An ethnic day was arranged in office on eight of October 2008 to celebrate the Ayudh pooja where we were all suppose to be wearing ethnic wears which would represent one of the Indian cultures we follow at home. That day the office was full of life and everybody trying to look their best at what they want to represent of the culture they belong to or believe in.
To spice it up a little an award was also there for two people - a male and female as the ethnic man and ethnic woman of the day. The office was full of people wearing different ethnic wears – mostly the ladies were in saris except for one. Many men dressed up in Dhotis and kurtas representing the southern culture of India. My lead in atypical cotton kurta and pajama, another ID lead and a colleague from different department in a saris, me in the most traditional UP sari style, my friend Christina in a Ghagra, the PM in typical madras wear which is a silk dhoti and shirt and small towel on his shoulder and a pointed shoe (called Joothi in Hindi) representing the traditional Tamilian culture.
Everybody is trying to be at work where as mostly being worried or so to say excited about who is going to win and what would they get as award. The day passes by us mostly wasting the time complimenting each other’s dresses and praising of how good each one is looking in their traditional ethnic wear. There were also a few of them at office in their casual wears which is a pant and a shirt.
As soon as the tea person comes with tea, the smokers of the office are out in the balcony of the office to grab a smoke. My friend clicks a snap and shoots a small video of me with a traditional Indian sari and smoking off a cigarette which was actually the best contradictory snap of me. As the day passes by, it is already lunch time. I with my friends go to a restaurant nearby called ‘Nandini’ where we had to wait for twenty minutes to get a table. Once done with lunch my PM asks me to get the gift which is to be given to the Best Dressed man and woman of the day. I with my friend am off to search for one. But with a small budget in our hand we find nothing that we can get for that amount even with a starting price of that at a gift gallery called ‘Archies’. In the mean time we get a call from our friend as in he is in trouble because the thread which was used to tie hiss pajama had broken and we were to find one to save his ‘face’ (In Hindi it is called “Izzat”).
Finding nothing at Archies we search for gifts in another gift shop and reach a shop nearby where two carpenters at work at that shop and after going through a few things we finalize on buying two pen stands each costing Rs.100.Once done we that we search for shops where we can find a two meter thread to fit the pajama of my friend at office. We roam the whole vicinity and find that most of the shops are closed for the occasion of Ayudh Pooja. We go to most of the readymade garments shop so that they could just give us one removing from one of the garments and help us but to our surprise we found almost no one was ready to help us in this regard, everybody had their own reasons to do so – some said the owner of the shop is not around, some said if we do so then it becomes difficult for us to sell that piece of garment and so on. But finally we land in front of big garment showroom nearby and when requested for help they did. With thread in our hand and the gifts we reach back office to find out that it is already time for the Pooja to start. One of our colleagues played the role of the pandit and offered the pooja, sweets were distributed and everybody was asked to cast their votes for best dressed man and woman without any bias on our mind. To my surprise after the results came in I was won as the best dressed woman and our PM won the best dressed man award. Ironically, it was me who bought the gift from the money paid by my PM.
There was a big photo session of all of us to capture these memories in the camera. After all this there was music and everybody dancing to the beat of music. Then comes the end to the Ethnic day and next day onwards everybody is back to their routine at work.
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