OUT AT THE VIKRAM & SHWEANA SHAADI OF THE YEAR…

When there is too much choice food to dine on and you have to be very choosy!

FUNNY or not funny. The only time I do not feel hungry is when I’m faced with a banquet of food, all kinds of food from around the world, vegetarian and non-vegetarian…I guess there are all kinds of hungers of the mind and body, heart and mind connect. But this is to say this was one very genuinely khaas aadmi party for an only son’s marriage reception I was witness too…there I was telling myself if one is invited to such a party it’s better to be well-behaved and don’t ask me what I mean by that! I can be very bad with small misdemeanors which may or may not upset someone (and don’t ask me to elaborate on that, life is complicated enough).
It’s difficult to explain. If one is in the media and not genteel, upper crust media which will only write goody goody social columns, with only fine mug shots of important people national and international…and then one gets invited everywhere for one is part of a certain social circle.
Up market or down market I succumb to the temptation of clicking a few pictures, even if nowadays smart hand phone’s intricacies of digital technology faze me…still I click away to jog my memory later on. Whatever catches my imagination or fancy, mostly food really. The food one comes across at these upper crust parties may take away one’s breath amongst other things. I may add here that most media gets invited everywhere up in the stars or down in the dumps and so we get some kind of ringside view of things like flies on the wall, etcetera.

VIKRAM & SHWEANA TIE KNOT
OKAY, in a recent memorable party I was at the shaadi of Goan industrialist (and a personal friend of the hubby) Dattaraj Salgaocar’s only son Vikram with Shweana (a Salgaocar-Raiturkar alliance) at the Marriott Resort Miramar in Panjim. Naturally it was an enchanting high end affair (media eyes can be quite jaded in the best or worst way possible)…but this is also the love story of the year even if I may say so. A media friend along at the party admonished: You’re here as a guest, it’s wrong to go around taking pictures and worse still post them on Facebook or anywhere! I said let anyone think what they like, I’m nobody’s fool or food for thought.
COMING to the food it’s interesting how Marriott puts up its banquets for special occasions, really thinking out of the box – here were chefs of popular international cuisines laying out their piece de resistance recipes … veg and non-veg kebabs circulated and there were live stations. Details were listed on a pretty leaflet placed at every decorative mirrored table (if you look into the glass you see yourself reflected and may quickly adjust hair or clean up smeared lipstick or pin up some tumbling down hairstyle)….
It was a most eclectic menu of choices for light eaters and for those who may have skipped breakfast/lunch (my imagination, okay, most upper crust don’t do that, most are scrupulously body beautiful conscious and indulge in intermittent fasting or disciplined eating regimes, have their own famous trainers and coaches to live mindfully)…coming to the Vikram Salgaocar shaadi menu, my dears, I’m sharing here the Marriott Masters’ Signature Cuisines.

A pretty menu leaflet was on every table with the message “Thank you for sharing our joy and happiness and being with us.” Blessed couple! Who organized it all so perfectly? If you must know it was Kiran Chandra of V4U Events and Entertainment Goa. Hey, there was a Photo Room for getting your photographs taken by a professional…and most interesting were those New Orleans Mardi Gras carnival style walkers on tall, tall stilts, swaying in the breeze and walking round …etcetera.
WHAT I did treat myself to? Only the impeccable array of sushi with its collection of soy sauces, wasabi and pickled ginger to live for. Then a plate of appam and veg stew which I got for the hubby, he didn’t eat it so I ate it instead of letting go waste (a real weakness). (Sigh) He prefers to dine on desserts only…oh yes, the baked yogurt was utterly butterly delicious and I enjoyed one of the pile of inviting dark almond rock chocs. That’s it? Plus, a glass of rich red wine, that’s it, my dears, and a “magai paan” on our way out when it was something close to midnight.
The wine warmed me up, the Black in White band was belting out hot numbers fabulously but no one took to the dance floor, a real pity. I cannot imagine a Goan shaadi reception without dancing, although I learnt later there was a cocktail dance party…post-midnight maybe, for pretty young things to dance, and I dare so even those pretending to be pretty young things. This is a gossip column to be taken in the spirit of a gossip columns, okay.
But I was feeling sorry for the gorgeous singer. I asked a few friends want to go and shashay on the floor to please the band folk? The hubby was sulking over his phone at a table and dear friend Dr Sidney Pinto said to me, “I’m too old to dance now!” What, I replied in mock shock, at all Catholic shaadi receptions old and young dance past midnight if not dawn…he responded sadly, those days are gone.
What if I tell the band to do the slow sway Pakistani Sufi song “Tu Jhoom”…it’s easiest dance, just jhoom…anyone can do that? But it was sighs all around, no takers. This is to say these days I’m very taken up by the lyrics of this intensely soft lyrical song “Tu Jhoom” — go discover it and go jhooming one of these days.
LATER I met up with the bride’s mother-in-law Dipti Salgaocar and asked if mother Kokilaben was around somewhere and if I may take a click of both of them? She sighed, no show, mother was not too well; and instead of me taking her picture she said, let somebody do it, there was a professional team of photographers around. That’s how I got a picture of both of us attired in auspicious red…she asked if I’d discovered the Kashmiri food at the far end of the swimming pool? I said, No, I haven’t walked that far out yet…but maybe I can pack up tiffins of all the cuisines and take them home to put in the fridge, the food will last me for a month!
At that idea she laughed and I remembered an offbeat compliment Dipti once paid me. I’d asked her if she ever read any of my foodie columns in the “Goan Observer?” She replied, “No, I don’t read your columns because make me feel so hungry! Hey, a compliment like no other, thank-you, Dipti is a sweetheart when provoked and never mind that she’s the late Dhirubani Ambani’s daughter married to GSB Goan Dattaraj Salgaocar. She’s Guju and so am I, if that’s saying anything.
It was really c’est la vie at the Vikram Salgaocar shaadi, my dears! A shaadi of ‘taare zameen pe,’ etcetera. Eat your hearts out that I was there …on that note it’s avjo (because I am Guju), poiteverem (because the hubby is Tambhram), selamat datang (because I have Malaysian leanings), au revoir, hasta la vista and vachun yeta here for now because I’m living in a freedom-loving, liberated Goa in India!