Impromptu Birthday Party (Sept. 21)

So I know this entry is taking a step back in time from the previous entry but I felt the need to write this in it’s own space simply because it was quite the event, it took us completely by surprise, and finally it illustrates the concept of “Indian Time” perfectly.

Now to start off with we already eluded to Indian Time previously in this blog so if you’ve been following you’ll know a little bit about what we’re dealing with here. Okay, here we go. So it all began with our good friend Raj calling us up in what sounded like an urgent tone to invite of to his house for dinner that very night. We hadn’t eaten yet and he said he wanted us to be ready in 20 minutes. That wouldn’t be a problem even though we had just finished up playing volleyball for the evening and were dirty and sweaty, so we agreed and he told us he would pick us up in 20 minutes.

We rushed back to the room bathed, put on our clothes, and headed out to the ER entrance to wait for Raj. I might add we had never been to Raj’s house otherwise we would have just walked, as it wasn’t but 4 blocks away. We sat for about 35-45 minutes before we called up Raj to check on the status of his 4-block journey to the hospital. He said he would be there soon and we headed back to the room to grab some cookies to take to his house as a gift since that is the polite thing to do here in India. (Take something sweet or flowers or something like that)

We kept sitting and waiting and chatted with some nursing students that we just met and finally after about another 30 minutes or so decided to eat the cookies we were planning on bringing to Raj’s because we were starving! Keep in mind we got done with volleyball around 6:30 and were ready to leave by 6:50, so now it’s somewhere around 8:15 and we haven’t eaten since 1 this afternoon. Needless to say, we didn’t feel to bad eating the gift for our host at that point.

We decided to walk towards the front gate of the hospital and wait there. We did some “freestyle walking” by walking across these poles that are about 1 and a half inches in diameter and seeing who could walk on the top of the poles the best. After that we moved outside the gate on the curb and sat there. We waited another 45 minutes or so and finally Raj rips up on his motorcycle with a friend on another motorcycle to pick us up. At this point it’s a about 15 minutes after 9 so this means we sat waiting for over 2 hours waiting for dinner.

Now you’d probably expect, as we did, that dinner would be ready and the table set when we got there but you would be wrong…When we pulled into Raj’s house (which is actually home to not only he and his wife but also his brother and his wife and 2 kids and Raj’s parents and another family who rents part of the house plus at least one other person who rents a room) dinner was still being prepared…Raj apologized for it taking so long for him to come get us and then told us it would be probably another 45 minutes! He also informed us as we got there that it was his wife’s birthday...perfect. We watched the ladies cooking the special rice and soup that originated in the Middle East and was brought to India hundreds of years ago and sat around and chatted with everyone who was there.

It was actually really cool watching them cook and then Raj began showing us around house. There were 2 geese that were making noise in the yard and we asked him what they were for. He told us they made great “watch dogs” and also for eggs. He continued telling us about how is father loved keeping dogs, geese, chickens, and monkeys at the house…The last one there caught our attention and we immediately inquired about the monkey. They had a pet monkey! We went down to the tree it lived in and took a look! It was pretty sweet to say the least. It was pretty small and had a tail that was at least 2 and a half feet long hanging down. Raj kept saying in a funny voice, “Oooh, you’re a bad monkey!” Evidently if you have food the monkey will come and snatch it out of your hand, but other than that Raj assured us the monkey was quite well mannered. After that we headed back upstairs to their large upper deck had chairs all set up for what looked like a meeting. We found out shortly that they were also going to have a worship, which turned out to take another half hour or so! I’m all for worshiping God at any time, anywhere but my goodness we were hungry! Anyway, we had worship, which was mostly in Telugu and comprised of two song services and two separate talks.

We finished worship and then things got a bit weird…They had Raj’s wife sit up front and brought out the birthday cake which had a single candle on it and was very nicely decorated. I’m being specific with this because what came next was awesome! Raj lit the candle and all of a sudden a 6-inch firework flame shot out of the candle! At the same time this happened, what I thought was one candle was actually a flower closed up and once lit it opened and on the end of each petal was a small candle which was lit by the firework part of the candle as it opened! It was the COOLEST birthday candle EVER! It also had a little speaker part in the candle that was playing the tune to Happy Birthday!

Anyway, that was awesome but remember I said it became a little bit weird? Here’s where that happened…They began cutting the cake and then Raj, his parents, and Raj’s brother and kids came up and each of them fed a little piece of cake to Raj’s wife, Suzanne. She fed them each a piece back and this went back and forth for about 3 or 4 minutes. And to top it off no one was making any noise; it was just kinda awkward silence… Finally though we had prayer and started eating! By now, it was 10:15 or so and so we simply ate and then headed back to the hospital. Of course we, thanked Raj and his family profusely for their hospitality! (That was for you mom J) And then we walked back and headed to bed. All in all it was pretty fun and very Indian! A good experience for sure!