Of crush and misinterpretations.

You are going to office. Just like every other smart bachelor efficient in time management, you sleep till late; even if that means you have to skip breakfast. You catch the metro or bus almost in breathless condition.  While you hold on to door trying to gain your composure your eyes rest on a pretty girl. You blink for a moment and it’s a short story thereafter :-) Does the situation sound familiar?  Atleast to me, it does!

 Cute, smart, tall and sometime attractive enough that you can’t keep your eyes off.  God made beautiful creature – girls, and then made admirer of beauty -boys. Let me state that I am not favouring anyone here but no doubt, God blessed the two, with hearts quite different from each other. One like a safe mutual fund and other like a volatile equity.

Back to our situation, you see her. On a numerous such occasion you will have a quick look and then doze off or  may be a lightening have already struck you take a sneak peek every 2 min. This is just one phase which happens to boys at some point in their life. Lightening and awestruck. Love at first sight, crush, infatuation or the basic instinct ...whatever it may be, boys are always fast decision maker as if they are living life on edges.

But if the whole drama can be viewed in a different light, you will be amazed with what goes on the scene sometime. Here are few possible scenarios from a third person’s view.

1. She is lost in her own world when you see her first time. May be a treat for eyes for few moments before she realizes that two pair of eyes are constantly staring her. She looks back and you turn around or try to pretend to look outside window.

2. She is talking to someone over a phone call. She is probably using a handsfree. While she talks she might have a cursory glance around her surrounding which include you. At times as she talks, she would flaunt with her hair, probably even curl it 360 degree around her cheek. And if she happens to have a blank look at you while doing this act, you are flattered. It’s not a problem with us. Guys always have half knowledge about girl psychology and take this as a positive signal. Poor guys !

3. This is the third scenario while you may or may not be lucky. It depends a lot on your luck and look on a particular day. In this situation the girl actually finds out you are taking a sneak peek. She might look back at you for two reasons. First, she just wants to ensure if she knows you or you are just some random stranger who is starring her. Second, this is rare case contrary to popular myth – the girl would have no objection on you starring at her. When you look at her, she will pretend that she is not fine but, when you look through corners of your eyes, you will find her checking you out as well.  And chances are that she might gossip about this incident with her friends later.

But call it crush or infatuation... guys are like that. We think that we understand girls, just like I thought that I have captured every aspect of their psychology; but I haven’t, no one can. But still it was just a humorous attempt to capture how guys can be fooled around by their own misinterpretation and at times by girls :-)

Chalte chalte

Life gives us so many moments to laugh….. sometimes on ourselves, sometimes on friends, and at times people we don’t even know. Sharing one such incident happened recently.

Two weeks back, my friend and I went to a liquor shop on Saturday evening to pick some beer. This shop is on the busiest road in my area and is generally very crowded on weekends. The shop has a fashion college in close proximity and is quite natural to find the students hanging out on this road or buying liquor from this shop. So as we reached the shop looking at the huge crowd I choose to wait outside- on bike as I was driving - and asked my friend to bring beer. When returned, he was all smiling shamelessly. I followed suit when I got to know what just happened inside the shop. In his words,

There was so much of rush that he couldn’t reach till counter to place his order. Before him in the queue, there were two pretty girls, mostly from the same fashion college, mulling over wine bottles of different brands. They seemed confused on what to pick. To us seeing girls picking liquor is quite common site but these two just couldn’t decide what they wanted. Then one of them called her boyfriend to seek help about the brand selection. She probably didn’t quite catch the name and handed over the cell to the man at counter and asked “bhaiya, ye cell pe jo maang rahe hai wahi de do hame”. The man took the cell, listened and then returned to the girl with a mischievous smile. He said “wo to kiss maang rahe hai”. With this, all nearby faces turned toward the girl whose face was pink by embarrassment. Though the girls took control of the situation immediately and placed an order, the moment was really hilarious.

We laughed out loud. It was such a funny incident that I couldn’t hold myself to share this. Hope you could imagine what that boyfriend would have got to deal with later.

