Ho ho ho!! Merry Christmas, everyone!

This was the most memorable Christmas for me, second only to the Christmas in Foxen Street when I got a Christmas gift from Santa who was riding his cart without the reindeers. Foxen Street in Perambur used to be a hub of Anglo Indians. One of the largest Anglo-Indian concentrations in the country, Perambur has a church that is over a 100 years old, built during the British era when a lot of the Englishmen stayed in Perambur, close to the Integral Coach Factory. When my Anglo-Indian neighbor Zeena Antony decided to thank my mom for her wonderful rasam, she made Santa give me a gift when he paraded the streets of the Anglo-Indian population. This happened when I was 10 years old.

Preparation for the party, in the bridge

And today, I was celebrating Christmas in the unlikeliest of all places – in the middle of somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Our Captain Cool was fully excited about Christmas and spent the last few days thinking of games for the party. The crew was split into three teams, captained by the youngest in the lot and as expected, Cheena and I ended up in the same team. We were pretty much winning every game that included a variation of darts, pin-the-tail-on-the-cow, bowling with mineral water bottles for pins and a football for the ball and the like. It was great fun and the hoots and shouts would have scared the whales in the ocean I am sure. The only useful thing I did was to put up the scores. The captain looked cutely upset when the others were winning at the games that he had thought of. The chief engineer, called “bada saab” in Indian sailors’ lingo, was the butt of all jokes. But since he is a personality that deserves a separate post, I shall say no more here.

 With the crew, the captain is missing though

The party started scattering post lunch, with people wandering back to their cabins or huddling with just their buddies for a game of carrom or a session of adult jokes. The food had a lot of meat, with the x-mas turkey being the centre of attention. We poor vegetarians hardly had anything to eat and had to make-do with the snacks and the very bland half-hearted peas pulav. The cake was a disappointment too – it was bought in Thailand sometime in November and stored in the deep freezer so it tasted a little weird.

I sneaked out late afternoon to use the laundry room that was empty. No waiting for my turn today. Yay. The officer’s laundry consists of two washing machines and two dryers – one for boiler suits and one for civil clothes. The civil clothes machine and dryer are almost always full whenever I go down to wash.

Paavam X-mas turkey

We went down for dinner around 8 only to find out that we just had the leftovers from afternoon. The peas pulav had gone stale and we had nothing to eat. We went back to watch LOTR, but when Cheena started scowling every five seconds, and I heard my stomach grumble as well, we realized hunger ache achon ko badal deta hai and went down to rummage the mess room to find something to eat. I had two slices of bread and he had some leftover salad lying in the fridge. We both had a glass of milk each and our stomachs yelped happily. Oh, the joy of giving!

Happy Birthday, Jesus! We had a good, fun day today, thanks to you.