Jei Ho!

Pre-script 1: The good people at BlogAdda have interviewed the Bartender Bhai here. Special thanks to the interviewer Harish for his patience -- I think I asked him more questions than he asked me!

Pre-script 2: If you're wondering about the 'typo' in the post title, read on. Post abhi baaki hai, mere dost!

So S2/D2/P2 arrived back in Singapore today. (Bewdas who are new to the bar may need to refer to this post to find out who they are.)

"Shall we go receive them at the airport? They're landing early in the morning on saturday." Pizzadude wrote gleefully to Viv and me a few days ago. I can assure you that this was no caring friend talking. This was a man who had been burning in the fire of vengeance since this little incident. And this seemed like the perfect little opportunity for him to have his revenge. Of course Viv and I got involved. We're only happy to get involved in anything that involves these keywords - S2/P2/D2, Pizzadude, a high degree of embarrassment, and of course, a camera for posterity.

And as is normal with us, what's a project without a title? And thanks to Viv's project-naming skills, project JEI HO was conceptualised and finalised partly over email and partly over mysore masala dosas last night.

So there we were, up at 5 am this morning, armed with the following:

- One steel thaali
- One small container of sindoor
- The ugliest garland in the world (See picture at your own risk. Warning: graphic image; parental guidance advised)
- One homemade poster (you'll see)

So we took at cab at 5.30 am to the train station and then a train to the airport. It was in the cab that we suddenly realised that in our sleepy and dazed state, we had forgotten the camera at home! Damn you lucky S2/D2/P2! Anyway, we decided to take the videos and photos using Viv's phone instead.

The train ride was rather eventful, and as often happens when you make a journey at an unearthly hour, the talk was inane. We discussed the possible superpowers of our homegrown superhero Veshtiman (read more about Veshtiman here). Viv is still working out the finer details of how many ways Veshtiman can use his veshti in, to save the world, but that's a whole other post (coming soon).

Meanwhile, the three of us reached the airport and freaked out to see that the flight had already landed. We hid behind the pillars and waited and waited and wondered and wondered. "What if they have already gone home? What if they pulled a fast one on us and told us the wrong flight timing??" In the midst of discussing how we would avoid ending up as the "embarrasees" in the case of either of the scenarios being true, we spotted S2/D2/P2! PHEW!

So we hid behind the pillar again, and just when the unsuspecting couple came out, we ambushed them with this poster. Proudly held high, to the amusement of onlookers! (There sure were a lot of people at the airport at an unearthly time like that!)













(Of course, I have blurred out the wedding pictures in the poster. I may be the Bhai, but sleep-deprived furious brides who have just been 'surprised' at the airport can be ahem, quite unpredictable.)

This was duly followed by the 'teeka ceremony' at the airport itself, and then we made the couple exchange the ugly garland. Well, there was only one garland, so there was no 'exchange' as such, we just used the same one. Shub remarked, "Thank goodness there is no aarti!" and then immediately retracted it with, "Wait, that's a dangerous statement to make." (Inside joke: When we had ambushed Pizzadude with the poster at the airport last year, he had said, "Thank goodness you didn't get a garland or something!" and Viv immediately took the garland out and honoured him with it. Muahahaha!)

But to Shub's relief, there actually was no aarti. We had briefly considered the aarti and ghanti, but we dropped the idea as we were not sure of Singapore's jail procedures for lighting a fire in Changi airport, and whether we could be bailed out in time to go to work on Monday.

Oh well.

Anyway, S2/D2/P2, it's good to have you guys back! Really. :)

JEI HO!

PS: Ooh I almost forgot to disclose what JEI HO stands for! It's Joint Embarrassment Initiative for Husbandu and Oifu.