What women must know about Men's daru parties!

There was a time not very long ago, when women would wonder, with the frustration of Sunny Deol's choreographer and Sunny Leone's photographer, both combined, that what is it that draws men to drinking; what is it that men start walking like zombies as soon as a friend invites them for a drinks party. Of-course most of them have stopped wondering now, as they themselves have started indulging, thanks to the 'Liberal Women' crap. But just in case there are still some left from the almost extinct 'Sati Savitri' species, let me inform them that it's not the quality or quantity of alcohol, but the drinkers and their mannerisms, that makes these binge parties a gents-magnet. Here are a few 'characters' and their 'mannerisms' that make a Daru-party the addiction that it is:


The Bartender: Rest assure that there has never been and shall never be a certified daru-party without this one friend who assumes the role of a bartender. Nobody knows what drives this guy to do it, perhaps little moments of feeling 'being-in-charge', but be as it may, everyone in the party instantaneously trusts his knowledge of peg-measurements. Clean glasses, ice-cubes, 30 ml, 60 ml, you name it, our bartender friend juggles them perfectly. Whats more, post 4-5 rounds, when all the so-called bevdas start ROFP (rolling on the floor puking), he is the only guy still making the dreaded pegs with uncompromising precision and motherly care (as in 'Vicky Donor'). Selfless bugger this one!


The Bania: Meeting long-lost friends after an eternity? College reunion? Stopping by for a quickie (drink I mean)? Celebrating a success? Mourning a loss? The occasion doesn't matters to this guy. The only thing that occupies his mind is that he should be able to drink/eat worth the money he had contributed in arranging the party. With this man on mission, there would be plenty of cheap situations like sudden disappearance of the salted-cashews,dry chilli paneer not completing one full round of the table etc. Everybody at the party are left wishing that this guy achieves his 'no losses incurred' mission as soon as possible, making way for normalcy.


The Singer: This guy waits restlessly for such gatherings, expecting people under the alcoholic influence to lose their judgement and ask him to sing. And once he starts, there is no stopping! From Kishore Kumar to Kumar Sanu, nobody is spared. Jokes apart, he is generally a good singer. A very potent cog in the daru-party wheel! 


The Host: For most part of the party, he is not a happy man, particularly if he is married and hosting the party in his wife's absence. I mean who would be happy watching his home sweet home turn into a sty within the space of a few hours. Like a maestro overseeing a musical performance, this guy manages the entire drinking-event, conducting businesses like ordering food, preparing salad, issuing guidelines like who should not be allowed beyond a certain number of drinks and, the most important of them all, who should be sitting closest to the wash basin. I am yet to see, in my glorified career as a distinct drunk, the host being the first to go down. Never! Also, invariably, he is the one to egg people to sing or recite a shayari. The Singer's favorite this guy, not surprising is it?


The Non-Drinker: Yes! There is almost always a non-drinker in the daru-party too, silently sipping a Pepsi in the corner, shooting a video. He may or may not be threatened instructed requested by his wife/GF to return sober. Although I must say that participating in a daru-party and not drinking is not easy, one fumble and the entire bevda group would be all over the guy, coming up with wise cracks like 'Abey, Pepsi chadh gayee kya?' It doesn't ends there. If there is a scarcity of chakhna or side-dishes then this guy is asked to adjust as the underlying principle of Nashebaazi dictates that the drinkers be given the first right to food. As if putting up with all the non-sense during the course of the party isn't enough, this guy (possibly in tandem with The Host) had to do all the cleaning-up and dropping off of bodies later.


The Tanker (or so he thinks): Another regular at daru parties. Thinks optimistically that some day 'drinking' will qualify to be a category in Olympics. He challenges everyone to drink more and pulls out of the hole those who are silently skipping pegs. He is also never short of letting lose some venomous remarks on The Non-Drinker for not drinking. Goes without saying that he is also the first one to go down and become a liability for The Host. He would frequently slip into (fake) philosophical mode, touching topics like 'How to keep your wife under control', 'Total recall of the gorgeous school teachers' or 'college time crushes who are now married to someone else and already a mother of two', nothing goes under the radar of this guy. You surely would have run into this kind of guy in daru-parties, you know the one who is barely able to walk at the end but insists: "Gimme the keys, I will drive." Always charged up, like the outermost shell electron (valence electron was it?)

Sri Sri Sri Johnnie Walker ko
 barambar pranam!

The Tanker (real one): As expected, he is just the opposite of his evil twin (the other Tanker). He goes about his business, peg after peg, in a very silent and professional way. No bragging, no challenging, no trash talk, just more daru!


