The Wedding

So Christmas week, I escaped to Dubai for the wedding of an old family friend, Rahad. It was the most hectic 7 days I've had in ages. Although being my first time in the UAE, I SAW NOTHING. I saw a mall. I saw the Burj Al Arab Hotel from a distance....but it was basically home to beauty parlor to wedding party to home, and all over again. Oh yeah, I did see lots of Meena Bazaar though, the local market hub for desi clothes. The wedding itself was mostly in Sharjah, so I managed to get a glimpse of Dubai mainly on my first day, when I went straight from the airport to the Mall of Emirates, to meet the whole wedding crew. First impressions: Everything is so shiny, clean and NEW! Thats what 2 months in Cairo does to you....From there we spent Christmas Eve dinner at TGIF. Very wierd experience, sitting in an Arab country, being served by Filipino waiters, and driving through neighbourhoods overrun by men wearing shalwar kameez. I wasn't too fond of the fact that getting around Dubai is so difficult if you don't have enough cars/ cant afford taxis. How do AIESEC trainees survive there? My friend's dad hired 3 cars for the entire wedding crew, and even then it wasn't enough.

Even so, I ended up having a really fun time. Weddings are always a laugh, and I really enjoyed spending time with Chahat and Rahad. It was hilarious because our side (the brides side) practically had just me and Chahat to defend our territory. Ok in case you have no idea about Bengali/Desi weddings, we have a tradition where the brides side has to try and get AS MUCH dough from the groom, in order to allow him to marry his future wife. So, in this case, it was up to me and Chahat to get the money. Unfortunately, we were up against 6 big tall men on the grooms side. That's not a very advantageous ratio, especially when your trying to block the door of the wedding hall, or trying to steal the grooms shoes. We still managed though, because the not-so-clever boys on the grooms-end decided to pick him up into the air, in order to carry him OVER us, and in the process we quickly snatched his shoes off his feet! hah! You should've seen us, we literally sat on the floor of the ballroom, clutching one shoe each, tightly to our chests, for like 15minutes. NOT an easy feat when you have a sari on....Camera's, lighting, people all around us, trying to get us to give the shoes back.....but we didn't cave. I just had one thing to say: Show me the money! :D

[I had to make up for lost time, I actually spent the first part of the wedding throwing up in the hotel bathroom, I got a bout of food poisoning on my last day :D But it was all good, I was back on my feet within 5 minutes!]

Alas, we only got away with 150 quid though, so at the end of the night, we decided to block the door to the newly wed's hotel room. :P We told Imran, the groom, that he couldn't enter his hotel room to join his lovely wife, unless he paid up. He did. 500 crisp ones. But then, suddenly, I had this random realisation. The 50 quid bills were FAKE!! They were definitely bigger than I remember.... Hell, I lived in London for 6 years! But then again, I never did have many 50 quid notes, simply cuz i never had much money there!..... :S lol.....So I INSISTED that the bills were fake. We left the hotel room disgusted and cheated.....This groom would have to pay....but how? I was leaving the following day :( To this day, I'm still not sure if those bills were really fake or not...but if they weren't, I'm gonna have to swallow my self-proclaimed knowledge of all things English lol.

One thing I did get done was some much-needed pampering. The beauty parlors there are practically all-female boudouirs. The windows are all blacked out so nobody can look in from the outside. Women enter in their black burka's and shed them inside to carry out all sorts of beautifications. Needless to say, I got the full works: Pedicure, Facial, Waxing, threading, henna tattoos, hair-styling, you name it, I did it!