The Qutab Minar expeditions - II

Like I said, I have visited Qutab Minar twice so far. I hear JNU organises midnight walks to the monument - through the ridge in large groups that sometimes get rowdy and disturb the peace of the inhabitants of the forest... I haven't been a part of any of those yet, but my first expedition had taught me better than to walk all the way, especially not barefoot!!

This time I was with Ramya, and I went there on my bike. We had something important to discuss, and both of us agreed that it was too important to be discussed in 'public', so we left my house and decided to go to some place 'private', and what place better than Qutab Minar! What important matters were to be discussed escapes my mind - I think it had something to do with someone who liked someone else, but couldn't tell someone about it, or maybe a couple of people had similar issues... Anyway, we reached Qutab Minar, both sloshed to a great extent, and I introduced her to my 'nocturnal tower-friend' and we then got around to discussing the important matters. She was telling me about some girl, I was was telling her about another. Each of us didn't want to reveal the identities of our protagonists, and was trying to convince the other that it was a better idea for the other to reveal their story first. This went on for a while when I realised that the lady in question at the other end was messaging Ramya at that very moment.

There began a struggle, resulting in my acquiring Ramya's spectacles (somehow) and her cell phone. This obviously didn't happen voluntarily on her part... what I'm trying to say i that there was a struggle... at 2 AM... in front of Qutab Minar... between a drunk, pony-tailed guy, and a drunk girl. There were some Army Jawans on their way back to their quarters from somewhere. What stopped them from assaulting me and throwing me into the nearest available ditch or getting me arrested for 'attempted rape' is something I don't know - maybe it was the fact that both of us were laughing our guts out as we wrestled in front of Qutab Minar, before I got her phone and specks and ran a short distance. The jawans looked on for a while, a little perplexed, maybe even amused, and then walked into their quarters.

After this we talked for a while, exchanged belongings, rode to JNU to buy cigarettes for Avi, maybe had something to eat on the way, and then came back home, and I think somewhere amongst all this drama, I even spoke to the lady Ramya was talking about...

The Qutab Minar expeditions - I

Well, I haven't written here in a while, and Peter reminded me of this last night. So I thought I'd pen down another act of my emotional mind. There are two instances when I visited Qutab Minar, both of which were spurred by these 'minor tiffs' with the only person I usually fight with - and I'm not talking about Sam.

Anyway, so there we were, drinking on a a weekend as usual, when one of us said something silly, and the other said something sillier, and as usual, the consequence was that I decided I had to storm out of the house (I don't usually remember what it was that led to my departure). There I was, standing at the Kishangarh T-point, Chevrolet Showroom in front, JNU to the right, Fortis to the left, and Cows, Buffaloes and my house behind. The last time I had walked out I had walked all the way past JNU, Munirka, Aggarwal sweets, DLF Promenade, Vasant Kunj B-block, and back to Kishangarh. This time when I reached the T, I decided to walk the other way - only this time I forgot to take my slippers along.

So, there I was, barefoot, trudging along with a mind determined to set eyes, for the first time, upon Qutab Minar. The route was simple - Kishangarh (left) Fortis (left) Andheria Modh (left) Mehrauli (left)... but has anyone ever tried walking barefoot on the road? It felt therapeutic... like acupressure, there was this warm feeling of blood rushing to the souls of the feet, and when it got tiring, I could rest on the empty drains a couple of times - back to the wall, butt on one side, feet on the other, the drain in between...with the 'terrific' view of Delhi night traffic in front, of random strangers on random vehicles, driving by at 2 AM - a myriad stories hidden in each shadow briefly changing shape in the light of the street lamp above, before moving on...

I remember reaching Qutab Minar, looking at it with awe, saying 'Hi' to it like it was some friend I had either always heard of or had met online, but had never gotten to meet before, and then as I turned around to go back home, I turned around and waved goodbye again... The journey back was no different...right turns instead of left, more acupressure, another 3 hours of walking, and I was home with swollen, aching feet. The blisters on my feet the next morning were the biggest and most painful I have experienced (yet), and stayed for at least 2 months (in fact a faint mark still remains to accompany my memories of that night)...