The Romantic: The guy in love! He urges The Singer to let out the most romantic of songs (another favorite of The Singer). Most often than not he tests others' patience (particularly the fake Tanker), with his depressing and thoughtful talks. Although sometimes his deep talks have an opposite effect, bringing out crazy statements (mostly from the fake Tanker guy) like: "You love her right? Let's go, we'll kidnap her !" However, things take an ugly turn when The Romantic, after hours of whining, resorts to watching porn.



About the author: He is a qualified drunk who has already successfully presented a white paper challenging the 'Those who drink go straight to hell' ideology. He could be reached at numerous drinking joints during the weekend and the weekdays.

A walk-back to the good old school days that you should not miss!

As a kid I always had a problem in reciting the second line of our Indian National Pledge. I would shout my lungs out during the first line 'India is my country' but would just murmur something insanely during the second line 'All Indians are my brothers and sisters'. It would be funny because I will say that part with eyes on the ground wearing a 'WTF!' expression. But, you can't blame me for that, could you? If you had hots for the girl sitting next to you (thanks to that 1Boy-1Girl sitting arrangement in my school) and the teacher, both at the same time, then one needs to really have a twisted mind to say such an offending thing. Thankfully, I wasn't a psychopath !


Talking about psychopaths, beautiful teachers and girls at school, I always wanted to ask a couple of things from people outside my circle of pervert friends. First, do you also still discuss your gorgeous school teachers sometimes over a conference call with your school-time friends? Second, do you also at times see on the Facebook, pics of gals from your school time and say to yourself with utter guilt 'Oh come-on! How can she turn out to be so beautiful! God surely doesn't exists' ? NO? Great, we are on the same page then as even I don't indulge in such things. Was just a simple inquiry. Now back to the original topic. <<Crowd Alert>>It's going to be a long article, so empty your urinary bladder and empty/fill-up your non-urinary bladders now itself. 


Of-course when we look back now, we laugh at the things which resulted in us getting punished. The teachers, true to their part, believed that punishment would instill discipline in us, perhaps leading to a better life. But if one closely monitors the life trajectory of those who got regularly caned during school days, it would be pretty evident that they aren't exactly heading any World Peace operations at the United Nations now. They are still doing almost the same things, only at a larger level! For instance, one of my friends was once punished in the 7th standard for calling another guy a cabaret dancer. Really! Is it that criminal? But surely the punishment didn't deter him an inch, as he grew up to be the most foul-mouthed guy I have ever come across.


And for all that philosophical fuss, what would the actual punishments be like?
'Write a 1000 times that I will not do such-and-such thing again', which would invariably be written by your elder sibling or parents, whoever is most jobless (by the way did any of you followed my technique of writing all the 'Is' together, followed by all the 'wills' and so on?); 
'Sit between those two gals', which again wouldn't really be a punishment unless you had set really high standards for yourself; 'Get out of the class', again I could see a bunch of silver linings in that one; 'Hold each other's ears', though looks straight out of Dostana script, but would always turn into a laughter riot. The only punishment that I dreaded was when the teachers would make a pony tail out of your hair for keeping your hair  too long. (Would never forget or forgive my Social Science teacher for that)

The pic that fooled us into thinking how
easy our future life was going to be!

Needless to say, not all teachers are devilish. No matter which school you went to, there is bound to be that one lenient teacher whose class everyone used to look forward to. More often than not, this would be your Art or Hindi teacher. I had this Arts teacher who, for three long years, just asked us to practice one drawing. 
Every week he would come and put that traditional fruits-on-a-platter picture over the blackboard and ask us to draw. If that was not enough, we would sometimes ask him to take that pic down so that we could use the butter paper to trace/outline the pic. And his pet dialogue or rather SOS dialogue was 'Why have you made this class a fish-market' !


Examination time was a time when we would always find a thousand ways to screw ourselves. Starting from preparing for the wrong subject i.e. messing up the exam schedule to forgetting to attempt a sub-part of a question, you name it! Some would even discover that there was a second page also in the question paper, but sadly after coming out of the exam hall. But for me, there was just one interesting thing happening in the exam hall and it was that who would ask for an additional sheet for the answers. Boy! That was one poisoned harpoon right into my chest. There was this one gal in our class who would ask for an additional sheet almost within 15 minutes into the exam. The gal's gesture would somehow make other students believe that either they are not doing well enough in the exam or they have mistakenly received the wrong question paper. This would almost immediately push me and my friends into a channel of distress and disbelief and we would start looking at each other as if we saw a ghost, prompting some asking for a glass of water and others an increase in the fan speed. The fact that this gal used to do this in every exam was provoking an inquiry from us. So finally one day we got hold of her answer sheet after the exam only to notice that on our 10 inches wide answer sheet she would draw not just the left margin but also a right margin. Yes, you read it right, a right margin, both 2 inches wide and to pile on our misery she would write in XXL font size. Satisfied with this sensational revelation we breathed a sigh of relief with our self-belief and pride restored.   


