International Birthday Bonanza!

Tonight, Tasha and I attended the fourth birthday party for the daughter of a former contract employee in my section at work. Some astute readers will remember this coworker as the one that introduced me to Indian food last year, an experience that I will treasure with every singed taste bud in my possession.

I received an e-vite from my friend and his wife two weeks ago, and my wife and I were excited to attend as we had not seen them since he moved away to a different contract job elsewhere. When we arrived tonight, we knew we were in for an interesting experience.

We were met at my car by a small group of my coworkers that were helping to set the party up. They lived in the same apartment complex that the party was being held at, so they helped provide some entertainment by way of a stereo system and a laptop to play some Indian music.

“This will be an experience for you!” one of the guys said. “I bet you’ve never heard Indian music before!” Well now I have. And the weird thing is that I swear that I have heard one of the songs from somewhere else, maybe an advertisement or something.

Anyway, before long the room had filled with around 40 people and Tasha and I were the only ones that didn’t hail from India. It was nice knowing some coworkers there because we had some things to talk about. That got us introduced to some of their friends, wives, etc. with whom we could do the normal small-talk that is best suited for events such as this.

The Indian guys would be talking to each other in their native state languages, during which I would occasionally hear my name and they would gesture at me. They would drift in and out of English to ask me things (my karate exploits were mentioned regularly, as were work-related topics). There was another couple that had come in from my friend’s new workplace and they didn’t know anyone else either, so we spent quite awhile talking and getting to know them.

Tasha and I marveled at how similar birthday celebrations are across cultures. They sang “Happy Birthday To You”, had birthday cake (although the child fed part of the first pieces of cake to their friends and family, like we do for weddings), and they had pizza. What I couldn’t get over was the scale of the thing. It was a BASH, tons of people were there. The kids were all having a blast playing and running around, in fact I found out later that I was batting a balloon around with one of my coworkers sons and didn’t even know it. I think we were both expecting a little more variation, given the cultural differences that we experienced during our first visit to their home.

One neat thing was that the guys were all dressed in jeans and polo shirts, however almost all of the women were dressed in saris, which are traditional Indian dresses. The birthday girl was dressed in a princess outfit, a point of which she reminded me frequently throughout the night. “I’m a princess, see my crown?” she’d say as she came by. She’s really into Cinderella right now, we found out.

It was really nice to get to know a few more of those guys outside of work and get to meet their families… we talked about movies, the differences in Indian music, television, etc. I am really glad that I went, Tasha and I both had a really fun time.