Diwali Feast

The clocks have just wound back an hour and the town of Pinner was settling in for the night.

A few distant fireworks helped light the streets as the rust coloured leaves fell onto the slippery wet roads.

My stomach grumbled, I had prepared the lining of my stomach for the evening's festivities with....nothing.

I had been warned that we would eat well. This was possibly the biggest understatement of the current year.

I arrived to see Miss and Mrs Kulkarni dressed beautifully in fiery red Sarees. Their outfits would match the intensity of the feast that we were about to relish.

2 of my best friends and I, had been lucky enough to be invited to the feast of Diwali, a celebration of light and truth in the Hindu calendar.

Nadir and Suha and I began to enjoy the tantalising onion bahjis, the hot creamy chicken, (made with double cream!!) and chicken tikka.

After almost two hours of this, and Nadir telling us more stories of his impending triple on call, we were truly stuffed. Buttons were released, zips were fighting gravity.

Kiran's dad then dropped the bomb.

"Did you enjoy the starters?"

We looked at each other, a look of excitement for more gustatory treats and yet fear.

We were all doctors, we knew about the human body, we knew of gastric emptying, the peristalsis of the human gut, the enzymes that would dissolve the food, but none of us knew how much more we could take!

We peered into the main dining room, beautifully laid out with Lamb curry, Lamb chops, prawn curry, chapatis, and steaming hot rice.

"You must eat it all!" Someone said. I could not make out who for at this point I was heady with hyperglycaemia.

We piled more food on our plates.

One more hour later and we argued with the Kulkarni posse that going back for seconds would be delightful yet scientifically not possible.

And then it happened, there was dessert!

"It will be a great insult to not eat dessert made by my God mother!"

With super human endurance we ate the dessert and almost 5 hours later we were well and truly saited and had a wonderful experience.

We helped each other to our cars and drove off, eager to wangle an invite again next year.

The next day I had emails from friends in America asking if I was coming to see them during my "half term."

I could honestly reply that I was far too heavy for the plane to rise into the sky for at least the next week!