Oh, come on.

My cousin Adu got married a few years back, and I went to his wedding. You know those nice Indian families who speak in moderated tones, partake sparingly of alcoholic beverages, and always look presentable in public? Well, our family is NOT one of those families. Yes, we’re all lawyers, doctors, and business school graduates, but those are just facades. When it comes to weddings, we’re the Indian family that gets drunk and orders pepperoni pizza in the hotel lobby, then pukes violently in the potted plants.

Added to our lack of breeding is the fact that along with my brother, six of my cousins are male and all around the same age, at that time in their 20s, and have the collective good sense of teenaged rhinos in heat. Thus, it seemed inevitable that some shit would go down at Ad’s wedding, especially since he had the good taste to marry a girl from one of those OTHER families. At their garba – a traditional pre-wedding dance involving hand-held sticks – our family, exhuberant and poorly coordinated, was knocking her poor gentle relatives down like dominoes. “LEAVE SPACE!” my cousin Shala roared as she cleaved a path through our shocked, sticklike soon-to-be in-laws.

Though we were all Indian, we were clearly from two different cultures. I knew we were in trouble when another cousin, Swa, and I went to Macy’s to get wedding gifts. Both the bride and groom work on Wall Street, and their choices run accordingly. Looking at the registry, I had a hard time finding anything that cost less than what I make in a week. We finally found a Calvin Klein sheet set (grey silk spun by worms hand-fed by mute lovely virgins) that we thought we could just afford, if we both pitched in. “We’ll take this sheet set for $250,” I told the saleslady.

She gave us a withering look. “That’s $250 for the pillowcases,” she said coldly.

Swa and I looked at each other, silently weighing the tackiness factor of giving someone a single pillowcase for a wedding gift.

“I’ll think I’ll get a gift certificate,” I finally stuttered.

The wedding itself was beautiful. It was held at a hotel outside of New York, and by evening it looked like we might escape this wedding shameful-incident-free. My sister and I, exhausted, finally headed up to bed around midnight, and the boys took off for the bar.

This is where the facts get blurry. Apparently the guys went up to the bar to order drinks, leaving Swa’s wife alone at the table. According to her, a drunken guy with an accent – Latino, maybe – approached her and asked if she was alone. No, she told him, I’m here with my husband.

“Too bad,” he responded, leering, “because I’d really like to come on your face.” And off he stumbled.

My sister-in-law sat there open-mouthed, and when the boys returned to the table, she told them what had transpired. Naturally, they were outraged, most of all my cousin – we’ll call him P. Diddy – who has been full of piping-hot testosterone since the age of 6 months. They were all for hunting down the perp, but eventually calmed down.

Then P. Diddy went off to the restroom, and who should he stumble into but Mr. Indecent Proposal himself. Fuming, P. Diddy grabbed the badmash by the throat and slammed him into the wall. “HOW ABOUT IF I COME ON YOUR FACE?” he hollered. The rest of the gang came running, and soon there was a regular Hindi-movie-style tamasha, lacking only the cheesy soundtrack to make it complete.

Our heroes returned victorious to the bar to celebrate, but in true Hindi movie style, the villain was not yet defeated. He returned to the bar with a friend and pulled out a knife. The insults flew, my cousin Teja threw a barstool, and the bartender called the police. The cops quickly assessed the situation – three hundred Indian wedding guests vs. two poor saps from the Bronx – and chucked out the bad guys once and for all.

We more timid types heard this story the next morning, circulated in whispers at first and then more boldly. The aunties clucked in horrified shame, while the uncles secretly rejoiced at their sons’ sister-protecting instincts. I, however, had my doubts.

“Why would he say something like that?” I asked my brother. “I mean, who uses an expression like “come on your face?” Maybe, I suggested, just maybe, he had said something else? I mean, everyone was drunk, we’ve got an Indian immigrant talking to a Latino immigrant… Is it possible he said something like “I was going to come on to you”, an expression that someone recently arrived in America just might not understand?

The blood drained out of my brother’s face. “Oh my GOD,” he said. “We just beat the crap out of an innocent man.”

Not only that, I said, but think of it from his perspective. One minute he’s zipping up, and the next minute, a group of Indian men in suits and ties is all over him. With P. Diddy wanting to COME ON HIS FACE, what could he have thought but that he was under attack by a group of homicidal gay desis?

And further, I said, if that is in fact what happened, then how, in the name of all that is sweet and innocent, did our sister-in-law even know the expression “come on your face”?

And that, my friends, is a blog for tomorrow.