Tie Me to The Bar : A Goan Wedding

Tie Me to The Bar : A Goan Wedding:

Escaping weddings had been a forte
all my life. There’s something revolting about them….All the toothless women
seem to recognise you instantly, claiming to have seen you naked!! They also claim
to have access to all the single women in town, endorsing a   “happy ending”.
My beloved match making aunties…

A Goan Wedding

What do you do when an adorable friend decides to bite the dust and say ‘I do’ (in Punjabi of course...) and tells you to be there!

              Weddings usually are a scary affair for me. But this was one wedding                I could never say No to, especially when the back drop said- Goa!!  

          For all the intricate knowledge I had from Bollywood flicks, Goa somehow 
     seemed to be a place where the Russians took asylum from their traumatic lives,               a place where lobster grew on trees and where kids were raised on home 
                                    grown weed, plucked from their back yards….

Escaping weddings had been a forte all my life. There’s something revolting about them…. Toothless women from the aging association of 'life after death' seem to recognize you instantly, claiming to have seen you naked!! They also claim to have access to all the single women in town, endorsing a  “happy ending”. The beloved match making aunties…

Try refuting their declaration and they instantaneously grab your face choking you with kisses flavoured with the last snack they pounded upon.

 Which is why going to a friend’s wedding is so much safer, especially when it’s an effort towards national integration. A Rajput girl marrying a completely bald, half Goan-half Punjabi-half Bengali guy, settled in Bangalore.

The guest list was equally unpretentious. Corporate lawyers turned photographers, over grown air hostesses who claimed they were only half their current size just a few weeks ago, an innocent Chinese who confused spider webs drawn on her hand for Mehendi. To her defense, someone had spiked her Fanta.

Amidst all this, you barely stayed sober, spent unending after hours at the beach and for some strange reason carried women’s clutch all evening… 

And just when you think you could dance the night away with those multiple clutches in your hand…. You somehow got swept off your feet and twirled in the air by a Psycho Punjabi Moron straight from DDLJ…Thankfully, it was the only romantic moment I had!!!

Next morning, just when you are recovering from this trauma that almost killed your willingness to live, you realize it’s show time!!

You forget about everything else and get ready to enjoy every ritual in the company of friends, celebrating every moment.  May be that’s what makes a friend’s wedding different. You are there for someone whom you really know…….

When you return home and start extracting sand off your cell phone and from every single piece of wardrobe, you smile and wish it never ended!

Travels like these remind me of the song..…

Nothing comes from nothing, so must have done something good

in child hood…..

Its Not As Bad As It Looks....

A common man’s claim to fame or a stage when he reaches stardom is when he finally finds his ‘Third Space’ and falls in love with it. It could be a cosy corner at Starbucks, a bench at the sea side café or  just a dark space to unwind with a ‘joint’ listening to Metallica….. A space beyond  office and home which feels like an extension of your front porch!

                                                                                                                                               Let me describe what my 'Third Space' was like.....
 Just like every day, you finish work and walk across the street only to see a long queue. And just when you decide to turn away, the bouncer at the door shouts your

name, breaks the crowd and lets you in.

As you approach the bar- the cute bar tender flashes her dimples the moment she sees you and a pitcher gets placed by default….And that’s the point in life when a common man like me takes a sip and says….”I Have Arrived”

Such were the hay days of my life. My Third Space was called ‘Charlie and Barneys’, a bar right next to work where we met every single night. It was a place that taught me how to drink silly and fearlessly hit on women (not that I got any ). It also gave me my first & only preview to a wet T-shirt contest and a place where I sang my first karaoke with the Hooter girls…

Going to Charlie and Barneys was almost felt like going to college; only difference being you could put things you learn't in to practice!

I did sometimes feel that we only went to work so that we could later go to the bar. Dressed in suits & ties, people often mistook us of being from a law firm or tipsy investment bankers . So every night, we the ‘Hoteliers’ chose our Alter Ego…. And after a few pitchers down, we could be What Ever We Wanted To….

Reaching home early & sober was never an option! And walking back home always turned in to a treasure hunt. Waking up the homeless, ringing doorbell of friends and running away were all a part of the process of reaching home! The neon road signs, shopping trolleys from parking lot, mannequins outside clubs- somehow became part of my prized possession.

  

Occasionally, when you did try to get home at a civilized time and hailed a cab, the driver instead of asking directions, would turn towards you and ask worriedly, ‘what happened to you, going home so early?" I don’t recall if it was a feeling of shame or guilt but on such occasions I did think, ‘I am better off tied to the bar’!

What’s interesting is that we the ‘humans’ really need this Third Space in our lives, and we’ve needed it for practically our whole existence. It’s something that you wouldn’t really know you need it, until you have it.

P.s. I hear Charlie & Barney’s closed its doors few years ago…