Excuse me "sir" !?!?!?!

First and foremost, you Punjabis with your fun-filled weddings should be banned. Just because you have an open bar with a Johnnie Walker Black Label, awesome kebabs, women dressed in their finest and music that makes me want to dance after a few pegs are down, does not…I mean DOES NOT give you an excuse to start  the sangeeth over an hour late. Nuh-uh! Look at us fabulous tams starting all our weddings on time and everything running like a Swiss clock. That’s why we’re so awesome at accounts and process improvement. Shame on you people for calling us at 8 and starting at 9:30…che che! Don’t for one minute think I will excuse such behavior just because I had fun at the wedding! There are long term repercussions for having fun in such a manner….it’s a major health hazard! Just as I was settling into a ‘Pearl Jam ‘sort of groove, you make me revert to Hindi dance music. Do you know what I was doing this morning? Grooving to ‘Katiya Karun’….I hate that song.  Karma….don’t know how long it would take me to recover.

To set the context to the previous outburst, the family and I were invited to the sangeeth of the daughter of one of my dad’s old colleagues from one of the big companies my dad had worked for. Dad and this guy started their careers out together in that place. The gentleman and his wife have seen me as a 6-month old baby. So they are all quite close. There were a ton of people from the company there who worked with dad, senior and junior managers, many of whom had welcomed my mum to the office community when she got married to dad, many of whom had seen me as a 6 month old baby, and even as a 1 year old wrecking havoc by peeing on their carpet.

The evening was off to a late start, but picked up. Slowly but surely enough the women dressed in their best started trickling in and the bar was open. So yaaay….drunk Punjabi chicks! Late Christmas gift I guess. In either case, not like yours truly has the guts to walk up to one of them and say hello, but I was expected to be on my best behavior because you never know when one of these uncles would ask for my resume and probably help out with a job interview. A lot of the ladies, and girls who were in their teens when I was just born took full advantage to scream,” Oh my goooooooood…..little Nikkkiiiiiii baby has grown up….shoooo cute!” and proceed to pinch my cheeks. I did not have much of a choice but to grit my teeth and seem happy at this public display of embarrassment. Didn’t they know that the good looking Punjabi girls were checking out the hot eligible tam Bram dude? Not helping ladies….not helping!

At some point, after I’ve had a good amount of Johnnie Walker and kebabs, I decide to break away from the uncle-aunty group and check out all the infectious dancing. No sangeeth is complete without a bunch of turban-wearing sardars dancing to ‘Why this kolaveri Di? I’m standing near the stage, with a whiskey in my hand trying very hard to pull off a Don Draper sort of look where you enjoy your whiskey and have a certain ‘Devil may care’ attitude to everything around you.  To my right, are three very good looking girls are dancing to the music. They must be a year or so younger to me. The cutest one among those, pink dress, takes two steps towards me. Needless to say, I’m thinking “Don Draper is my new God….I need to buy more suits!” Girl pulls out a camera, taps me on the shoulder. Playing it cool, I sip my whiskey slowly and turn around and look….and then it happens. Girl says, “Excuse me Sir, could you take a photo of me and my friends?”

‘Sir’…did she just effing call me ‘Sir’???? What the effing hell is wrong? Do I look like a ‘sir’ to you woman? Agreed that life has given me some grey hair before my time, and I do look like the bouncer of a club, or Kim Kardashian’s Chihuahua’s body-guard…but at no point am I a ‘Sir’? What the hell? Do I look like a prissy English Knight called Sir Nigel Bernard Appleby or something to you? Holy lord….you won’t believe how my ‘Don Draper’ moment just crumbled like the Walls of Jericho.

A woman my age just called me ‘Sir’. And it wasn’t a ‘Sir Mick Jagger’ sort of ‘Sir’….’Sir’ it seems. Bloody effing hell. Tell me dear reader….do I come across to you as a ‘Sir’ type of person? I’m very tempted to post a ‘Jaa Chudail’ link on Youtube right now, but since I’m a bloody ‘Sir’, I will honour my knighthood and behave more maturely. Now excuse me while I find a quiet corner in my office data center and cry. It’s good that almost everyone is on leave!