Expensive Imported Chocolates and Vomit

There's an American movie called Forrest Gump all about the life of a dim-witted man named Forrest. You should watch it is you haven't already, it's really good. One well know line from the movie is "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get." Well, that may be true, but I do know what you'll get if you eat an entire box of chocolates at once - SICK, that's what! And the reason I know that is because that's exactly what happened at Chachoo's mehndi celebration!

During the ceremony of the mehndi, the main part of the whole shebang is when the groom sits on a stage and all the attendants surround him, waiting for a turn to feed him sweets and preform other rituals of good tidings. Generally people are feeding him traditional Pakistani sweets either in small bites (if they're trying to be nice to him) or huge whole ones (if they're trying to tease him, which is more common and part of the fun!) But Chachoo's in-laws also brought with them a large box of fine imported chocolates obtained from a relative in Dubai (if I'm remembering correctly.) And while our side of the family generally fed him one of the Pakistani sweets we'd provided, almost all of his in-laws opted to feed him one of those rich chocolate.

Can you imagine eating through an entire large box of chocolates in one 30-45 minute setting? You could see him struggling too. He had to drink a lot of water and his cousins started calling up to him to spit them out instead. They were worried it was too much for him, but he persisted. There was even a bit of bickering between Chachoo's young cousins ("Spit it out! Don't eat anymore chocolate!") and the cousins from the other side ("Leave him alone, he can do whatever he wants!") He said he was having fun, that this was part of the mendhi and he didn't want to spit them out. He seemed to take pride in it, and when the girls on his soon-to-be-inlaws side started teasing him about it - asking him whether he could take another chocolate or did he want the easier sweets, he never backed down and always accepted another chocolate happily.

He didn't eat any dinner later, though. And while he didn't get sick that night, there was a later incident that people blamed on all that chocolate consumption.

Ooh...foreshadowing! Don't worry, we'll get there soon :)

You can see the box of chocolates here - the box with the camels on it - and you can see Chachoo's tightened jaw and pursed mouth indicating that he was likely struggling through one when this picture was taken. And still just a hint of that pride-filled smile, too.