Ramblings and Musings

Another surprise party - for Inas

My elder daughter's birthday falls on the 15th of this month, that is, tomorrow. We arranged a surprise party for her yesterday, that is, on the 13th of March, Sunday. My wife, Nishrin, my daughter, Hannah and I arranged everything - the guests (her school friends and the girls in our residential colony), the eats (samosas, pedhas, wafers - potato chips to the Americans, potato-wadas, Pepsi and a glorious chocolate cake that everyone enjoyed eating. Besides this, we had games like dumb charades, singing of Hindi songs and a bad talent competition that had everyone rolling in their seats.

I must say something more about the last one since I conducted it in a unique, surprising way: I first divided the group into the two groups I have already mentioned above: school friends and colony friends. Then I asked them to nominate, from each group, three members who felt they were sufficiently talented to participate, and three members who did not want to take part. We had the twelve of them. Then I asked those who "did not wish to take part" to go into the other room. Finally, I disclosed to the remaining twelve girls that it is those six girls who would be performing and these twelve would be the audience.

We all returned to the hall where the six of them sat complacently. I disclosed to these astonished six that they would now sing/dance/act "badly" for us and win prizes. Their points would be decided by the number of girls who stood up and left the room while they were performing. They hesitated initially, but after being prodded, they assented. It worked great and the winner was a school friend of Inas who sang so badly that eleven of the sixteen guests ran out before she had sung only two verses!

LOL!