Tying The Knot - Village Style

Drinks dont have to be served in a clandestine fashion. There are many dholkis and mehndis where drinks are openly served by waiters with trays or via an open bar.

Chowkies, Harp,

Was lucky enough to get a copy of Harp`s ``program`` story. Harp, share the talent and submit it to Chowk.

Also, any publishers out there or people who have publishing contacts, Harpreet is a prodigious talent to watch. Sign him up for a book deal, he`s one of the better diasporic writers I`v ever read.

Samina,

Harpreet is a Pisces. Buy him a Book of Writers 2003 :)

Umer M.

#45 by Saminasha on January 12, 2003 7:18pm PT
Sameer,

You men are sooooo baaaaaad....how come I never found out about this? Although, I think my khandan older generation is very conservative...was this common in India/Pakistan about 50 years ago?

Dont worry it is not as common as these guys make it out to be. This is also a male ritual... Exaggaration....
You wont find it in any middle class muslim community in India and for that matter in most communites in india

Umer...
And how do you know that Harpo is a Pisces????!!! Anyway...Valentine`s day is right around the corner, why don`t you buy him BOW 2003?! :-). Something tells me he might already have it though!

Sammi...
you should be Harpo`s agent :-)

Ali87:

Well, whereas I disagreed with the initial description that Veeresh gave, I can tell you that the discrete serving of alcohol is very common amongst Punjabis middle class families. Even in my extended family, people who are way more conservative than us, the ``program`` was a reality, in a sense out of social pressure. They did not want to offend people by not having an option. They did not want to serve it openly either.

That`s why, though my earlier description was light-hearted, the serving of alcohol in a discrete manner is very much a reality. Again, I am limiting my comments to Punjabis, both Hindu and Sikh. We don`t have Punjabi Muslims in India so it is hard to say about them.

ali87 #48:

[he even defended his statement a day later only to withdraw it after two weeks under pressure. ]

I didn`t know the chief minister had to retract from his position.

[[Doing surveys is pretty easy. If you go to Cafe Coffee Day (the Bangalore equivalent of Star bucks)around b/w 11am-3pm in Prestige building in Bangalore and took a look at all the girls smoking and ask gently about thier sexual experiences you will have a good enough cross section reperesenting various colleges of bangalore. Such a survey will lead you to conclude that majority of the young college women smoke and have very linent sexual attitudes and quite a few would be willing to exchange sex for a dinner in a five star hotel or a night in the exclusive hotspots of bangalore.

You would have a very good cross section of colleges covered and even a relatively varied economic variation in the survey candidates. ]]

While there sure are some college girls willing to have sex for pocket money or a few drinks, by no means are they are majority or even close to 20% of the total population of college going girls in the metros.
I have graduated from college not too long ago and know what goes on.
You are falling in the same generalizatoin/exaggeration trap you accuse Sameer, Stuka etc off, albeit on a different topic (they on alcohol and middle class families and you on sex and college girls in metro India).

Satyavadi

#55 by satyavadi on January 14, 2003 11:22am PT

I think that you got confused.... Im saying exactly what you are saying.. that it is easy to do surveys and pass it off as actual situation in a socitey

read the surveys....

Krishna seems to be a sensible old man.. he gracefully withdrew the suggestion citing that it seems that there is widespread oppostion to the Idea.

#53 by stuka on January 14, 2003 10:37am PT

It is true about punjabis... I lived in Delhi for a few years.... though I was a young not too observant.. I did feel that Delhiites were pretty hard drinkers..
Often after diwali, holi and such festivals our neighbours mothers would discretely call us younger boys to go out and find their older sons who have not returned home. Often we would find them passed out in friends palces, inside small sweet shops where they would drink with the owners who they had befriended and some times on foot paths, gutters and busstops....

It is this hard reality of drinking that most people dont seem to accept..

re: #51

A Pisces, eh? No wonder he`s such a cool guy (and an extraordinary writer as well). Pisces rule. It`s a fact.

Aamir

Aamir#57

Go on...write a poem about me...LoL!

;)

-h-

Umer

I am Saggitarius.

Half Man, Half Beast, with a licence to screw in the streets.

(I wish that was my quote but I heard it from some black dude from America on a TV programme once)

:)

-h-

People,

Regarding Harpreet being a Pisces...it was a joke...you see, it was like - December the 14th gettit and I was like...okay, let`s forget it. Sorry, that was my other type of humour. Since no one got it, I think I`ll stick to my brash swear-word filled variety….

Yeah, it’ll be cool to see Harpreet get published. Saying that, he’d prolly have to write a novel first. Short stories seldom get accepted by agents, let alone authors. It’s all related to economics. Once you have a couple of solid titles under your name, then you can head into short-story writing.

As for the BOW, there’s an internet link which I can’t find right now so you don’t have to burn 12 or 13 quid down at WHSmiths.

Umer M

Umer...
Actually I was wondering about whether you were joking, hence my teasing question, since the first conclusion I came to upon seeing Harpo`s email address was that it had to do with his birthday!
[Yeah, it’ll be cool to see Harpreet get published. Saying that, he’d prolly have to write a novel first. Short stories seldom get accepted by agents, let alone authors. It’s all related to economics. Once you have a couple of solid titles under your name, then you can head into short-story writing.]
that`s what I was told too, in a writing class, when an agent came and spoke to us. But then again there are those who have published short story collections first, like the gorgeous Jhumpa Lahiri. It seems that Harpo`s niche right now is short stories. And maybe he can connect stories later on, or turn just one into a novel...or write a whole different novel, but I sense that this is what he`s comfortable with for now. I myself have put aside attempting a novel, and am writing short stories. I`m really waiting and hoping for Harpo`s stories to get published though. :-)