Chandni Chowk – Lehnga and the End of an Adventure (Part 4, the final story)

Noooo… you are STILL around?? How I love you… so we had reached the deserted shop. The fat men who looked very bored pointed at a precarious looking ladder pretending to be stairs to another floor. We went up the ladder.. err stairs to find a whole new world.

Fat ladies from south Delhi were sitting there in all their finery to select some more finery for their girl-children. There were fat ladies from other parts of Delhi as well. We were there, it seemed, only to add to the confusion. Lenhgas were being flung around the room. "Oooh! I like that one there", one heard some woman scream and next thing you know - some shiny fabric that weighed a few tonnes was flying across the room.

We definitely upped the cool-factor of the place a few hundred notches. While the person next to us saw rainbow coloured dresses with stones that would put the Kohinoor to shame... we decided rainbows were best left in the sky. Draping superlatively heavy lehngas after another... each glitzier than the other, Ma and Re 'oohed' and 'aahed' at the appropriate moments (whenever they liked someone else's stuff - only to be buried under the fabric the very next second!!).

Compromise was finally reached, I wanted peach so we got peach fabric, the mother wanted red so we had red net over it and Re wanted "antique" work so we got a bit of "antique" work and not so antique work as well. Yes I know it sounds pretty clownish right now, but when you stand there at my wedding (holding your sides and wiping your tears)....

Shopping complete and lighter my a small fortune, we decided 2 rickshaws were the mode of transport required. The mother zipping past like Road Runner in one and us chugging along trying to navigate the people, cows, buses, cars, cycles, autorickshas and motorbikes who all seemed to be standing facing the direction perpendicular to us at the crossing. They stood there pretty much motionless for fear that someone might actually want to move in the direction that the road was MEANT to carry!! Motor vehicles were a new concept it seemed, and the joy of driving one around to prove the sheer existence of such marvel of modern technology appeared to be the aim.

Finally we caught up with the speed demon who cycled my mom in the face of very very real danger to life to be brought home safe. We are yet to recover. Can you blame us?