One of my routines when I feel like taking a stroll – like towards the end of a perfectly screwed weekend of stasis, or to cultivate offense at a variety of architectural freakishness around the neighborhood – is darting my eyes out for any vehicle number-plates around. With mobility being a status symbol, and the concept of joint families still a reality in India, the upper-middle/upper class owns vehicles in herds, so I’m never short of number-plates. Then I try to determine the sum of its individual numbers, recursively, until I’m left with a single digit number. It is like:
DL3C 7786 = 7+7+8+6 = 28 = 2+8 = 10 = 1+0 = 1
DBA 1980 = 1+9+8+0 = 18 = 1+8 = 9
You get the point…
The 4 bikes parked outside my home right now give me: 1, 5, 6, 7, respectively. [To further derive, the state of my home is 1+5+6+7 = 19 = 1+9 = 10 = 1+0 = 1. So I can tell if some guy’s out on some random night just by math (though you can figure out the obvious chinks here).]
This scanning-and-adding process needs to be executed in the span of a single parked vehicle, before I am confronted with a new number-plate, so - about 7 yards, or 4 seconds. There’s no mental prowess involved here, but only a continuous state of play that makes things less boring, and additionally cushions the blows of bad taste and unhygienic habits the citizens of this great nation so genially provide. Just eyes darting between spaces.
With this relevant detail explained, I will now enter into the details of my evening stroll. With Pa returning from HK tomorrow, and only briefly in Delhi – the single hour before daybreak, that it takes to get from the airport to the train station – I have the chance of seeing the exchange of my new iPod into my hands tomorrow itself. So, a 45-odd km outing for an ulterior motive, in the morning, in the winter chill that has already affected me with a sniffle and general dreariness. I am set. To make things more fun, I’m gonna do it on the bike – bicycle. Finally, to gauge the cold outside, I decided to go out for a stroll, an hour back. Since it was already late into the night so I expected conditions to be representative of the morning.
The stroll went as usual. Quiet, empty lanes. A few homes still decked in their Diwali grandeur with garlands of lightbulbs. Some loud music - surprising dance numbers like “My dream is to fly…”. Some girl tipsy outside her home. Hosts swell will pride, as the guests leave with compliments over how good a dinner their wifey makes. And then there was some guy sneakily staring at their cars’ number-plate and babbling innocuously.
On my last leg of the stroll, as I returned back the same way that I’d come from, I made way past the same hospital. Feeling like challenging myself, I tried adding up the motorbike number-plates – in the space of a car, at least 2 or 3 bikes can be accommodated, so you can figure out my challenge. These bikes were parked enfilade in the parking lot under the tree. Some guys loitering about. Though I had to marginally slow my steps, and squint to make out the numbers, I did well in my challenge (UPDATE: I have, apparently, worked out the method of casting out nines all by myself). The road ahead went along an empty market place, a short stretch, so it must’ve felt like a pitstop to my frontal lobe. Shortly after, the math resumed (probably giving a minor scare to some guy walking on my left who must’ve thought I was giving him a stare). This home-market stretch is a mere 100m affair that cuts through a park as well.
Nearing the entrance of this park, the aforementioned ‘guy to my left’ – yes, he becomes the central theme here - nervously asked for the way to get to #105. Casually enough, I told him to cut his way across the park, just like me. And so we cut across the park, a very short stretch, at the end of which he was thankful enough to shake hands with me - nothing unconventional here, for I’ve come across people at distress reacting in excess. Then he started about how good he is at massage. Then about how good he cooks as well. It started to sound like some i-think-im-talented spirit looking for employment, or for a job-switch. I put my bets on this guy being drunk this late at night – and boisterously gave him a pat and asked him to get some rest.
Then I walked another few meters to the gates of my home, only to find this guy tailing me, still expecting something from our conversation. I now know what set him off – again, it was my indiscretion, as I explain:
Having spent time in Mumbai, I was fascinated by what went on at the Juhu beach. No, not the hookers in the auto-rickshaws, but these guys with their wooden boxes of colorful oils, soliciting each and every guy at the beach for a full-body (Turkish) massage, given right at the beach itself, next to the Police Station. I greatly appreciate massages. This fact, though, derives not from any personal experience, but from my self-diagnosis from the times when the body feels torn, say after cycling, or a trek; when legs turn into logs of wood. Massages have always been a royalty thing here in India, and being from the nawabi city of Lucknow, I can confirm that they are still in vogue. The sight of two talented hands kneading the muscle blocks like dough is awesome.
Coming from this background, I showed a natural appreciation for his talent at massage. That’s what set him off. Set off his gaydar, so to say. And it wasn’t massage that he was good at, it was “massage” that he was good at. He set on his path of seduction probably because of the let-me-do-motorbike-math that I was so engrossed in, him thinking that I was giving some signal at the parking lot.
So I had a man-whore standing at my doorstep on this day. Repeatedly urging me to sample his “massage”. I had still been assuming the influence of alcohol here, until he went for his master-stroke and came to stroking my master (neologism, I coin). Now I had a man-whore standing at my doorstep trying to stroke me for a sampler (the first one's free) and promising me more details that I didn't wanna know, with me actively restraining him to a distance of my arm’s length. Fucken Tom of Finland dropping at my doorstep.
Talk about lame instincts, that it had to come this far for me to finally get a clue on his intentions. Though I've been to Mumbai, where this "massage" culture is quite popular, but door-to-door... I'd never imagined!
Don’t feel so smart anymore. So much for my 2+7+6+3… FML
Need I say it again: I DON’T WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE. This weekend had been sad enough, to now end with this tragicomic crescendo.
In another 46 minutes, things will - technically - advance into the next day. Do I breathe a sigh of relief?
Widget by Css Reflex | TutZone
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment