lessons:

a. Think long term. Make sure your business idea is something you can picture yourself doing for the rest of your life. If you’re not totally committed, it just won’t work.

b. Don’t go it alone. Starting your own business can be lonely at times (trust me!) and you’ve just got to find a way to stay motivated. If you don’t have partners, talk to as many people as you can so you can bounce ideas off them. Even better, talk to potential or existing customers. It can be a difficult transition to go from working in an office with hundreds of people to working alone. Remember, you can’t call Barb over in Accounting to get the financial projections for your product, because now you’re Barb from Accounting. And Larry from Marketing. And Matt from IT. You’re going to wear multiple hats – so get used it quick.

c. Make your business easy to understand. You may think that adding a particular feature to your awesome new product is going to be the “killer app”, but whether you’re selling airplanes or tea, if your customers don’t understand it, they won’t buy it. This is why marketing is so important.

d. Personalize your market research. While the internet, census data, trade journals and books play an important role in market research, there’s simply no substitute for face-to-face interaction. I can’t emphasize enough how valuable it was for me to conduct that little “tea tasting” event in Urbana. I got the chance to chat with over 200 people (some of whom are now loyal customers) and learned a lot about what they liked and what they didn’t. Real insights from real people will teach you much more than any book or website. The internet can be such an anonymous place – so we plan on doing many more tasting events every year, so we can talk to our customers in person. There will be one coming up in Urbana, Illinois this winter, so stay tuned for more details on that.

e. Get a mentor. As an entrepreneur, you’re full of ideas. If your mentor doesn’t have the guts to tell you that your ideas suck (and why), get a new one.

There’s nothing new or earth-shattering about any of these lessons – every entrepreneurship book or article tells you essentially the same things in a different way. I’d be lying if I told you that I follow each of these to the tee (pun intended!). As simple as these suggestions sound, they’re surprisingly hard to execute. If it were that easy, we’d all be millionaires.

What are the biggest obstacles you have faced so far, and what obstacles do you foresee in the near-term?
Money and marketing.

You need marketing to get customers and you need money for marketing. It’s a bit like a like the classic chicken-and-egg problem. Everyone knows you need to spend money to make money. And when there’s not that much money to begin with…then what? That’s something I struggle with every day.

That being said, I try to focus on the marketing aspect of it more, and I remain optimistic that the money will follow! In the near term, if we are to meet our growth projections, I will need to seek external sources of funding.

Did you make any mistakes in the handling of the business so far? Is there anything you would have done differently?
Of course. Plenty of them. Big ones. Small ones. Medium ones. And there will definitely be many more to come. I think mistakes are part and parcel of this whole process. I keep telling myself that I’m trying to do something for which there’s no blueprint for success, so I’m going to stumble and fall along the way.

To answer your question – I think one of the biggest mistakes I made was spending too much time over-analyzing my business model. Don’t get me wrong – analysis is (almost) always a good thing. But nothing happens without execution, and I think I delayed execution because I was so convinced that if I just tweaked my spreadsheet a little more, I would nail down this perfect business model. Of courLse, it’s never that easy.

It’s a tough balancing act, and I think this is something all companies probably struggle with at some point. As a consultant, I learned that sometimes decisions have to be made even if you have only 70% of the information you need. I wanted 100%. Feeling comfortable operating with imperfect information is something I’m constantly trying to improve on.

Your lessons and experiences should be extremely useful for anyone who’s interested in starting their own business. Thanks for the openness.

But now let’s shift the conversation towards some tea-specific stuff. The tag line on your blog is “tea. Uncomplicated”. Your online store claims to make the process of buying tea “simpler”. How so?
Let’s imagine for a moment that you’re a tea connoisseur and you’re looking for a Second Flush Goomtee Estate SFTGFOP1 (that’s the kind of lingo you speak if you really know your tea). Well, because you know what you want, you can probably find what you’re looking for pretty quickly.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think most people buy tea this way.

There’s an overwhelming variety of tea out there – some of it is good, most of it is well…not-so-good. There are probably many people out there who settle for sub-par tea because they don’t necessarily know, to take one example, what SFTGFOP1 means. I want to make high quality tea available to them, but without all the unnecessary jargon. I want our customers to be faced with a solid, but manageable variety of choices with easy to understand descriptions. That’s one of the premises behind The Simple Leaf and our mantra, “tea. uncomplicated”.

And finally, what do you think are the top 5 things a non tea drinker should know about tea?
1. Tea is the most popular drink in the world after water. I love that one because it shows us that it really is a simple, every-day drink. And who says every day tea shouldn’t be gourmet tea?

2. Like wine, or coffee, there’s a wonderful range of flavors in pure tea. Different regions and processing methods yield distinct flavors which add to the allure of this drink.

3. All tea comes from the same basic plant, called Camellia sinensis (which means “of China”).

4. Tea is good for you.

5. You can use incorporate tea into all kinds of other things – like your favorite cocktail, or even use it as a marinade in cooking.

Well, Nikhil, it’s been fun and enlightening. Thanks for taking the time to do this.
My pleasure.

I continue to interview Nikhil Roychowdhury, Founder-CEO and President of The Simple Leaf, an online start-up that sells loose-leaf tea. Incidentally, he has his own tea-specific blog where he regularly writes all kinds of interesting things about tea.

In this part, we talk about his business, its vision, the marketing strategies, using Web 2.0, funding and his business philosophy, in general. If you’re thinking of starting something up, be sure to read on. There’s tons of useful gems in there.

I guess the first thing that people think about is funding. What are you doing for funding?
We’re funding this with personal savings and a small amount of cash from angel investors (read: family). We’re doing it old-school – thinking really big thoughts, and trying to build a sustainable business, one customer at a time!

Once we can scale the business to the point where investing in additional infrastructure is no longer a luxury, I plan on seeking external funding. If all goes according to plan, this should be sooner, rather than later.

There are plenty of good options for people who want funding. The US Small Business Administration provides some loans for startups. Other options are commercial bank loans and venture capital funds. Investors will want to see a solid business model, and even better, solid financial results and reliable future growth projections.

Will it be easy to get funding? Probably not. I’ll find out soon enough.

And for the complete newbies reading this, let me ask how does one even go about starting a business? Where do they begin?
I’m hardly qualified to give people advice, considering that I’m just starting out myself. But since you asked….

Procedurally, it’s actually not that difficult to incorporate a business in the United States. It takes some research (for which there are plenty of resources online), and a few forms, and you’ve got yourself a company. Lest I make it sound too easy, I want to stress that getting good legal and financial advice is critical. Make sure you talk to reputable lawyers and accountants about the correct structure for your business – C-Corp, LLC, S-Corp, etc. This may not seem that important now, but it will be in the future. The legal entity you choose will have ramifications on ownership, should you decide to take on additional partners or shareholders, or even if you want to sell the business.

There’s also a wealth of information on the internet so you can educate yourself on the process. Places like the Small Business Administration, startupjournal.com and entrpreneur.com have lots of good information and are a god place to start. That’s the relatively easy bit.

Ok, so how about the hard bit?
Trying to figure out what your company is all about is the hard part. This will take time – lots and lots of it. And sleepless nights. And moments when you rush out in the middle of a shower to jot down an idea! It’s a continuously evolving process, and if you have a good concept, it will probably be very frustrating as you refine it. My journey is only just beginning, but I did learn a couple of things here and there.

Obviously, I’m very interested in what you learned. But before we get into that, talk a little bit about The Simple Leaf. What’s the fundamental idea behind it?
I think our brand name really underscores what we’re all about. Simply put, we want to make really good tea a lot more “user friendly”.

