I was thumping and jumping and screaming with my roomies in my flat’s hallroom.We were shouting so loud that the faint hearted neighbors had to intervene. We came out in the balcony .Sky was glimmering with reds and blues and greens – fireworks had enveloped the whole Pune city. We could see people riding in cars and bikes waving tricolor and praising each and every member of Indian cricket team (even Shrisaanth and Sehwaag were being praised).It was an indeed a proud moment and that’s when the patriotism inside me was alive again. I decided to go out and celebrate the victory with people.
My roomie kick started the bike and I jumped onto the pillion so that I could click pictures and jump and dance occasionally with the crowd. It took us one and a half hour to reach
It was a picture of complete craziness. We couldn’t move an inch for the next fifteen minutes. Public transport buses were all over the road and hundreds of people on top of those buses, dancing and chanting Sachin’s and Dhoni’s name in between. Folks had parked their cars alongside and we could hear all kinds of songs being played – from ‘Munni’ to ‘Sheela’ , from ‘Desh ki dharti’ to ‘Sabse aage honge hum Hindustani’ – people were feting. They did not care about the tune but danced anyway. Knowing the fact that it was impossible for us to ride on our bike further, we parked it outside a closed shop and started walking with crowd.
I loved the whole atmosphere that night. Electrifying it was and I felt like that patriotism was flowing in my veins along with the blood.I had already seen tons of people standing on the buses, on car roofs and people standing on speeding bikes waving Indian flag. However, what I witnessed at Jungli Maharaj road was the mother of all frenzies. People had gathered in hundreds at one particular red stop and they all were looking towards the sky and screaming like crazy. At first I thought they had just seen some kind of awesome-st firework. But I was wrong. That was something I had never, ever seen before.
There was this man who was standing on the horizontal pillar of the road directions board (See above pics.Pardon me for poor quality pictures but this is all I could click with my cellphone). It must have been an easy 50-60 feet. I had to crane my neck in order to see him clearly .How he climbed up there, is beyond my imagination. But there he was, standing tall and waving tricolor in triumph. And boy, did he look happy. It reminded me of the scene from the motion picture Sholay where Veeru did a similar act. It was funny and scary at the same time. I was wondering if he would last there for one more minute because he was trembling a lot. I enquired about him from one of the people and he told me that even he had no idea how he climbed there. Another guy told me that he was a local tea shop owner and he had been fasting after
I roamed around the FC road for another one and a half hour before heading to my place. It seemed like entire Pune had assembled on the roads and was lionizing
It was Christmas time of 2007, December 23rd, I guess. I had invited some old college mates to my place for an all night long booze session since we had an off from office the following day. Jay, AG and Pelu (these aren’t their real names because I don’t want to hurt their integrity) dropped in around 10 PM and we began to booze. By midnight, we were over with two and a half bottle of rum and as usual, we started to talk about the girls we adored and how we failed miserably in wooing them during college days. Jay proved out to be the smartest of the lot because right then, he revealed something that made us so jealous of him. He told us that he got laid a couple of weeks back with some office girl. That bastard took his own sweet time in detailing his each and very move about how he made out. Trust me, it was one hell of a news since we all were virgin (except Jay of course). I remember I smoked some 3-4 cigarettes in tandem after hearing this news not because I was jealous but I was outsmarted. Anyway, I was feeling a bit depressed and was planning to doze off after hearing the whole story. AG had his own way of dealing with these kinds of situations and I heard him locking the bathroom’s door. What was about to happen there, I need not explain.However, it was Pelu who couldn’t handle this revealing. First, I saw him smashing the whisky glass on the floor and then, all of a sudden, he was flashing with anger. I tried to calm him and wanted to know the reason behind his sudden outburst. And then, he gave us another shocking news.Pelu told me that he hadn’t touched a girl in his lifetime. Of course, he was not counting those moments when a girl would come and shake hands with him on his birthday. That’s the closest he had ever been to a girl. He hadn’t even kissed a girl, forget the getting to the second base part and all. He was damn serious and I could see tear drops floating in his eyes. He wanted to sleep with some girl that night and the way he was reacting made me sure that his decision was inexorable.
