This post is about perseverance, and its rewards (or punishments, depending on your general mental attitude in life). Its about the great human tendency to aim at the sky and strive to achieve higher heights. This is a story about this guy who demonstrated a "never-say-die" attitude! Oh yeah, its an awe-inspiring story of he who dared, failed and fell flat on his face, but rose up from the ashes and tried again!
This weekend saw a considerable amount of partying… On Friday night my friend and I ventured downtown to check out the nightlife there… there’s an array of nightclubs in this particular area of downtown, ranging from latino to hip hop to reggae music… the clubs are also differentiated based on the crowd that gathers inside, like primarily Hispanic or African American and even homosexuals… interesting mix and loads of choice, like everything else in US! Anyways, we finally decided to go to the hip hop music club, a peaceful compromise because my friend didn’t know how to dance any Salsa and I refused to "getjiggywitit" (or whatever reggae music is!)!
When we were ushered in, the floor was packed with people “getting down” and doing the grind. Now, the ‘Grind’ calls for explanation… if you guys ever saw the program ‘MTV Grind’ (which used to be aired at like 11 in the night on Fridays because of its “adult” content), imagine a live version of that right under your noses! The ‘Grind’ involves a guy holding a girl by her waist with her back facing him, while she “grinds” against him, hip down! His role is limited to holding her in place and “enjoying the grind” while she’s supposed to move against him, and apparently that’s a lot of fun… Depending on how late it is in the night, the raunchiness of this entire “dance form” takes on monumental proportions, so that ultimately, somewhere around 2 in the night, the entire dance floor begins to resemble a huge orgy. I realized that no matter what kind of music is playing, the only “dancing” that happens on these floors is this grinding and bumping (A bit like the universal bhangra in India?). And the most important thing is that most of the couples are strangers! They just met on the dance floor - sometimes the girl doesn’t even know who she is grinding till much later! Hmmm… alcohol can make dreams a reality I think.
It took a lot of getting used to this new dance form, with everyone looking like they’re literally having s*x on the floor… so I decided to maintain eye contact with the dance floor and do my own non-grinding, “normal”, at-arms-length dancing (Oh, how I missed good ol' Punju music then!).
In the midst of all the “fun”, my friend and I noticed one desi guy standing around on the periphery of the floor - carefully checking out all the girls, meanwhile forming a game plan in his head – a ‘how do I get to dance with a girl tonight?’ plan. Specific targets in mind were the non-suspecting Caucasian girls. He was there with a few guy friends who were also scanning the crowd with similar intention.
Suddenly, about 15 mins later we found this guy clinging onto a girl who was at least a 5” 10’ in height, big-bodied and looked like she could swat him like a fly! Because he was, in contrast, only about an inch taller than me, which made him a whole of 5” 6’ at the most, and also very skinny! But you’ve got to admire the guy’s strategy – "I'll just cling onto a girl who won’t be able to find me for at least 5 mins, in which time I've got what I wanted… errr… danced with her".. He basically wanted to imitate the “lucky American guys” doing the grind. Aha! Now, if you want to do the grind, at least learn how to do it right first! Instead of standing straight and letting her do the moves, this guy assumed that just because this looked like s*x on the dance floor, it actually was s*x on the dance floor! So, he held her tightly with her back to him and began to move like what can only be described as a horny dog at the peak of mating season!! If we had not collapsed with laughter, we may have tried to warn him that his moves were inviting trouble! Of course, the girl was very quick on the uptake, and realized there was someone behind her who didn’t know jack shit about what he was doing (or did, depending on what you think were his intentions!) and she ran, and I mean actually ran with her girl friend to the absolute other side of the floor, leaving this guy in the middle of his self-deception.
You’d think he’d learnt his lesson and would then slink into the periphery again and adhere to the “you can look but you can’t touch” policy, but no… he was persevering, demonstrating a great never-say-die attitude which may have gotten him through very crucial situations in his life, and applied it to the task at hand – “I want to dance with a hot chick”. So, right before our eyes, he proceeded towards another group of girls, waiting for his “chance” standing behind them, and suddenly grabbing them… every time they realized what he was doing and turned to look at him, it resulted in either fits of giggles and a scurry across the floor, or a disgusted expression and an almost physical push asking him to get away!
We began to feel bad for him after this happened for the fifth or sixth time, but I mean, you’ve got to admire the guy’s shamelessness! His admirable one-pointed focus on what’s got to be done – he has to tell his friends back at home that he literally “made out with a hot American girl”, carefully omitting the embarrassing parts in his “report”! We wanted to stop him, saying “Please stop humiliating yourself and us, by association”, but we couldn’t get ourselves to stop laughing, so talking coherently to him was out of the question. I also think he was drunk out of his mind, and don’t think he would remember the next morning what he subjected himself and others to! (At least not for his sake). It is important to note that this guy’s friends had disowned him sometime during the virtual orgy he was indulging in, and he was found alone later in the night, lurking around a group of girls, hoping to “get lucky”! Needless to say, he was packed off home alone 5 mins later.
I have only one thing to say after this entertaining yet harrowing (coz the image of this guy is stuck in my head!) experience – I love Bhangra and the Orange Room! :))
P.S: Pls don't crucify me for writing about this gentleman, I just couldn't keep this story "inside me" for long!!