Many companies selling ”premium” tea in the US today are marketing tea like a fine wine – an ultra-luxury product that only true connoisseurs can enjoy. They are often over-delivering on prestige and emotional appeal, and under-delivering on freshness and quality. I don’t know why – perhaps there’s a faulty assumption that consumers don’t know any better? Well, I think they do.

After all, tea, despite all its complexities, is an every day drink for millions of people around the world. But it doesn’t mean you have to drink awful tea every day. I want to provide my customers with a fresh, great tasting product without skimping on quality.

We can do this because we know where the tea comes from and who grows it (in many cases, personally). We don’t buy our from a bulk distributor or a wholesaler in Germany (interestingly, a lot of tea consumed in the US comes from distributors in Germany!). And we won’t carry a million average teas, just a handful of what we think are some of the finest. After that, we want to step out of the way and let our customers be the judge of quality. After all, the true tea experts are our customers, not us.

So you’re trying to bring good tea to the masses, as it were?
Well, I don’t want to refer to my customers as the “masses”, because they’re definitely not! We’re not trying to be a commodity play in the sense of a mass-produced, mass-distributed product that’s going to end up on every grocery store shelf in the US.

We’re catering to a much smaller cross-section of the market. I think our customers range from serious tea connoisseurs to people who may drink tea occasionally but have a hard time picking an excellent tea from the thousands of choices available. So rather than have them purchase a mass-produced box of tea bags from their grocery store, we want to step in and fulfill their need for a quality drink.

And clearly, your use of Web 2.0 reflects that. Anything to say about that?
Personally, I’m very excited about Web 2.0. Incidentally, my wife thinks I’m a total geek because of it, and there’s probably some truth to that. All these new Web 2.0 sites are taking something that used to be in the realm of techies and putting it in everyone’s hands (by the way, I like to think I’m doing the same thing with tea!). Web 2.0 is not something to think about in the future, it’s here right now. We’re always excited to test drive new technologies that make some aspect of life easier. When we find a tool or site we like, or see a business application for it, we’ll use it. We’re using sites like our blog, Squidoo and Fanpop to share our thoughts with fellow tea drinkers. It’s not so much about getting them to buy our tea as it is about engaging with a community of people who are interested in the same things we are.

Apart from using Web 2.0, what else are you doing in terms of marketing?
I think the best way to describe our (rather low budget) marketing approach is “grassroots”. We rely heavily on word of mouth to help spread the word about our tea.

Since the web is a core part of our marketing strategy, we’re working hard on building our online presence, and on getting decent page rankings from some of the major search engines. We’ve also made a few targeted Google adwords buys that have paid for themselves already, so we’re quite pleased with that. I tend to be very impatient sometimes, so I am constantly reminding myself that marketing requires a great deal of patience.

On the wholesale side, we’re trying to create compelling product/ service offerings that we think can add a lot of value for specific verticals. Ok, that was the consultant in me rearing its ugly head! Let me try that again, in English. Let’s say we’re talking to a restaurant, we might want to put together a package for them that includes not just tea, but also training their staff on how to present a tableside tea service, or teaching them about the origin of the tea, it’s flavor profile and how it’s grown, so they can engage in intelligent conversation and make recommendations to their customers. If it’s a retail food store, merchandise displays and training sales staff is incredibly important. I think it’s important to get the sales folks excited about the product, because if they’re not, the customer is probably not going to buy it.

So that’s what I spend a lot of my time thinking about. Now if only I had 20 million dollars…!

So where does the company stand right now? Any plans for the long-term?
Well, we’re executing Phase 1 of our strategy (our beta release, if you will), which was rolling out our online presence – the web store and the blog. We’ll continue to enhance the web experience for our customers with all sorts of cool new features and compelling content we have planned.

But we’re also hard at work on Phase 2 of our strategy – developing retail distribution channels so our product can get into retail stores. And let me tell you, it isn’t easy! Sales cycles are long in this business. It takes a lot of hard work, a thick skin, and the ability to handle rejection.

