October 8th 4:49pm - Indian Wedding

Drinking chai is as essential to Indians as sex is to nymphomaniac rabbits.
After our boat ride, Ammu monster-truck-towed me and the Scot to the rooftop Rainbow Restaurant for chai.
Ammu steamed through his camera-phone and showed us photos with mother-pride for baby pictures. Every photo was of him. There were photos of him with his arms crossed in front of his motorbike, in front of a boat, a lake, a house, his ayurvedic shop. He wore identical Mexican thug expressions in all. His elephant-sized gold chain clung to his neck in every picture.
After viewing the thirty-fourth photo with the feigned interest I demonstrate towards hairy backs, we asked him where a good thali restaurant was.
"I take you there! Come on!" he said with Oprah enthusiasm.
The three of us boarded his motorbike. Indian motorbikes are intended to carry three to four Indians, not two giraffe foreigners and an Indian with a Texas-sized gut.
Ammu spiraled through streetlight-less streets writhing with rickshaws, bicyclists, motorbikes, cars, trucks, and cows. The Scot and I elevated our legs and held on to each other with the terror I feel whenever I hear rumors Sarah Palin is running in the 2012 presidential election. Ammu chatted on his cell phone and then to another motorbiker as I sat with a smile as frozen on my face as my breast size has been since I was eight years old.
The Scot yelled into my ear how much he had been craving thali.
Ammu took us to a wedding.
It was day two of a three-day celebration. White Christmas lights enveloped every surface.
The women's saris and salwar kameezes shone in a kaleidoscopic range more colorful than a transvestite's wardrobe. Hair was as immaculate as in a shampoo commercial, faces were make-up painted, and clothes were Mother Teresa-flawless. The Scot wore Jesus sandals, khaki pants dirtied from a hot day in India, and a sweat-blemished shirt. I wore floppy black pants, sandals, and a stretched-out shirt that I had been perspiring in for eleven hours. We looked like ragged whiteys in a lake of impeccable Indians that might as well have been going to the Oscars.

Ammu introduced us to his ninety-eight relatives, referring to them as brother and sister. His mom must have been annually pregnant with twins throughout her fifty years of life. I later discovered the term applied to sister-cousins and brother-cousins.
Ammu's two-year-old niece showered into tears every time she glanced at us strange white beasts. The six-year-olds trailed us like we were Mr. and Mrs. Clause.
After eating a luscious cocktail of fiery dal, rice, aloo gobi, vegetable masala, chapatis, and Indian desserts, Ammu transported us out of the expansive lawn swimming with Indians. We shook hands with the bride's parents as we exited, said, "Namaste," clasped our hands together, and were ushered into the parking lot.
Ammu's brother-cousin sat inside his car rolling a joint. He looked as inconspicuous as a deer wandering through a tiger's cage at the zoo.
Ammu's brother-cousin explained that he is a bus driver and needs at least two joints to get through any drive.
"That explains Indian driving," the Scot said.

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