Happy 4th of July!

A few days ago, I registered with the US Embassy here to ensure that in case of civil revolution, natural disaster or other miscellaneous insurrections, they would find me and whisk me to safety (this is the same Government that recently announced issuing unemployment checks was the best way to stimulate the economy, so I am not putting too much stock in them saving me).  We do have a private security service that will actually do the aforementioned, but I thought the more the merrier.

Anyway, after I registered, the website sent me to the local embassy website.  On it, there was a bit about a 4th of July party at the American Center.  The photos from last year look encouraging and it promised food - which I am always up for.  I envisioned a small gathering of State Department Officials and ex-pats discoursing on all the aspects of living in India.  More importantly, I imagined beef and beer.  I am learning quickly to manage my expectations.

I arrived at the American Center around 8:00pm to a cacophony of music and people emanating from behind the wall.  The security that was tighter than most airports.  I had to show a photo idea, go through a metal detector, get wanded and patted down.  I went through the vertical steel turnstile into a massive crowd of ........ Indians.  There was nary an American to be found - just hundreds of Indians.  There was no beer and there certainly was no beef!  Apparently, this little gathering was for the Indians, not Americans.  The entire shin-dig was to build better relations with the local population.  Crap!

After getting over my initial beef-disappointment, I realized that this was a really interesting opportunity to watch Indians en mass in an element that was not entirely their own (to be honest, it is not like I had anything else to do).  The American Center has a large, secure, courtyard within the gates that is about the size of half a football field.  At one end, they had a Country and Western Band which was playing some older, twangy country music and at the other side was free Domino's pizza (exactly the image we would like to project overseas).  In between, a throng of Indians meandering between the two areas.  It was hot and humid (shocker), but there were huge fans with spritzers which were actually keeping the area relatively comfortable.  Relatively!

I thought I would brave the mob around the pizza, as I had not had dinner in anticipation of copious amount of beef.  The poor people serving the Pizza were desperately trying to keep the crowd in 4 orderly lines, but these are Indians and the idea of an orderly line makes no sense to them.  Time and time again, a group would push in sideways only to be rejected by the server and told to go to the back of the line.  The "cutters" would get a confused look and just stand there.  The servers would then serve around them for a few slices until they got the messages and the "cutters" would vacate.  This went on for an hour until all the pizza was gone.  By the way, Indians love pizza.

I hung around for about an hour observing this mini circus. You could not turn away - hundreds of Indians shuttling between the pizza mob and the country music. It was as odd as seeing a Brit with a full set of teeth. Finally, the pizza ran out and the place cleared out with an unusual efficiency leaving only some Indian Country Music fans and some low-level State Department personnel.

Happy 4th of July from India!