As far as future marketing, we plan on hosting more local events so that we can get as many people to taste our tea as possible. Also, we just like talking to customers face-to-face. In addition to the distribution plans I mentioned earlier, we’ve also vaguely toyed around with the idea of a branded tea room in the future. But don’t expect to see one on your block anytime soon – it’s just an idea at this point! In the short term, we’re going to stick to the basics and keep telling people about our tea, and getting them to tell their friends about it. Connecting with our customers one-on-one just makes us feel good, and isn’t that what it’s all about?

Hey, you got me into it, right? But I have to say, I wouldn’t do it if it weren’t for a quality product.
You have no idea how good it makes us feel whenever we hear from a customer telling us they liked our tea. That’s why we exist, so we sincerely appreciate it.

And what about employees? Do you have any or is it just a one-man show? Also, any partners?
No employees yet. My wife Cara and I are partners in the business.

But if you mean “Who does most of the day to day grunt work?”, then I’m guilty as charged. For all the other stuff that goes into running a business – sales support, marketing ideas, financial backing, and supply-chain strategy, credit goes, first and foremost to my family and friends. Since I definitely don’t have the budget to support all these important functions with a paycheck, they are all happy to serve as (unpaid) volunteers and advisors! And for that I’m eternally grateful. Especially to my wife who believed in me enough to let me quit my job (and still does, I hope!).

On the supply side, my dad is the main guy. He’s a trained tea taster with tons of knowledge about the ins and outs of everything related to tea. He’s worked in several capacities for large corporations like Brooke Bond (now part of Unilever) and Duncans, before starting his own successful tea blending and export packaging unit. During his career, he’s been able to build many long-lasting relationships with several excellent tea growers all over India and abroad. Now that he’s our buyer, his excellent tea tasting and sourcing skills are being put to good use by me. It’s been a tremendous learning experience, and I hope some of his expertise rubs off on me.

Concludes in Part Three.

From his website:

We don’t think enjoying tea should be complicated. In fact, we’re all about making really good tea just a little bit more accesible. And upretentious. That’s why we started Pekoe Tips and The Simple Leaf™ brand. We have tea experts that live and breathe tea. [link]

A college-buddy of mine and an anthropology-economics double major, he spent most of his twenties as a a successful consultant, hobnobbing with CFOs and advising them on how to run their business. But then, like most desis, he realized there was something lacking in his life. He wanted more. And certainly not more of the same. He wanted his own life, he wanted something which tied him to India and he wanted his freedom. So he chucked it all away and decided to start his own company. Selling tea.

From anthropologist-wannabe to consultant to a web 2.0-savvy chaiwallah. How the hell did that happen? Well, I was wondering the same myself. Read on, to learn more.

First of all, let’s start at the beginning. What did you do as a consultant?
I was a seasoned, and I mean seasoned, road-warrior. As horrific as it may sound, my record is 145,723 miles in one calendar year! And those are flown miles, not bonus miles.

When I wasn’t stuck in an airplane 37,000 feet above the ground, I spent the remainder of my time as a management consultant for a company called Headstrong (formerly james martin + co). I started my career there after I graduated from college in 1998. I was lucky enough to get involved with tons of fun projects, from helping to launch a broadband internet service startup, to developing technology strategies for large corporations. I spent the last few years there advising other companies on how to successfully run an IT organization. It’s called IT Program Management, in consulting-speak.

You didn’t like that life?
Did I mention that I flew 145, 723 miles in one year?

Actually, I enjoyed consulting immensely, despite the hectic travel. Of course, it had it’s bad days – but every job has those. There wasn’t one thing that I can put my finger on and say – “I hated that. That’s why I’m leaving”. What I relished the most was making a case for a particular solution (technical or otherwise) and then getting executives to slowly rally behind it as a team. It’s old fashioned politicking and ego-brandishing like you wouldn’t believe. Bob in Marketing often had a personal vendetta against Jim in Finance, and I was often the poor sap caught right in the middle of it. There were plenty of occasions when I didn’t care for this and asked myself what the heck I was doing lecturing a CFO on how to run his business. But in the end, if the outcome was successful, I’d done my job. I like to think I was more successful than not.

