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...
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