The Mojo Chronicles

When I had just joined IBM, there was this group of people that I usually hung out with on weekends, and their favourite hangout was this place called Buzz, which was open till 1:30 p.m. This place is located on the 2nd? floor of either Metropolitan or DT mall(I can never get it right). One reason I can never remember which one it is in is because I was usually quite high by the time I got there, coz drinking there was expensive. So, by the time I got there, I was usually 5-6 beers or half a bottle of whiskey/vodka/rum down. I'd go there and all I needed was a pint to keep myself high. The place usually shut at 1:30, after which some people went home, while others went across the corridor to Mojos, which by then would finish playing the Punjabi music and would progress to hip-hop, and then later to trance, perfect for the people I was with. The first time I got there was on my bicycle (which I also rode to work those days, as I stayed in DLF phase 3, right behind the building I worked in), on my way there, I bumped into a cut tree trunk on the road and toppled over, hurt myself, and went to Buzz all cut and bruised...

Going to Buzz and Mojos was almost a routine - every weekend or alternate weekend, we'd enter Mojos at 1:30, and would people leave at their convenience (I'd usually stay there till it shut down, whether the others stayed till then or left). Because we were such regulars there, we usually got in with either no cover charge, or with a nominal cover charge (1000 rupees for 7-8 people). I'd have a couple of more beers there and that would usually be enough to get me sloshed. That is when I would start doing interesting things. There are several interesting episodes - once, I was rolling all over the dance floor and dancing like a maniac, till one of the bouncers came and asked me to 'stand up and dance', another time, I was so thrilled by the music the DJ was playing that I held on to the DJ console platform (located about 8 feet above the dance floor) and started jumping up and down, till I freaked the DJ out, who then called the bouncer again(weird guys, I say!!!). Most of these times, I got away coz my friends and I were regulars there. I have done several other crazy things there, like danced with complete strangers, asked random women to dance with me, being dropped home by people I'd never met before, etc. Once, there were three of us left there at 5 a.m., when they were about to shut, and none of us knew each other, but all of us decided to meet again the following week, which we did, and had a wonderful evening.

Then there were the times when I'd get 'bored' in the middle of it all (this happened quite often, by the way) and decide that I was not having fun any more, and walk out of the place. This happened more frequently during winters, and I'd have to take a left to go to my place, but would end up taking a right instead, and get lost on theway. I remember one such incident in particular, where I walked quite a bit, passed two omelette stands, had an omelette each at each stand, till I finally reached a place where there were a lot of cabs (outside Vertex!!), when one cab guy told me that I was walking the wrong way. I turned back and kept asking for the way back till I finally reached home. On another day, I walked a while and realised that I was headed in the wrong direction. I saw some street dogs on the way and decided that I quite liked their company. It was quite cold, so after playing with them for a while, we curled up and slept right there on the footpath, my new-found canine friends and I.

Then, of course, I got my bike, and started heading in the right direction, but usually, would have no clue the next morning how I got home. Once, I went there with an old college friend, and even allowed him to ride us back to my place, even though he had never ridden a bullet before, and was all of 5 ft 6 inches and 55 kgs at that time. My friends even got to see me get angry for probably the only time during my stay at IBM - right outside Buzz, when we were walking towards Mojos. I really lost my cool at a colleague of mine, and we didn't speak for months thereafter. Those days, I was also busy getting over my first relationship, and would often be lachrymose in my late night wanderings. I can still hear some of those songs that I had become so used to in those days...Nelly, Shakira, Rihana, Beyonce, etc. but our favourite was 'World Hold On' by Bob Sinclair. Mojos was one place that went hand in hand with those years of uncertainty and growing up from a 'college graduate' to what could (by some stretch of imagination, and some concession) be called a 'professional' - some of my first few sips of alcohol, the wanderings, the lachrymosity, the crazy dancing, random flings, the lonely walks back home, the bicycle rides turning to motorbike rides, waking up to take interview calls on Saturdays and Sundays, so I could pile up compensatory offs for vacations that I took every two months, when I would run off to the hills all by myelf... those days were fun...

The Great Fall

Here I am sitting at the airport waiting to take the flight to Pune, from where I am to take a bus to Aurangabad. I was briefly back in Delhi, including the 24th, when we decided to have a small get-together for a handful of people. The preparation started on that very day as we hardly had any time for preparation. The vegetables, the meat, the alcohol, the Christmas tree, the wood, the charcoal, the bonfire, the barbecue, the invitations, the music, the seating, buying the decorations, decorating the place... all this happened within six hours. Well, the people started coming in at ten. It was a combined party so each of the flat-mates had called a handful of people. There were about 15 people in all,including the hosts, thanks to some people who ditched at the last moment. It was just ideal I'd say, as the intention was to have a quiet time around the bonfire and the barbecue. Things went well except for these Jat neighbours who wanted us to take the party indoors. There was a brief altercation, after whch the couple shut their window and never appeared again. We had a variety of reasons to not comply to their demands:

1. Christmas occurs once a year
2. We had never had any problems with any neighbours in the one year that we have stayed here. SO, it was not a regular occurence
3. We were not even making any noise.

Anyway, people went downstairs after some time, after which some of us went back upstairs to rekindle the fire. It was a fun evening with me inventing an interesting drink - which I am yet to name - Rum, lemon, sugar, 7-up and beer...try it out sometime... well, it was a regular party with people separating into smaller groups, the barbecued stuff being passed around, etc. A few drinks down, for one reason or another, I had mildly offended one of the ladies present there, not sure how, and she decided that she wanted to assault me. In self-defence, I ran to the terrace, which has two parts. A lower part and a higher part, both separated from each other by a parapet wall. Usually this parapet is easily accessible, but today, as we had done up the place a bit, the washing machine was blocking it. I reached the lower terrace, with the lady in hot pursuit. Trapped, I decided, in my state of insobriety that I would jump onto the washing machine, leap onto the parapet (which was about four feet away from the washing machine) and go to the other terrace.

What I didn't take into consideration was the fact that the washing machine was not fixed to the floor, and that I wasn't as light as I felt after 6 of those concoctions I had made. So I jump on to the washing machine and try to leap right on to the parapet. There I was with one foot on the washing machine and the other ready for take-off, when the washing machine decides to topple over. It was like one of those scenes on a tom and jerry episode where tom fails to reach the other end, halts for a couple of seconds and goes CRASH!!!...I don't know if it was me or the washing machine that hit the floor first. All I remember was that I was in mid-air, almost parallel to the ground, with my palm just about reaching the parapet. when I realised that I wasn't going to make it. There were four witnesses to this event, who all split into laughter. I lay motionless, till the laughter stopped and they came running to check if I was ok. After a couple of seconds, I couldn't control my laughter...surprisingly I didn't get hurt at all...the next morning I realised I had hurt my tail bone a bit as I had landed on my right side, but that was it. The witnesses maintain that it was totally like a movie stunt carried off to perfection, and that even if someone tried a hundred times, it would never be the same. As for the drink, I think I will call it 'The Great Fall'

The Jeetender Mohan episode

People keep telling me that I love getting drunk, making a fool of myself, and then proudly narrating my exploits of the previous night to everyone around. Well, that maybe partly true, in the sense that the most interesting stories of my life belong to a state of total insobriety. so, here is a series of such exploits...some interesting, some more interesting...I never drank in college for two reasons...one, I feared I'd become an alcoholic, given the tradition in the family, and two, I had better uses to put my parents' money to, and didn't think it was appropriate to waste it on liquor. So well, I got my first real job a year after I graduated, and some months after, I started drinking. And that's when this first story begins.

There was an office party happening, and everyone from our team had gathered at this place on MG road... I forget what it was called..'fire' or something...Well, so the manager, senior manager, and even the vice president were present, along with a host of new trainers who had never met me before. These parties are where you are supposed to conduct yourself 'appropriately' as everyone is observing your behaviour. Your career, your image in the eyes of your colleagues, how seriousy people take you at work, are all determined by you conduct at work, and also in these official parties. It had been around two months since I joined IBM and therefore not many people knew me too well, though I had a set of people I hung out with quite often.

So well, there I was, sitting in a corner, sipping awayon some rum and coke, till I was sufficiently high. Then some people drag me to the dance floor, where Arnab, a senior of mine from college, who also worked with me was going crazy on the dance floor, and I decided to join him. We were all over the dance floor, and everyone else just decided to sit and watch our moves, our grinds, our thumkas, etc... a memory a lot of those new trainers still possess. We even danced with the VP for a while, till he conveniently stepped off the dance floor, like everyone else did. Well, after tiring ourselves out, and witnessing a drunk Sajith puking in the loo and yelling..." Asherrrrrrrrr, Asherrrrrrrr!!" for over 5 minutes, I decided to go eat.

I served myself some food and sat in the corner where I was drinking before. This was a circular platform overlooking the dance floor on the front, and at the back were large, curtained window-like openings which overlooked the buffet. After eating a bit, I found that I needed some more rotis. So I stepped up, parted one curtain and looked for someone who could pass me a roti. I saw this guy standing with his back to me, so I tapped him oon the shoulder, and sai, "bhaisaab, do roti laana yaar please". The figure turned around as I was digging into my pate, walked to the buffet and promptly got the two rotis. As I took the rotis and looked up to thank him, I found myself looking at Jeetender Mohan, The Deputy General Manager of the team...