1. Find the girls with the Rapunzel hair and the strawberry lips. It won't be difficult; they cluster and twirl through the hall in hundreds, like starlings. Don't let them see the seam ripper in your sleeve. When they sweep past you in shimmering swathes of silk and chiffon, use the blade edge to snip off as many sequins as you can. Be stealthy. Be sudden. Bead the sequins together in a noose-shaped necklace or a necklace-shaped noose. Either is sufficient. It'll be the prettiest thing you ever made, winking flecks of orange and red and purple and blue. Save it for later.
2. Turn all the clocks forward by three hours so they serve dinner at nine, not midnight. The birth certificates of all the babies born that evening will bear the wrong time, and a generation of astrologers will produce inaccurate natal charts and give people the wrong advice about future professions, future spouses, and future children. But this is not your problem. By the time the mistake is discovered and corrected, you'll be too old to remember or care.
3. Speak exclusively in lyrics. When rishta-auntie number four eyes your plain black kameez with disapproval, tell her you had no other choice because everything you own is in a box to the left. When your cousin says she's afraid she might fail her finals, reassure her that she can stand under your umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh. To increase the difficulty level, restrict yourself to a decade and a genre.
4. Carry an empty whiskey bottle in your purse. When your nani's sister asks why it isn't your turn yet, pull it out and tell her you need to consult your genie.