So is that why you quit? The politicking got to you?
I decided to quit because the life of a penniless entrepreneur was calling my name! I guess the fear of regret is something that I didn’t feel like I could live with. As clichéd as it sounds, I wanted to live a more balanced life, enjoy my family and friends, and not feel like I was owned, so to speak, by a corporation. It’s hard to put into words, but I just had to do it. I didn’t want to be on my death bed saying “I wish I had spent more time at the office”.

Basically, you wanted to be your own boss and have the freedom that comes with it?
Yes, to some extent. Although “freedom” is relative! Yes, I can make my own hours now, but I seem to work more now than I ever did when I worked for someone else. Being your own boss might seem glamorous from the outside, but it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!

What’s much more important to me is that I’m creating something from scratch. And that I own the whole process. Whether it’s ultimately a success or not, time will tell. But I’ll be able to say that I was responsible for it. That’s comforting to me, in a strange way.

Another pleasant side effect from starting a tea business is a ready-made excuse to deepen my roots in India. Having lived in the US for over 12 years, I sometimes feel like a bit of an outsider in my own country (umm…probably because I am!). I think I’ve found a good way to immerse myself both personally and professionally in the two cities that I consider home – Calcutta and Chicago.

When did the idea of starting your own business come to you?
As tempting as it is to say that I had a “eureka” moment, I didn’t. The idea evolved around three years ago. At the time, it was just one of those things that I had filed away in the back of my brain along with many others (starting a national dog-walking / pet-sitting franchise was one such brilliant idea!).

Ok, so I’ve been itching to ask you this: Why tea?
It goes without saying that I love the stuff. And I practically grew up surrounded by it, in Calcutta and Darjeeling. I remembered how fascinated I was during my first trip to Darjeeling and my first tour of a tea estate. I spent every summer as a child in Darjeeling, and endless hours wandering around tea gardens, watching colorfully dressed tea workers pluck the “two leaves and a bud” of the tea plant.

So the idea of a business involving tea slowly started emerging. Finally last year, after many discussions with friends and family, latency (or perhaps laziness?) finally turned to action, and I took the plunge. We started off by getting just a few samples of some excellent tea from my dad which we used to host a “tea tasting” session. We did this at a farmer’s market in Urbana, Illinois. The response I got from people was so overwhelming, I knew there was more to be done and I had to build a business around it.

And what were people’s reactions when you told them you were quitting a high-paying consulting job to sell tea?
When I first told people I wanted to start a tea company, I got my fair share of incredulous stares. You know – the ones where the listener’s mouth is slightly open and their eyes feign interest and excitement? And while they’re thinking “Boy, what an idiot this guy is – quitting a nice consulting gig and opening a tea shop”, somehow they manage to mutter: “Hmm….sounds interesting”?

Yeah, I got a lot of that. And still do.

Continues in Part 2.

That being said, here goes:

I am thinking about the time that I had too much to drink,
And I said to the barman, “Why are the elephants pink?”

I want to go to Honolulu, I hope no one objects,
I wish that I could fly there without the damn security checks!

I hear that some Indonesians, used peppers to break out of jail,
I wonder if they’d send me that recipe, but using electronic mail.

I regret nothing I’ve ever done, but only what I never did,
I am what I am, no more, no less: Ego + superego + id.
(According to Freud, at any rate!)

I write bad poems, blog posts, and, oh yeah, my doctoral thesis,
To write without lifting a finger, I need to master psychokinesis.

I work to be diplomatic, and I hope I don’t offend,
Because I am not wriiting all the “tags”(?), and this is where I end.

So there!

Said the psychiatrist, “Calm down and relax,
“You’re not helping yourself, and that is a fact.
“You might be suffering an uncommon neurosis,
“Read the next verse for my diagnosis.”

