A slightly strange, almost surreal start to the day, with Wim (the sort of superintendent of the Bread Box building) hammering on my door when I was fast asleep. When I roused myself, he gave some sort of mention of a picnic – he has very little English – and then he was gone. I went downstairs, to find the Bread Box, for the first time ever, closed. Which both puzzled and concerned me, as I had ordered a special cake from them, for the cast party today.
Yogi had invited me over to SPA for tea, and he was able to discover some more information: Bread Box were having a staff picnic today (and presumably my early morning call had been a last-minute invitation.) And my cake was ready, was sitting in the display fridge in the café (which, despite the fact it was closed, I still had access to.) It later transpired that they had contacted Aparna to apprise them of the fact, but that she had assumed I had already collected it. Still, mystery over, and all was well… though somewhat symptomatic of the slight chaos that my life seems to consist of nowadays.
The party was to be held at the Fish Resort, one of a number of such places in the area, a sort of restaurant-cum-playground-cum party place. Aparna had described it as being near her, but that turned out to mean it was on her side of town, but still quite a way away, and after I went forst to her place, we took a tuk tuk (ha) to get there. But it seemed to suit our needs very well – there was a lake, with pedal boats, a swing, some places to act as background for photos. And they were providing us with an indoor space where we cold all eat in private, as well as cut the cake and dance around. Otherwise, we had to share the place with the general public, but that was not really a problem. We played a couple of games out in the open – zip zap boing (of course), as well as cat and rat, a sort of blind man’s buff, organised by Indra, another teacher at SPA (who happens to be cast as the Pujari, our equivalent to Friar Laurence.
And it was pretty much all that we wanted, Everyone seemed to have a nice time, lots and lots of photos were taken – it’s a bit of a national (maybe international) obsession. We cut the cake pretty early (it was melting); the food was… fine, though it did arrive very late, we danced quite a lot, there was a positive atmosphere, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.
When we finally managed to persuade people to leave, Aparna, Subitra and I walked almost back to her place; very pleasant, being cool, and through the countryside surrounding the city. I was invited back to Aparna’s, but decided to take a tuk tuk straight back, being somewhat knackered. It was pretty predictable that I would find Bread Box completely locked up when I arrived there, even though it was before six. But the security guy at the college had a key to the padlock for the shutter, and luckily the door inside was unlocked. It made for a sort of symmetry to the day, starting and ending with confusion.
