Skip to main content

Clubbing

Somebody up there do not want me to club.

It has been one experience that has eluded me despite my multiple visits, that has brought as much excitement as me sitting in a meditative pose.  This is all the more interesting because my intention was simply to get a feel of it, and not kickstart a career as a party animal, that would either way not work for a person who dared not even to dance in the shower.

Perhaps  though, it is not the circumstances, but the person to blame. I should have known I was not the party kind the very first time I set off. As I was tying my shoe laces, my father would politely enquire where I was going to. “Going to club”, I responded.

“What? Like a community club?”, he carried on.

I am not the most superstitious of persons, but when you are about to do something, it has to start off on the right tone. There and then, my father set the expectations of me, and all the stamps I received on my waist before entering the club became but somebody’s divine disapproval of my adventurous spirit.  That day, a private event in the club meant I had to wait an extremely lengthy two hours, and therefore I left, with my only impression of a club being the two big guys in black standing in the front.

My next shot at it was as part of Engineering Bash in university, where at least an entrance was guaranteed.  This time though, it was entirely my fault. I forgot it was held by the Engineering faculty and when I walked, I saw more sausages there than one would find in at Oktoberfest. Left, right, up, (but not down), all you saw were guys, all there for the experience. Finding a girl in that room, was like finding a remote island, surrounded by an ocean of guys. The name of photo album would excellently explain that night, “When MacDonalds is way cooler than Supper Club”.

And then I came to Stockholm, where the nights are longer than the day, which mathematically increased the probability of a more vibrant nightlife.

But probability never had any substance beyond keeping statisticians employed and everyone guessing. Do not get me wrong, yesterday night, the music was great. It was live and booming and I could not help but shake my head rhythmically. Though when I looked around me, by simply nodding my head, I was contributing more to the art of dance than the numbers around me who simply stared at the band in deep contemplative thought, as if in an art film. My friend turned to me, "Why are they not dancing?"

Divine intervention. What else can I say?  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sparing the Rod

 She gave me a look of deep displeasure, not very atypical of the look most members of the opposite gender gave me. “You know you can’t do that in Germany?”, she asserted with the same authority my mother used to tell me about not messing around in her kitchen.  “Yes I am aware”, I meekly responded, knowing well that any kind of argument about this would not end well, so it was better to close off the topic quietly and unlike the kitchen, I could not afford to get kicked out of Germany. She was not the first to respond with such hostility to what seemed like the most natural of things in my experience. The last one who told me the same was a teacher I had met at a party. When she sounded shocked that I was ok with it and said it was not right, I (with some alcoholic courage) had retorted, “How would you discipline them then if they do something wrong?” “I would tell them I am very disappointed with them”. I almost laughed. However, that was very much the theory of my new frien...

An Eye for an Eye

"Something that three or four years ago you told me was one of the touchstones of maturity: being nice to people even when they’re not nice to you…" - William Styron It was an plan that came out of nowhere. Perhaps half depressed by the winter and half depressed by the inactivity at work, there was sufficient turmoil in the mind to create these type of plans and then let it fester, until something that started off with a what-if turned into a why-not. It would have been the perfect revenge for the past hurt and humiliation that was yet to completely heal.  The circumstances were similar. On one side, an eager visitor who had traveled far to say "Hello" and on the other side, a host, bewildered and surprised by this visit. In the first case, the host would not receive the visitor, who would turn back humiliated and vowing never again. Now the roles were reversed and I was the host. What if I agreed to receive? What if in reality I did not plan to receive? ...

Passage to Vietnam : Part 2 - The Food

Imagine your friend passes you a fully boiled egg, garnished in onion and sauce. You use your chopsticks, lift it up to your mouth and bite of half the egg. It does not tear away as easily as you thought it would. And it tastes queer. Then while chewing away at that half, you look down at the other half on your plate and you see tiny grey feathers and a tiny leg bone staring back at you. My exact feeling at that moment was like I was making love to a woman and she suddenly reveals in the middle that she used to be a man. In short, I wanted to puke. I am not a big fan of Vietnamese cuisine. During my 18 days stay there, my Viet friends were kind enough to bring me around and let me taste about every kind of street food and drink, from snails to sticky rice to Viet baguettes to local alcohol. Other than certain items here and there, I generally thought the food lacked any kind of strong flavour to it. Plus, for some reason, I could not understand why the Viets went to the extent of ea...