“An unusual disease called metamorphobia,
“Which is caused by an obscure strain of bacteria,
“Was discovered in Africa, in the tribe of the Buthelezi,
“With you it’s much simpler: You’re just plain crazy!”

Inspired by this video, made by a (human) friend.

Cocktails and Appetizers

The Cocktail Hour

We got there during the cocktail hour, headed straight to the bar, and then to the buffet table. We decided to control the binge-eating until dinner and had “only” two helpings of the hors d’oeuvres (hey – I’m a starving grad student, after all). And everything seemed to be going fine. In fact, to my surprise, we were quite enjoying ourselves. There’s something extremely satisfying about the privacy that is afforded to one by being completely anonymous in a heavily crowded room. You also get to peacefully observe the aunties and uncles rushing around greeting each other with loud hellos and over-concocted smiles, each one more primped up than the next. You get to see the “crazy” uncle who never got married and is grossly under-dressed (the latter following from the former, probably), sitting on the corner table, bleary-eyed and nursing his single-malt scotch (“no ice, haan!” – he has a cold, you see). You can watch decades-old rivalries between relatives that, no matter how hard they try to hide it in public, shows up in their understated and cold hellos. Also, you get to eavesdrop on to the occasional “keeping-up-with-the-Sharmas” conversation. For example,

Hema Aunty’s Fridge

Sharmila aunty says (quite proudly), “You know Hema, we just bought a new fridge last week – capacity twenty-five cubic feet.”

And Hema aunty’s witty retort? “We also just bought a fridge. Capacity was thirty cubic feet. And it even has a bottom freezer. They’re more efficient, you know.”

Game, set and match to Hema aunty!

Dinnertime
Soon it was time to head over to the dining hall. After some intense maneuvering and some number theory to locate our table, we found ourselves seated between a boring girl who spoke in staccato and mostly with herself, and some desi guy married to an American – which seemed to be his greatest achievement thus far. At least, he wouldn’t stop talking about it. So, patiently making small-talk (well, at least with the Indian guy, about his wife) we awaited the first course.

A Small, Furry Animal

Everything seemed to be going as expected until the MC came on. This really hip black guy, he began strutting furiously round and round the dance floor trying to rile the crowd out of their drunken stupor and pre-prandial lethargy by shouting “Come on people! Let’s see some hands!” and “DJ Asheesh – pump up the bass!”. And boy, did DJ Ashish pump up that bass. The beat went from low-volume, innocuous Air India-style elevator muzak, to sounding like a small, furry animal getting caught in the rotating turbines of a jet engine and being repeatedly thumped onto the side of the plane. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the DJ then started introducing three generations of the couple’s family (with siblings, mind you) one by one, after which each ambled across the dance floor. And he would not progess until there was adequate applause (“Come on people! You can do better than that!”). I phased out of half of it, probably passed out because of my hunger, but I guess I regained consciousness when he, at long last, introduced the newly married couple by saying, “And, in their first-ever public appearance as a married couple! Heeeeeere’s…” as if it was Madonna and her newly-found Kabbalah priest.

All right, I thought to myself, finally we get to eat. And, the waiters and waitresses (who, incidentally, were better dressed than me, and definitely better dressed than crazy uncle) even came out to take our “order”. We got to choose from the lobster souffle or the corn souffle as appetizers and a bunch of other stuff as entrees. It suffices to say that the entrees and desserts were fancy, hard-to-spell Western food with accents and tildes from a prix fixe menu without the prix, i.e., free. Alas, however, the meal was not to be. Well, not right then anyhow, because the bride’s father stood up, DJ Ashish pumped down the bass, and the MC introduced him, reading his name off a small chit, and grossly mispronouncing it. And then there was a long, elaborate speech punctuated with bad jokes and with thank-yous to both, Hema and Sharmila aunties. Who knows what violence would have ensued if one had been thanked and not the other? And if you think that was bad, the highlight of the evening was yet to come. After the speech, the MC came back on, DJ Ashish had pumped up the bass again (think furry animal plus jet turbine again) and the wedding couple came on for the first dance.

