Busy week in Pune, from the very cheesiest of Bollywood films to a very messy farewell weekend, pet puppies and the shaving of four heads in the house.
monday
we went to see Om Shanti Om, the big Shahrukh Kahn film. It’s big, it’s bright, colourful, brash, over-the-top and I loved it. We’d all been singing the the soundtrack for weeks in the house anyway and when the scene came on where Shahrukh Kahn and his new wonderful pecks do an over-the-top Peter-Andre-eat-your-heart-out someone-chuck-a-bucket-of-water-on-me-from-off-camera disco-dance routine I thought I would die laughing. It’s out in the UK, definitely go and see it, sheer brilliant comedy value!
tuesday we found two tiny little puppies wandering around Tate Tope abandoned so of course they ended up coming back to the house for the night until we could find them some owners. These two little bundles of fluff had us running around making them scrambled eggs and warm milk and clucking like a house of mother hens. Sadly before a baby sitter roster had been established they had been randomly donated to some neighbours by a disapproving Manda.
wednesday the Sarahs, Dave, Carole, Jill, Nige and I headed down to City of Child for the day as most of the kids had the day off work. We played on the swings and fell asleep watching Hindi movies with them in the afternoon. In the early evening we took on the boys at a game of Kabaddi, a fairly violent game which involves trying to tag someone in the other team’s half and get back to your side before they drag you down before you can cross the line, highly entertaining, but we did get our arses fairly whupped by the boys, there were just far too many of them, and they totally cheated! (Click for Video!) Not that I’m competitive you understand. Tina and Prashant, who run City of Child, arranged for the bullock cart to give us a very bumpy half hour ride along to the main road in the dark where we caught a local bus back into Pune and went out for some mid week beers and jazz at Soul.
the weekend Friday night was another trip to Touche Le Sizzler for steaks…has to be done…with some digestive beers at the Beer Garden afterwards. Saturday night was the last big one out for Lucy, Dave, Carole, Jill, Nige and Emmanuel so we all went to take over Aqua club again and towards the end of the night half of us ended up in a hip-hop club called Cavier. Really good night although I definitely do not recommend drinking Indian Sambuca, nasty! We stayed up sneakily drinking rum in the living room until about 4am so when Lucy woke me up on Sunday morning at 10.30am to Dancing Queen on the ipod I was curt to say the least! Eventually I dragged my dishevelled form out of bed as it was the day of the head shaving. 
We were all crammed in the lounge, the boys from City of Child, girls from Vidala and Sahara were there along with Hans, Claire and Ashlesha. Dave very professionally and efficiently gowned, cut and shaved the heads of Jen, Allison, Faith and Teri who between them have raised over three grand so far. Surprisingly (although I’m sure their mothers would disagree) none of them look that bad, it fact they all looked kind of cool although they are all wearing bandannas around the house now. I mean I’ve done some crazy things with my hair but I don’t think I’d have the balls…