Guest Post: Surviving a Party

Here is the first Guest post by a Delhi boy Prateek Varma aka Patty aka CEan raj87verma88. I know Patty for almost 2 years. He one of the most influential member of our forum Crazyengineers.com. Apart from being a bike freak and conceiving a robot (CE Bot), Patty is also a student of Mechanical Engineering. Enjoy!

Surviving A Party

All of you must have got the feeling of boredom at least once during a party. Sometimes not exactly boredom, but you wish you weren’t there, you feel lost and helpless. There is a big gathering of people, an uncle is shamelessly goring himself on some dish and making sure his shirt doesn’t stay hungry. Then there is the irritating aunt who spots you while you are trying to hide behind the “Golguppa” counter.

But you have to make sure that it seems you are enjoying. Because if you give even a slight hint that you are not, then the host/hostess presume that it may be something they said or did and one of them sticks with you like a leech for the rest of the party or sends a waiter trailing behind you, whose only purpose in life is to either bring you delicacies without you asking for any or ask you first and still bring a topped up plate even if you had declined the offer.

The old aunts are one of the most lethal. They ask questions that would put even the RAW’s interrogation team to shame. Each answer you give, will give birth to another question, and if you don’t, then too another question following by a sarcastic jibe coated with humour. This continues till they either find a new prey or you collapse. Some oldies I know had a strange habit of poking me in the rib cage during marriages and chuckling with a toothless grin, “You are the next in line”. They stopped after I started doing the same thing at funerals.

In every marriage or party there are a couple of people who are usually very quite, but give them a a few drinks and they will give you one the strangest dance performances ever. Their steps are either derived from animals eg Snake Dance, Constipated Monkey, decapitated eel, etc or from day to day activities eg Flying a Kite, Laying plates on a table, washing clothes etc.

With the variety of snacks being served, by the time, it is time, for the main courses, you are too full to even look at the food. Now this is a typical Catch-22 situation. If you don’t eat, you either offend the host and they will continue to feel bad about it and make it known to you via slight hints and jibes now and then till judgment day, and make you eat some against your will, or they think you are feeling shy and literally force something down your throat. If you say yes, and have some just to please the hosts, they will keep coming back to you and force feed you, as if your stomach is a bottomless pit.

Many times a strange person you don’t recognize, creeps up to you and starts a conversation. He says that you had met before, and acts like he is your best buddy. You smile and laugh throughout the conversation while wondering, “who the hell this guy is?”. After the party, you take the courage to ask someone and they give such a searching look as if wondering whether you are from this planet or not.

Sometimes while you are sitting at the table, the person to your right is busy in conversation with the person to his/her right, and the one on your left is talking to someone on his/her right. You have two options here, either start crying softly over your bad luck or start singing a solo while using the spoon and plate as drum and sticks. But here also do not let the hosts know you are disengaged or they would feel responsible to you and start an emergency conversation which you don’t want.

Make others believe that you are talking to someone. Make it seem as if you are looking towards someone and keep nodding you head or say “Yes”, “No”, make some expressions from time to time.

Another way to kill time is make some sculpture out of the food on your plate or try to balance your spoon on your nose. But make sure, it seems you are doing this for someone. From time to time look up and say something which shows your either making this for someone or teaching them some fine culinary trick.

The last resort could be, going the ‘child way’. Start acting like a 5 year old. Go down on all fours, sneak below the table and growl like a tiger to startle someone, or steal some sandals and mix them up, tie the shoelaces of the two shoes together etc. Do this until you get kicked out…………………………………… or………………………………………… just take your leave, walk out of the party, go home and sleep.