So,we decided that we’d take Pelu to Budhwar Peth( a red light area in Pune) and get this virgnity thing off his mind. Jay’s colleagues had been to the peth area before and he advised us not to take any valuables or too mach cash since we had heard stories about how prostitutes rob their customers and took away their cellphones and wallets sometimes. We emptied our pockets, took off our gold items, left cell phones at my place and took just enough cash that would be sufficient for paying the prostitute. At this point of time, AG backed out from going with us .He didn’t want his first time with a hooker. I think he was afraid to do it with a hooker because of the fear of picking up any kind of sexual transmitted diseases from them. But Jay had different plans. He suggested me to take AG as our back up .Just in case anything goes wrong; he’d be there for our rescue. We decided him to leave at some place near the red light area and he’d be waiting for us until our job’s completion. This seemed like a brilliant idea. AG had no choice but to accept. So he was loaded with all the extra cash and a cell phone in case we needed to contact him in an emergency situation. With all foolproof preparations, we left our place around 1 AM.
We hired an auto rickshaw to take us to Budhwar Peth..That autowaala got a bit skeptical and refused us to take there.He also tried to preach some morality.Howver, Jay convinced him that we were not novice and had been to that place quite a number of times.( Naturally, he lied)
It was a foggy night and we were pretty high by then. I could barely see the things distinctly. The streetlights were looking like some balloon filled with light, and I am sure each one of us would have felt the same.It took us 20 minutes to reach our destination. As planned, we dropped AG outside a shady looking bar and asked him to wait there .We then headed towards a nearby chauraha that was a pickup point for hookers.
Frankly speaking, I wasn’t thinking of getting any action since I couldn’t believe that I’d be doing this kind of thing.Getting laid with a hooker is not my idea of having sex. But there I was, walking with a bunch of guys, about to take a stride that’d transform me and my friends from college boys into men.
Upon reaching the chauraha, we spotted an elderly, fat looking lady (Mausi - as they call her) with two hookers. They were sitting on the road divider under the street light and I could hardly see their faces. I was felling a bit scared and embarrassed to approach them and so was Pelu .Jay took the charge and approached her.He started negotiating and this gave me and Pelu some confidence and I decided to have a better look at those girls. One of them was a mature, fat looking South Indian and other one was a chinky.They were not good looking by any standards. Or let me put it this way- They were slightly good looking if we take sheer ugliness as a measuring scale. But Pelu wasn’t feeling the same way. He just wanted to do it anyway. He wanted the ‘curse’ to be broken .To my surprise; he opted for that fat South Indian girl. You never know what kind of fetish one might have on his mind. I had known him since college and I knew he adored South Indian actresses a lot. So, that might have influenced his selection. That also meant I and Jay were left with the option of doing that chinky.I felt a bit relieved and thanked him in my mind since that chinky was a bit good looking as compared to the other girl. I didn’t ask Jay about his preference since he had been telling us ever since we left the room that ‘beggars are not choosers’. We decided that we’d get a cheap hotel room adjacent to the street, complete the job and then leave since I did not want to take any risks at my place.
We were about to go to the hotel but right then came running a boy and telling Mausi that a police raid was about to happen. Even though, prostitution was kind of legalized in that area yet these kind of raids were quite common. She told us that police carried out raid usually one or two times in a year, collected money from them and from all the customers who were found in those cheap hotel rooms. She also assured us that nothing would happen to us and told me not to worry since she was a well known figure in that area. She had some political contacts too. However, I was shaken to my core and fear had gotten into me. I decided to go back to my flat. But Pelu resisted.He still wanted to do it. There was an air of fear and confusion but I could see Pelu’s desire for sex prevailing over all those emotions.
Sensing that she might lose her rich customers, Mausi suggested us an alternative.She asked us if we’d like to take those girls to my flat .It was the last thing I wanted and it also meant that we needed to pay her almost 6 times the original amount that we were supposed to pay. This was a good idea from her business point of view and I could see both Jay and Pelu were ecstatic. But the only problem was we were low on money since we hadn’t taken our wallets and debit cards with us. Jay convinced Mausi to pay the girls from ATM once we reached home.Mausi accorded on this and hired a local auto who would wait outside our society for the girls till we were done with the job. I felt helpless since Pelu was adamant and even Jay was blinded by the lust. So, I surrendered and became a part of the gang.
I asked Jay to bring AG back from the bar before we could head home.Pelu and I decided to stay there with Mausi and autowaala.
After 15 minutes or so, I saw Jay coming back but he was alone.AG wasn’t with him. He told us that he couldn’t find him anyhwhere.He looked for him inside the bar and surroundings but he was nowhere to be found. This was one tricky situation since we could hear police van sirens from every nook and corner. There were chances AG might had run into some gundaas and they might have robbed him. These kind of incidents were very common there. We asked Mausi if we could use her cell phone for a call since we had not brought ours. She was a generous lady and lended us her phone. I called AG but he didn’t pick up. I tried for some 15-20 times but no luck.
