An Indian Halloween

Tami and I love to throw parties. Tami is a certified Event Planner. We have thrown birthday parties, Christmas parties, Thanksgivings, New Years, and yes Halloween parties. We even did a gender reveal party once! So as October approached we asked ourselves “Should we throw a Halloween Party in India?” Of course the answer was “Hell yeah!”.

Now India is a country where Halloween is not celebrated. However it does seem to be garnering alot of interest. When I was here for Halloween last year I saw no costumes, no decoration, no candies. You wouldn’t know it was even happening. Most of our friends here ask us what the holiday is about. They have seen it and think it mainly involves ghosts, witches, and vampires (there is truth there).

We had to plan this in advance so we ordered what we thought were the easiest items to transport – vampire outfits – along with Halloween candy and decorations from the US. Amazon in India did have some Halloween stuff but not much. Tami also bought about 100 syringes for jello shots. So we had the basics for our party. And as time went on Tami got roped in to doing our apartment building’s Halloween festival for the kids AND I worked with my staff to do a Halloween at the office. And just like that – we are planning 3 parties over a 10 day period.

Home Halloween — we hosted this the Friday night before Halloween. We invited mostly friends from our society (that means apartment complex) and a few outside guests. We were honored to host my friend and coworker, Shivani Choudhary, fly in for the day during her trip to India with her husband and son. So you start the party of course with a scary Halloween mix of music — the X files theme song, Halloween movie theme song, Thriller, Monster Mash, etc. We couldn’t find pumpkins so we paid $5 to buy a virtual jack o lantern from Apple TV. Put up some bats and spiders and turn down the lights…

Then of course there is the food and drink. Now we set the timing of the party from 7-9pm and said we would have light snacks and drinks. Here is what Tami prepared, look at this ghoulish party table.

Everything in the picture is probably self explanatory but the red and white items in the center front are deviled eggs prepared to look like bloody brains from a half skull. Pretty good. And as for drinks – Tami made her famous heavy pour jello shots to start. Then we filled up two containers with a pre mixed cocktail. One was Gin, soda water, and seven up with lime and orange slices. The other was Rum, pineapple juice, and seven up.

I think by now all of our pancreas’s were screaming in fear as to the amount of sugar about to enter our systems.

The party probably had about 20 people and lasted until about 10:30pm but it was a great time. We had a photobooth wall and everything. Great thing about it was nobody had to drive home. For those that don’t live at our society, they already have their drivers waiting for them. Ohhh the benefits of India!

Society Halloween — This year was our society’s first trick or treat program. The kids got to go door to door to collect treats at the participating apartments. It was a fun time but even when all you have to do is use elevators and stairs it was pretty tiring! We had to quit about half way because Tenley was having a tired melt down. I think we all went down for naps. That night however was the Society Party that Tami helped to plan. It was on our rooftop around sunset. They did a great job with the decorations.

Tami had arranged several stations for games and kid activities and games like ball toss, cup knock over, witch hat ring toss, and a craft station to make pumpkins and goats. Tami led a relay race with the bigger kids with bumpkins and skulls. There was a food buffet for the kids and adults with Halloween music blasting on the speakers. We left after about 90 minutes but definitely enjoyed it. It was the first time many of the attendees have ever been to a Halloween event.

Office Halloween — I will fully admit here that I did hardly any of the work for the office party. All I told the team was, let’s celebrate Halloween, get some decorations, ask people to come in costume if they feel comfortable, and let’s set aside 30 minutes for treats and assorted desserts. Ashish, our facilities administrator, went all out and when I came to the office this is what I saw walking in. Isn’t this awesome for office decorations?

I was so impressed. Most people had some form of costume on. A face painter came by for two hours and gave alot of people a makeup costume. After a ton of pictures, we then had a “ramp walk” which meant nothing to me at the time. Now I know it means catwalk. With music blazing, our MC Ashish, led a catwalk costume parade through the office. It was hilarious and I loved how they got in to it!

We had some assorted desserts and even a little dancing. Then it was 6pm and we all went back to work…in costume….it was awesome. Here is our office group shot.

Suffice it to say, India knocked Halloween out of the park. We celebrated harder and better than probably at any point in the US. Did I miss the Halloween night trick or treating with the boys or sitting on my front porch terrorizing children in exchange for candy…yes…but this more than made up for it. We all cannot wait until next year!