I’m So Over This Crap (with a bit extra added since yesterday)

I have no photos of the party, so heres me drinking
champagne in Singapore

So it was the evening of our long awaited roof top, house warming party. The booze had been delivered, the music had been set up and the guests were starting to arrive. Within minus one second of pressing the play button security arrived saying we could not have a party (surprise, sur-bloody-prise) but we’re professionals at this game now, so 500 rupees and two bottles of Kingfisher later, problem averted and we started to party the night away. Feeling extremely smug that we had conquered this India malarkey Paul and I gave each other a secret high five, cranked up the base and started the shots (shots, shots, shots). It was the party of all parties; amazing view, great music and more alcohol than you could shake a stick at, things were going perfectly until 12.30pm….

At 12.30pm a man burst in to the party shouting and screaming at the top of his voice in Hindi. He was the most angriest person in the land (as in Hitler type angry) he was so crazy I thought we was going to start hitting people! Paul went over to him and offered him some cash – b'jesus that set him off more. One of our Indian friends then went over and said some thing along the lines of ‘Who the hell are you and what right do you have to say we can't have a party when we have permission’? BIG MISTAKE – the man went on to declare that he lived downstairs, was Chief of Police for Sewri and Lower Parel and if we didn’t shut down the party now he would call up the officers. Quicker than lighting we all sobered up and took the party into the house. The thing is I wouldn’t mind, I know its horrible when a party is loud when you are trying to get to sleep, but the difference here is that we live in the middle of a slum, we go to sleep to the sounds of dogs barking, car horns honking, drums banging, bells ringing, and men chanting, the sound of a bit of funky house I thought would be a welcome distraction. Never the less we took the party downstairs and that was going great until our Belgian friend Gerrit decided to treat us all to the ‘Worm’ dance move which resulted in him smacking his face off the marble floor and gashing his chin open; blood was everywhere and a hospital trip and a number of stitches were required.  Incidentally this isn’t the first time I’ve experienced the ‘Worm’ move go wrong, four years ago my cousin Marianne lost her two front teeth doing that very move in a bid to win the dance off in our old local, 'The Fountain'. Despite this additional set back once the blood had been cleaned up (by yours truely) we continued to party until the early hours and received rave reviews on Facebook the following morning.

The next day we had 60 missed calls from our landlord saying we had to attend a meeting at 10.00 am with the Chief of Police  (aka the party pooper) and the Director of Lodha Buildings (one of the biggest property developers in Mumbai) to explain our actions.  I was too hungover busy tidying up to attend so Paul went alone. Paul made sure he told the Chief of Police that his behavior the previous night was unacceptable and that he gave a very unfavorable impression of India to many of the visiting expats that were at the party, we had also since found out that Police Officers had surrounded our place all evening waiting for a resident to complain so they could come up and take a bribe. For this the man apologized and I can imagine was starting to regret calling the most unnecessary meeting in the world as he was coming off worse. In the end the meeting turned out well for us, the Chief of Police offered us his help on anything in the future and gave Paul his personal phone number and the Lodha guy will be making the necessary repairs to the general areas and putting up spikes to prevent the pigeons pooing in the pool! Result!