Liberal smiles and We the People

Few days back, I went out for dinner on a Sunday evening along with my roomy and a lady friend. We didn’t had reservation at the restaurant at it was finalized at the last moment. Quite predictable it was, we had to wait outside just like so many other folks (guys n gals) waiting for a table. While a surrounding with girls always prompt my lady friend to ask me to pick one, I wasn’t in mood to be teased easily. I gave a cursory glance around and expressed my disapproval, not because I didn’t like any, but simply because I didn’t wanted to be an easy target for the next 15 minutes.“How about guys? They look cool”, my friend said. Now this was not expected. Both my roomy and I was amazed at her wittiness. Managing the sudden awkwardness thrown at us, we looked at guys, turned towards her and said “On an unbiased opinion, YES! They are far better than the girls they are standing with.” On this all of us laughed out loud. The next few minutes our smiles were revolving around scenes from movie Dostana and life after 377. There was a moment towards the end of that long gossip when I blinked and realized our generation is really getting liberal.

Now this conclusion was not drawn until my next few observations.
Take the first one – my office cab. I share a valuable 2 hours daily in cab with my colleagues, of which a few are also usual acquaintance on tea breaks. Now, one of the guys in cab is always late and makes us wait atleast 5-10 minutes. Because of the good rapport our cab mates share we never told him anything rude or harsh but always used to tell him to be punctual from next time. Recently, a cab mate got irritated from him and asked if he is doing some extra work at home. The response he gave was that he sleeps late and gets so tired that can’t wake early. On this question the chorus blame was on his character and an accusation of being gay. However, the sudden twist in the tale didn’t deter this guy’s to be less witty and he was equally sportive in entertaining the accusation.

2^nd one: Two junior male colleagues who often found roaming together in shopping malls, starring at hot chicks are latest victim of 377. In their circle, female friends feed their hunger for laughter by mentioning about these inseparable entities.

Just years back, talking about homosexuality in public was an offense. Now it’s one of the topics to pull legs in friend circle just like crushes and affairs. We are confident about our identity and don’t bother to be pointed as a gay or lesbians in sarcastic gossips among friends. Not to mention, article 377 has suddenly made it more open a topic of discussion among every class of society. Be it social talk shows, print media, colleagues in cubicles or cab and friend circles. Gossiping about homosexuality is the latest addition in humour genre.

At times amid all the chaos in my cab I think: This is true liberalization of thoughts, where a serious topic like this gives a reason to people to smile. No one takes offense in getting pulled into any accusation whatsoever. We cut jokes, we pull legs, and we laugh madly. We the people, have really come off age.

Es raat ki subah nahi - II

Catch the first part here

After the initial hiccups they reached Mukul’s home where Mukul in his trademark style was pretending to hold an anguish face for them. They met him, and as decided, shown some respect to his anger for self defense. They were happy that they reached before shailendra and now he is the one who will be the “torch bearer”. They waited for Mukul in porch, just then Shailendra called for status update while he was on way. They asked him to hurry up. Mukul appeared in groom’s dress and joined the gang who by the time was ready with their arsenals to bless him. Once he was standing with the gang they all were having a gala time with the divine leg pulling session. Shalindra joined in the meantime and finished his quota of divinity. It was time for Baraat to leave Mukul’s place and to reach the point from where it was supposed to march ahead.
Our heroes somehow got a car and bumped-in, trying hard to manage their ass inside it. Thankfully this ride wasn’t long enough to intensify their pain; but they ran for fag as soon as the car dropped them at the destination. They got charged up with masala coke and “the mrit sanjeevani” (cigarette) and joined Baraat for which they were supposed to be the show stopper.

And they didn’t disappoint either; right from bhangra to old classics, and then break dance to “snake dance” they danced on every form and on every song the band played. Seeing their extreme enthusiasm and strange wildness no one had a doubt that they were not drunk. They danced and danced till last breath of energy during that short while which was merely 200 meter away from the point where baraat stated. It took around an hour to cover the stretch and Baraat approached its destination; and like sunlight fading at dusk our heros disappered. Leveraging this known opportunity they went in a corner away from sight of junta to have their mrit sanjeevani again.
All this while there was one common friend missing which they all have promised to meet soon. They appeared in baarat again which was being greeted. They discussed the possibility of meeting this common friend asap. Few of them wanted to invite this common friend in baraat as well but there was a lack of consensus. But now they all wanted to celebrate Mukul’s wedding in a grand way with this friend. So they all left the wedding for a local plash hotel which was decided as the venue to celebrate. They set down on hotel’s bar (if you are still guessing…yes Daru was their common friend), ordered and then toasted for Mukul and his marriage. As tonight Mukul was priority, they ordered only 2-3 drinks after that and then decided to leave. Another sutta session and then our boys, who were in elegant attires, were waving to autos standing in front of that plash hotel.

to be continued....