romancing the unknown

well... the title may seem like a sweet story... but its not...
depends on your point of view really..

On saturday night a few friends from work decided to go out for a few drinks and dinner. I tagged along.. more like coerced by SD, who is a great friend.. and tries to involve me in office social life a lot.. according to her i live a rather boring life... anyway.. so we went..

had our couple of drinks at this place called THUGS in Daryaganj.. nice place actually.. its in the Broadway theatre right next to delite cinema in Daryaganj, and is nicely decorated in the theme of 'Villains in Indian Cinema' so we sat amidst large paintings of Amrish Puri, Ajit, LOIN, Gabbar singh, shakti kapoor, prem chopra et al.... red walls and lighting on teh dimmer side of bright.. it was quite nice.. Dinner was at the restaurant named Chor Bizarre downstairs. now THAT is one lavishly decorated place.. we were frankly tempted to steal some of the gorgeous metal jewellery on display under the glass of the dining table...

anyway,... this is not supposed to a paean about my dinner.. its what happened in teh middle of it.. SD, who is quite a smoker, wanted to take a sutta break between drinks and dinner while we waited for our biryani... two more of our party accompanied her... 10 minutes later, i went out to get them coz teh food had arrived. while the four of us, (two women and two men) stood outside, a bunch of 'sportsie jaat boys' types arrived and stood staring at us for a few seconds.. one in particular, a tall, rather blank looking guy, kept staring, till finally i got irritated and dragged my companions back inside.. no one lse had noticed them.. perhaps because tehy had their backs to the boys.. (the two men accompanying us being senior photographers, one well over 50, i didnt want to bring the 'jaat boys' to their notice.. dont ask me why.. i just didnt want to create a scene at 11 pm..
well.. so we troop back inside, finish our biryani, and walk out again coz SD and I had to get home 'early' while the elders had a longer night out... a senior accompanied us to make sure we get an auto n all that.. the 'boys' were still standing outside the restaurant!!! and that tall guy was STILL freakin staring at us.. though he was on the phone.. anyway.. as has been drilled into me from years of battling the 'male gaze' i ignored the guy n got into the auto.....
as i climbed in and the auto started to move, the guy threw something at me.. at first i YELLED!!!! "$%&$%@&$%#&%$%#!!!!!
then realised what it was... a piece of paper. with his name and phone number written on it!!!

i started laughing like a maniac.. SD, who had been oblivious to the very presence of any such members of the male species, owing to her having had a tad more drinks than i did.. got rather startled when i suddenly screamed.. and then wanetd to read the note... we couldn't ofcourse, due to the lack of light in the auto...
i could sort of make out what looked like an N right in the beginning of the name.. and then my irritation made me tear up the paper and throw it out... amidst howls of protest from SD who thought that it was the most hilarious thing ever.....



well.. depends on your point of view i guess.. sure, the guy never made any inappropriate remarks.. none that were audible to me anyway... they actually whispered amongst themselves like little girls and stared at us... and averted their eyes if i looked at them in return.. maybe i shouldnt convert this into a rant against men in general.. coz despite their physique... i dont think these were the kind of guys who had teh b^&*s to actually TALK to a girl... they were in all liklihood a bunch of repressed little boys from a rather old fashioned section of old delhi who had to look around before they actually said hello to a girl in their neighbourhood....



so i guess i can laugh it off.. heck.. i could probably add this to the list of 'men who tried to hit on me'... even though i dont know what that boy's name was...



the funny thing is.. it was the whole idea of this man writing his number and name on a piece of paper and throwing it at me... i thought that only happened in saudi arabia where boys are not allowed to even look at a girl, much less talk to her... there was infact a story about boys going 'numbering' in saudi arabia, in New york times a few days ago...

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/out-with-the-boys-for-a-night-of-numbering/?scp=1&sq=NUmbering&st=cse




it is quite funny to a girl who is used to rather overt forms of attention seeking behavior from known and unknown men... though i guess its enough to irritate, startle, and if so inclined.. scare a girl...