At this point of time, Pelu hinted that it’d be better if we could delay this ‘getting laid’ drama for a day or two and look out for AG instead. To my relief, Jay agreed too. Since we were not taking girls to our flat anymore and we supposedly wasted Mausi’s dhandha and time, so as a penalty we ended up paying 400 bucks to her. However, she was magnanimous enough to let us hire her private auto. We decided to search AG around that bar once again. Autowaala took us to the bar in no time. I asked the bar owner about AG but no luck. Jay was also enquiring a lot of people in and around the bar but all negative. It was then, a cigarette shop owner told us that he had seen him an hour before and pointed towards the direction where he saw him going. This was a good piece of news since we finally had some clue where we could find AG.I picked up a couple of beer bottles from the bar and hopped in the auto. We took this autowaala to each and every street in Budhwaar peth but in vain. He was nowhere to be seen.
Shortly we saw a police jeep approaching towards us from distance. There were strong chances the police guys would have known this autowaala, the kind of activities he carries out in the night and that could have landed us in trouble. Jay enquired me if we could leave without AG.I was a bit reluctant but had to take a decision .Even Pelu was echoing Jay’s suggestion .Eventually I had to give up and I told the autowaala to take us home.
Upon reaching the society ,we realized that maingate and flat keys were with AG.I had no extra key with me.I was helpless again. So close yet so far.It must have been around 3 in the morning. That meant we had to wait either for AG to turn up ( if he was alright ) or wait till the duplicate key maker opened his shop. So in any case we were homeless for another 2-3 hours.
I opened up the beer I had brought with me.Pelu was clearly frustrated by the whole chain of events and he refused to drink when I offered him the other bottle. He had missed his chance of scoring a girl (so did I) but he was grumpy. He was also feeling sad that we had to leave AG all alone there. I thought not to trouble him by asking more questions and passed the bottle to Jay. We blamed our luck for that police raid and all and were wondering where AG would have gone. We were totally clueless about his sudden disappearance and nothing made sense to us. Thousands of bad thoughts were rambling in our mind .However; little did we know that there was more trouble waiting for us.
Two police man who were patrolling on bike had seen us standing outside the society. None of us saw or heard them coming. They were barely 10 meters away when Pelu spotted them. He hushed to hide the beer bottles since it would made the matter only worse .Me and Jay acted and tucked them in our trousers. In the meantime, those police guys had come. I looked around and saw Pelu standing in a corner at least 10 meters away from me. I was the one who would be interrogated since Jay was behind me.FML! I was drunk, worried and most importantly, fearful at that point of time. I was shaking - partially due to alcohol and primarily due to the fear. I still remember how that police guy screeched and haulted his bike right in front of me and started swearing at me. Had he seen a beer bottle in my hand, he would have slapped me. Anyway, he asked me ( in marathi) what was I doing so late outside a society. I am pretty sure he must have considered me as a thief or a burglar. Now marathi is something I think, would never understand ever in my lifetime. It’s incomprehensible. I started to talk in English (Yes, I do that a lot esp. when I am puzzled.).That fumed the other police guy and he abused something in the honor of my mom and sister. This took me back to Hindi. I asked them if we could talk in Hindi. They laughed. Yes, they laughed and I was allayed. Some happy sign finally. He asked me about my whereabouts and what I was doing there. I lied that we got late working in the office, got a bit drunk and were waiting for our roommate who hadn’t yet arrived from office. This was one convincing answer. I felt like patting my own back.Moreover,Jay and Pelu showed some confidence and they also started to support my version of the whole incident only in a better way.However,those guys were still abusing us in between conversation and reminded us how we north Indians have polluted and corrupted their pious marathi culture. Yeah right! We should be held responsible for letting these red light areas flourish in Pune and Maharashtra and we are the ones who is making profits by conducting those fake raids and extorting those miserable sexworkers.There was no point arguing those assholes .They abused and preached us one last time , took some bribe ,warned us and finally drove off. As soon as they left, I took out the beer bottle that almost numbed my back and drank again. I gulped the remaining beer , flung it across the street and started to smoke with Jay. We spent another half an hour talking how awful that night had turned out and how it could have been even worse for us. We were kind of framing stories that how we would lodge a complaint or a FIR if AG went missing for few more hours.
