Let’s Relax This Time With A New Year Party!

Most Gracious ILites,
Thanks for the really ‘overwhelming’ response for the Gossip Thread. I do plan to take up such serious topics alternating them with some light-heated topics. (ILites who want me to touch upon any sensitive topics, may please pm their suggestions to me.)

This week, with the holiday mood lifting us to increased levels of buoyancy, let us talk about something light. I would like to share my experiences about a memorable new year celebration I had a few years back.

I am not at all favourably inclined to new year celebrations. I don’t go out to a hotel, do not travel out of my place during that time. I would rather prefer a day of productive work and an evening of creative writing as the most proper new year celebration.

But it happened once, I think in 1999, that I was obliged to attend a new year party at a Star Hotel in <st1:City><st1lace>Madurai</st1lace></st1:City>. One of my young clients wanted to celebrate new year in style and he had paid, and exorbitantly so, for the admission of almost all of his friends. I did not have the heart to refuse his kind invitation especially after learning that he had paid so much on my account.

So at <st1:time minute="30" hour="8">half past eight</st1:time> on the new years eve I dressed myself with extra care to be present in the celebration venue, absolutely ignorant of what that year and that celebration was going to teach me.


When I entered, the bar had been opened already and people were in the middle of their drinks. I checked the time. There was three and a half hours for the birth of the new year. ‘If people start to drink from now onwards (I did not have any clue when they actually started) what would be their state of mind and body when the new year is to be ushered in!’

But it was quite interesting and even amusing to see some of the most serious businessmen and much respected VVIPs of the city, totally relaxed with their glasses of drinks! Though I don’t drink, I love to converse with people who really enjoy their drinks.


Their inhibitions and defences are down and the conversation assumes an unexpected shade of authenticity. We discussed about the year that was gone and the year that was to come in. We discussed about the celebrations happening in the various other venues, the charges, the kind of entertainment that is given and so on.

At about <st1:time hour="22" minute="0">10 PM</st1:time> the dance floor was open. I had never seen that kind of dancing in my life. Men and women were dancing with gay abandon. Though I was happy to see them happy, I was a little worried.

The men have been drinking like fish since 8 30. And they were dancing with women, were in the close company of women, in a semi-dark dancing floor. Honestly I have never subscribed to the views of Western Culture.

If you want a very candid opinion from me, I will go further and explain. You see in the West, in <st1lace>Europe</st1lace> and parts of <st1:country-region><st1lace>America</st1lace></st1:country-region>, the weather is very cold. The outside temperature will be sub-zero with snow falling most of the time. For them to turn themselves on they need drinks and closeness of women company. It is a kind of given in their culture. But ours is a tropical country.


Even in the worst of winters the temperature will be hovering around 21 to 23 degrees celsius. We do not need those props to arouse ourselves. And if we are going to blindly ape the West in this matter, we are in for sure trouble, as I found out that day.

 

Let’s Relax This Time With A New Year Party 2

Around <st1:time minute="0" hour="23">11 PM</st1:time> an young lady, wife of one of my clients approached me with an extended hand. ‘Come, Sridhar, let’s dance’, she said. I just smiled defensively and said, I don’t know dancing. Please look for somebody else.

‘Come on, don’t be a spoil sport. Are we going to dance Bharatham or kucchupudi? No. We’ll just hold our hands and swing to the rhythm of the music. We can be conversing. I want to talk to you a lot.’

Now the smile in my face was gone. I said with a sternness that I cant dance period. She was insistent. ‘Are you afraid that I will seduce you, sridhar?’
That was the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back. I had to tell her point blank,

‘No Madam, I am afraid of myself. I am not sure of myself. I may be a good man. But I cannot trust my harmones to be under my control under these circumstances. So I can’t dance.’
I stood my ground even when she came back with her husband to renew her request.

Then she left me with some stinging words. I was not bothered.

But then I expressed my anguish to my friend standing nearby. ‘If men and women are in so close company in this kind of darkness and that too after so much of drinking (some of the ladies had had beer)… I am not very sure of the consequences.’

My friend said that these things are quite common and that I am paranoid and outdated.

But in another 20 minutes what I feared happened. An young boy in his early twenties had misbehaved with a married lady. The lady raised a hue and cry and naturally we had many spot-heros rushing to the damsel in distress. The boy was beaten black and white and packed off.


I was there to express my opposition to this rude treatment. I told them anybody would have faltered given that kind of a situation. And we should just send the boy out without harming him. But nobody would listen to me. The boy went out with blood trickling down his face. He mumbled something as he went. We could not hear what he said.

But we realised the bitter meaning of his words in another half an hour. He came back. In four TATA Sumos fully laden with people, armed with sticks (the round uruttu savukku kambu is the favourite weapon in <st1:city><st1lace>Madurai</st1lace></st1:city>; it could be lethal depending on the person handling it). The boy was the only son of a local Dada.

The ladies were hauled up and locked inside the huge gents’ toilet of the star hotel. Fortunately the Hotel Management now interfered and the matter was settled amicably after about an hour of mediation.

Meanwhile the new year came in unheralded. As the ladies came out of their toilet-exile later I had the audacity to ask one of them, “How did you like welcoming new year in a men’s toilet?”

The culture makes the person. And if we are not intelligent enough to understand our cultural make-up we are surely inviting trouble as it was very clear on that new year’s day.

At the time of the next new year the same young client who sponsored me for the party invited me to a much more extravagant millenium bash. I told him in so many sweet words, ‘Go to hell.’

Varalotti

 

I am happy and proud of you, Aishu!

Hi Aishu,
Only after posting this did I realise that these days IL has a lot of vibrant young members who might mistake my writings as old fashioned or paranoid. But after reading your post I am very hopeful and more than relieved that todays youngsters have a strong sense of values and cultural belonging these days.

I am especially appalled at the atmosphere in BPO units, especially the night-shift call centres. Open, blatant, crude sex has killed all traces of subtle and tender romance.
Not that in my younger days I was not opposed to love and Romance. I was beautiful experience of falling in love. I had seen and known my wife (though I did not meet her) some 8 years before my marriage. But till we were formally engaged we have never talked to each other. But when we see each other in a common place we will allow to rest our glance on the others face one second more than normal. That was the maximum we could do. But that was pure romance. But what's happening now is crude, uncultured, valueless sex, which will only burn out our youngsters making them incapable of any tender feelings in their lives.

I am happy and proud of you, Aishu, that you stood out of the crowd and stood up for what you thought was right. Have that kind of strength for all time to come and you will never, ever be sad in life.
Best of luck, Aishu,
regards,
sridhar