The Happy Couple Dance

The Chicken Dance

And this was where the proverbial furry animal hit the side of the plane and exploded. This was no ordinary dance. It was an elaborately rehearsed, bollywood-style, professionally choreographed dance number. At least, that’s what I think they intended it to be. Just picture two brown people, one tall and completely uncoordinated and the other, short, chubby and trying to keep up. Both sweating profusely on the dance floor under bright spotlights. These were by no stretch of the imagination bollywood stars – just two NYC lawyers flapping their arms about, thrusting their pelvises at each other and doing what I think was the tango, but it could also very well have been the chicken dance. The groom was hopeless. I mean, if dance is poetry of the body, then he was right about at the level of Humpty Dumpty. Stiff, awkward and extremely conscious, this guy was a dance instructor’s nightmare. The girl was marginally better, a little fluid, but shaking that girth was no small feat. And required pretty large and thumping feet, to boot. And I thought the speech was bad. I’d take a hundred speeches over that public display of ridiculosity. Why anyone would want to subject themselves and, more importantly, others to that is well beyond my comprehension. It got worse when the MC called ordered everyone on to the dance floor to join the ‘happy’ couple, who seemed far from happy right then. Suddenly, there was a throng raising the roof in a circle around the groom. Those who weren’t dancing were pushing and shoving everyone around while risking punches and kicks from the violently gyrating crowd simply to try and catch a glimpse of the groom and his clunky Govinda moves. For some reason, the word “cattle” crossed my mind several times at that point. And, after all of this, when things had finally settled down a little, the guy with the American wife proudly proclaimed to me,

“We also danced at our wedding, you know. But my wife did a solo bollywood number during our dance sequence. It lasted for fifteen minutes! Pretty cool, huh?”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m a cynic and an atheist.

Exit Strategy
Finally, after tolerating crazy uncle, Sharmila aunty, staccato-girl, speechifying father, desi-guy-with-American-wife and (*groan*) the Mithun-Silk Smita dance number, the first course was served. It was a lobster souffle all right, but was about the size of a mini-muffin and was fifty percent air. I inhaled it. After which point, the MC decided to call everyone on to the dance floor AGAIN! I mean, it’s bad enough they make us dance before eating, but who the hell dances between courses?

After almost an hour of watching the herds flock to the dance floor to make asses of themselves, we used sophisticated statistical techniques to project that, at the current rate of serving, we would get dessert at approximately five in the morning. That was the breaking point. We exited the ritzy locale ASAP, took a $5 cab ride to a friend’s place and filled up on some delicious Parsi chicken and Bengali cabbage. And, most importantly, some single malt scotch. A lot of it. Now, THAT’S how you survive that fiasco!

The horseshoe crab or limulus polyphemus is not really a crab. It’s more closely related to spiders and scorpions (see a baby horseshoe crab, right, and an adult male, below left). But despite its uglier (if you’re arachnophobic) and sometimes fatal cousins, this arthropod provides a valuable service to the medical community – a substance manufactured from their blood is used to test for bacterial toxins. The “crab” has also not evolved much over the last 300 to 400 million years, which makes it an interesting animal. It also looks a bit like the crab version of Robocop if you ask me, which is why you shouldn’t. And if you had to ask me (once again, I highly recommend against this) why they have not had to evolve over the last few hundred million years, I would say it’s because of their Robocop-like protection, which allows them to deflect anything that might harm them. Told you not to ask…

And, oh yeah, they really do have blue blood – their blood has copper compounds making it blue, as opposed to our (assuming you’re a human reading this) blood which has iron compunds. Human blood is red, by the way, for all you non-humans reading this. The Great Ganesha writes for everyone…