Left-arm drive, and wedding season

Left arm is swollen somewhat, an injury acquired when I slipped and fell in trying to kick my mother’s pomeranian on Diwali night. Bloody waxed floors. Thumb was purple for hours. On the whole though, it was just the kind of injury I like best – enough pain to make you feel like something of consequence has happened ("because when it hurts you, you feel al-l-i-i-v-e" crooned Bono with feeling) but not so much that you have to start contemplating doctors and x-rays and such.



Where it’s inconvenient is while driving, a throbbing left arm being a very undesirable thing in Delhi’s wretched stop-start traffic where you have to shift between gears around 40 times a minute. Driving will be unbearable for the next few days anyway. It’s Trade Fair time at Pragati Maidan, which is along the route I usually take to office. And now the wedding season commences: the evening streets will be thronged by cavalcades of elephants and horses and idiot Punjabi revellers (okay, so they’re not all Punjabis but traumatic childhood memories of forced wedding attendance have fixed the stereotype firmly in my mind). Delhi Times reported recently that 14,000 weddings will take place in the city on November 28, so I suppose it isn’t much of a coincidence that I know two people who’re getting married (not to each other) on that day.



Anyway, what it adds up to is that there’s a good case for staying in office very late to avoid the evening rush. Expect to see lots of blogs posted on the night of the 28th, while the other Punjus are doing the balle balle.