YO BRO IT’S ME LITTY

Sunday night was Hip Hop night for all you gringos keeping score at home. It was the first official party to celebrate Param and Ro’s wedding. As you can guess, it was a hip hop themed affair that was especially catered to the younger generation. What does that all mean? Let me try my best to explain.

I’ll relate this back to what you may know best: Bar Mitzvah’s.

Think of a massive Bar Mitzvah. The theme of the Bar Mitzvah is hip hop. There are huge murals of Biggie, Tupac, Eminem and 50 cent. The walls are also spray painted with tags such as “Get Rich or Die” or Param is the L.V. don. When you walk into the party there are hats, belts with huge fake gold buckles and fake gold medallions. There is a paparazzi of 15-20 photographers taking your photo as you walk down the red carpet entrance. There is an emcee/dj but instead of EJM it’s a fat, short ghetto Indian rapper dude. There is a special performance by HardKaur. She is considered to be the Desi Missy Elliot and one of the first Indian female rappers. She takes this role seriously as she recently told the press that she “eat, sleep, s*** hip hop and I want to keep it just that way”. Here is her music video for Sexy Boy. One of Param’s friend (who owns amusement parks in India) informs me that “Kaur” is a Punjabi phrase and hence the double entendre.

Her is a clip from her performance on Sunday.

HardKaur from Brian litty on Vimeo.

If none of this impresses let me now tell you they had FIRE. Yup, every few seconds the stage would go up in flames. I’ve been to a bunch of lavish Bar Mitzvah but none of them had real fire! It was so hot and bright that I could have used sunscreen and aloe.

If that doesn’t impress you, let me mention they had waiters walking around serving cheese fondue on trays. Beat that. Actually, Param beat it with his Louis Vitton turban.

My favorite feature of the bash was the bartenders. In India human labor must be cheap because there are always double or triple the amount of people that is needed for a project. So there were about 20 bartenders (21 after I hopped over the bar and started serving drinks later in the night) at the circular bar. Each of them were done up ghetto with chains, do rags, etc. They all had tattoos on the arms and face, which I assume were temporary but who really knows after a dozen black labels.

More impressive than their costume was their service and personality. Bartenders in America are often tough guys who want to be taken seriously and try to act all professional. But this crew of Indians had more fire than the machines on the stage. Every time I came near the bar they were practically begging to serve me another drink. I was drinking Johnnie Walker Black (the preferred drink of distinguished Indian gentlemen) and they loved that I was drinking it straight. They also had an arsenal of bartender tricks that makes Doug Coughlin (Cocktails reference that I had to look up on IMDB) look like an amateur and they loved showing them off. Actually the trick sucked but I feigned delight similar to when Max The Dog pulls off one of his lame stunts. Every now and then a few of the bartenders would jump up on the bar and start dancing. I wonder if they have this much fun at every party. My guess is that most sikh wedding don’t have a hip hop night (Param has a special affinity for the gangsta lifestyle) so perhaps this was a special occasion. Regardless, their enthusiasm rubbed off on me (and not just when I lifted one of the bartenders on my shoulders and carried him around ala Josh Weinstock).

I’m going to be bold and go on the record here and say that you haven’t really experienced scotch until you’ve been served by a Delhi bartender on hip hop night.

Here is another video of Param’s friends roasting him on stage with a cool story.