All of a sudden, I saw an auto rickshaw approaching us and when it finally stopped at some distance, I could see a silhouette of a man. My heart wanted him to be AG.He was AG.Never in my life, I had screamed so hard with joy. Not even when I cleared my engineering exams or when I got campus placement.This was one truly special moment. We all were so felicitous. We gave him a big hug and wanted to know what happened to him and where had he disappeared from the bar.Pelu had almost started weeping upon seeing him. It took us a while to control our emotions.
Now, it was AG’s turn to tell us his tale. He told us that he had a couple of drinks in the bar and then came out for a smoke. He was smoking and roaming around the corner when he heard about police raids in one of the hotels. This baffled him and wondered whether it was us who were caught red handed in that hotel. So he made a move and started looking out for us. Abruptly, he saw a police jeep coming towards him. Out of fear, he ran in an opposite direction and completely lost his way and sense of direction. He could still see police vans patrolling, so in an attempt to save himself, he looked to sneak into some place. He even considered sleeping on the footpath with beggars so that police wouldn’t notice him but it was too dangerous. So, he crawled onto one of the covered pav bhaaji thela that was parked alongside the road and tried to hide himself completely. Since, he was drunk and feeling a bit exhausted, he slumbered. He was fast asleep for nearly 2 hours on that thela.It was the time when we were calling him from Masui’s cell phone but he was sleeping like a baby. I am sure we’d have been near that thela too but it never occurred to me that he could be there. At any rate, it was great to see him back. We lit up a couple of cigarettes just to mark an end to this horrid series of events.AG was unlocking the society maingate,but then those police guys were back abruptly. And this time one of them jumped from his bike and tried to catch hold of Pelu who was standing away from the gate. Never had I seen Pelu sprinting so fast – he would have put even a rabbit to shame at that particular moment. The other police guy was on fire. He swore a lot in Hindi. He even threatened us to take us to police station. He jotted down our names and phone numbers and menaced to visit us sometime very soon. So, in order to pacify him I had to give him another 300 bucks. That really settled them and they went away swiftly. AG had already opened the maingate and we slid inside the society campus.
End of story.
PS : I know this story has got no moral, no action, no sex, nothing at all but believe me it was the most horrible and yet most memorable moment of my life.It was one of those drunken moments when I tried to do something adventurous but ended up like a pile of shit.Even so , if given a chance to rectify my past, I’d love to go back to this night only to end up like a hero !
I remember the time, may be a year and a half back when my friends followed a common trend.Trend – yes, that’s what they call it .‘Any form of behavior that develops among a large population and is collectively followed with enthusiasm for some period’. I am not talking about fashion trends and all but music trends. People (esp. my friends) talked a lot about different kinds of music and artists recommendations and stuff. They would even come up with the songs playlist in the form of a Fcebook note or a blog at regular intervals. It helped me a lot to explore different genres and artists – a lot. It was fun. I miss those days when there was a genuine reason for logging in on those social networking websites. Anyway, I have decided to continue the same practice and would be posting my IPod’s playlist every month. I am not sure if this is going to benefit you or influence your musical horizon but I have this feeling that I should be doing it. So, here I go with recently played list of my Ipod –
A tout le monde - Megadeth
Across the universe – The Beatles
All I know – Karnivool
Alone – Amorphis
Baba O’riley – The Who
Barnes – Pinback
Behind blue eyes – The Who
Black gives way to blue – Alice in Chains
Blue Harvest – Pinback
Bouquet – Pinback
Brave new world – Iron maiden
Brothers and a hotel bed – Death cab for cutie
Carry me Ohio – Sun kil moon
Change - Karnivool
Chasing cars – Snow patrol
Chasing pavements – Adele
COD – ACDC
Devil you know – Pinback
Ghetto gospel – 2Pac
Golden Brown – The Stranglers
Goliath – Karnivool
Good to sea – Pinback
Help – The Beatles
Hey – Pixies
In the sun – Joseph Arthur
Like a rolling stone – Bob Dylan
Monkey gone to heaven – Pixies
My Hero – Foo Fighters
New day – Karnivool
New Deep – John Mayer
On every street – Dire Straits
Outside – Staind
Say it to me now – Glen Hansard
Shadow on the sun – Audioslave
Silver and cold – AFI
Sister Morphine – The rolling stones
Skinny love – Bon Iver
Skygazer – Klimt 1918
Stairway to heaven – Led Zeppelin
Stillborn – Black Label Society
Sweet Child o’mine – Guns n roses
Tick – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Tonight the sky – Sun kil moon
Why Georgia – John Mayer
You know you’re right – Nirvana
You’re all I have – Snow Patrol
The cave – Mumford and sons
Happy listening folks !
