#+1: Getting Uneven Steven on your Wedding Gift

It's wedding season, 'caque Knoblauchs. brotate around that fire five times, hide your brother in law's shoes and watch sweaty dudes storm the DJ decks requesting soca hits of the '80s, '90s and today.

Cut Indians loose in the wedding hall and it's like unhooking the baby bjorn and letting your diabetic beta run wild in the jalebe shop.

Because Indians (okay, Gujus, can we stop pretending?) are infamous for their one up-manship, a so so necessary aspect of the indian wedding richa-ual is the round up on the financial gift. Normally Indians round down on EVERYTHING including their age, the mortgage on their condo, their penis size and the previously agreed upon terms for the hotel caterer.

But oh yo not so when it comes to the CHEQUE, cause, uc, if there's one thing Indians prefer to being miserly, it's doing plus one better than Nandini in the gift department. So what if her daughter went to Stanford undergrad, Northwestern medical school and is engaged to a white podiatrist in Winnetka? She only gave one hundred and fifty dollars. You're gonna give one hundred and fifty plus ONE.

Sure, some might say it's auspicious to leave off the extra zero but can we finally, for once, please, pretty please get picked to live in a house, stop being polite and start getting real? The only thing auspicious about getting Uneven Steven on your wedding gift is watching Ritu uncle's face turn red when he finds out you One-Upped him and then wondering if he's actually angry or just drunk...again.

So here's to you Indians. You won't turn the AC on in the summer; you sneak outside snacks into the theater (yeah, i heard you open that can of Diet Slice during Taare Zameen Par, AUNTIE) and you bought little Deepaum VOITS instead of Reeboks, but all that's cumin on a cutlet when you make it drizzle on the lucky couple with your $101 dollar check. Eat it up, Nandini. You just got 1-upped.