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What A Weekend! Part-1

Song of the day: Where’s the party tonight….Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna

I was invited and couldn’t make it to their engagement party. Then again I was invited and couldn’t make it to their wedding, so when the invitation to attend their 1st Wedding Anniversary came up, I knew for sure that I was going to definitely make it this time! And boy, am I glad I did or what?

I had already met Neeraj and Poonam at St.Louis last year, but this was the first time I was visiting their home and their family. I was excited because I knew that both of them were great friends and fun loving people and there was no better chance to share and celebrate their happy moment and the wonderful journey of their relationship from staying apart to engagement to marriage! After many attempts by the cosmos of foiling my plans of going to Illinois for NPs 1st Anniversary Party, I finally boarded the plane to O’Hare. Little did I know that I was in for one of the best weekends in a LONG time!

O’Hare is one of the busiest airports in the world and to think I was going to land there on the Friday before a long weekend, was enough to tell me that I was in for a long wait, either at the airport here or while landing at O’Hare. To my surprise and gratitude, my flight took off on time and believe it or not, it landed 25 minutes ahead of schedule! That is unheard of at busy airports! As soon as I got off the plane, I called Poonam’s brother Suraj who was going to pick me up. He was still at Midway airport picking his friend up. I thought, lets go get my bag, at least that will kill some time. To my surprise, I saw my bag as soon as I reached the baggage claim area. Twas one of the first ones to come out. I spent the next hour at O’Hare whiling time away, taking in the myriad welcome hugs and goodbye kisses. It was very busy at the airport, I only figured it would be busy on the roads while Suraj was picking me up. Suraj had come to pick his friend Pratik up, who by the way was Gujju! So we tried to annoy Suraj by talking in Gujarati but Suraj was too nice and we stopped after a while. Two hours on the road passed by quickly, I didn’t even realize when I fell asleep in the back seat and when we arrived and their home!

The first thing that hit me when I entered the Bhatia home was how “at home” it felt. How everyone sitting and talking at the table was just like it would be at my home. Poonam or Punni as everyone calls her, Neeraj, and their families were all awake and chatting the night away. Punni’s mumma was awesome! She was always smiling, very genuine, very funny, and very very nice! I clicked with her right away. I was soooo sleepy when I reached there close to midnight, but I was wide awake within ten minutes of entering their home! We chatted, had chai, finished up wrapping up some personalized candy for the party (which by the way was a fabulous idea and will be stolen by yours truly in the near future), and then when all the elders were in bed, five of us - Neeraj, Poonam, Suraj, Pratik, and me sat down to play cards!

Now cards and my family get-togethers go hand in hand, so I was all up for it! Pratik and I were gujjus and kept confusing everyone with our terminology for spades, hearts, diamonds, etc. We laughed, called confused hukum and trump, diamonds and hearts, and since it was the game of unknown partners, we had a lot of fun guessing our partners. We must have played till 2 or so and finally went to bed pretty late. We had to wake up pretty early the next morning to get ready for the party. 7 am is early right?

To be continued…..