There are many more such incidents and characters that I can share, like that one time when one of my classmates trying to reason why he hasn't completed the summer vacation homework said (and figure this out for yourselves): 'Sir, actually I finished the entire assignment, but just one day before the school re-opened, a monkey took my notebook from my room. I chased the monkey, being a disciplined student that you know I am, but it dropped the notebook in a house. If it was some other house, I would have gone and collected it back, but Sir that house was haunted! We are forbidden to enter there'. Goes without saying, what followed that explanation was the most sickening display of a 35-year old man repeatedly jackhammer-ing an innocent and (foolishly)creative eighth grader. 


I must stop here, only for the fear that what I found enjoyable of my school-days might not really ring a bell with you. Maybe a sequel. But would love to hear of any such moments that you might have to share, I am sure there are aplenty!!


P.S. Alright, I know that I have already exceeded both, the max-readable-limit-even-for-the-most-jobless and the max-readable-limit-befitting-an-article-from-a-pathetic-blogger limits in this post, but I don't see that preventing me from mentioning one last and perhaps the most memorable incident of my school life: There was this creepy boy in our class who would lead an extremely reclusive life, wandering around with his hands always in his pockets. He really used to freak us out as even while writing, his one hand will be in the pocket. So this one time, during an exam, the most gorgeous (and the most cocky too if I may add so) teacher not just of our school but perhaps in the history of English-medium schools became suspicious of that weirdo, suspecting a cheating attempt or a possible concealment of a cheating weapon, you know with all that one-hand-in-the-pocket-even-during-writing thing. So she proceeded to frisk him and then came THE moment <cue ominous organ music> when she entered her hand in his pocket. Ladies and Gentlemen, let me have the privilege of telling you something about the high pitched shriek that followed next. Just to give you some idea, that piercing cry is still rebounding among the walls of my (now dilapidated) school. Apparently, the weirdo never used to wear any kind of underclothing and had removed his pockets from inside altogether! Goes without saying that the guy turned into a legend overnight. 


P.P.S. 'Good Riddance' are perhaps the two words you are thinking of. Notwithstanding that, let me assure that if you liked this post even a tad bit, then you would surely enjoy one of my old post on college life:Examination Fever

Examination Fever

I can safely presume that anybody reading this article must have had the misfortune of taking up exams of some kind or the other at some point in his/her life. So let’s discuss some of the typical characters that come to the fore during examination season.

The Optimist: He is like the Ravi Shastri of Indian cricket. Always sees the glass half-full even if it is fully empty. He thinks he has a Midas Touch, so whatever he picks to read will surely feature in the question paper. You should see the way he totals his score after the exam, generously awarding marks to himself left and right. Irrespective of the question asked, he answers whatever he has by-hearted, not to mention he will award himself full marks for that as well. Ever heard of a guy who disappears from the college after the result-sheet is put up and returns to hostel at midnight fully drunk? Ya, now you know whom I am talking about. Don’t you?

The Pessimist: He is like ACP Pradyuman of CID, suspicious of everything. He never feels sufficiently prepared for the exam. He is the last one to sleep on the eve of the exam and the first one to wake up, thus making him a prime candidate for screwing the exam. You should see him calculating his expected marks post-exam. It’s some sight. Even Darrell Hair didn’t scrutinize Muralitharan so much as much The Pessimist scrutinizes himself. 

The Surrenderer: He is like the Harman Baweja of modern cinema. He is so confident of his preparation (or the lack of it) that he decides a fortnight before the exams, which of the subjects he will be attempting. And even for the ones he will be attempting, he prepares only for fifty marks. Now that’s one surefooted bastard if there ever was one. The Pessimist kind of guys simply hate his guts. The guy has all the plans for the coming semesters chalked out including the back papers.

The Analyst/Stats-Guru: Which question has been repeating itself for the last five years? Which is the chapter which will not get its share of the questions as mentioned in the syllabus book? Which tutor’s notes to concentrate on? Which reference book to follow? Which teacher in the city could have designed the question paper? Which is the best Indian author for the concerned subject? He is one guy, everyone is paying a visit to, a day before the exam. Ironically, after the exam, he is also that one guy who people think should be electrocuted in public.

The John Nash: Did it ever happen to you that you are all tense on the eve of the exam, roaming around like a constipated donkey? You haven’t taken bath nor have you eaten your meal, and then you enter a guy’s room, just to discover him nonchalantly watching an episode of Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai. If you have, then you have had already confronted The John Nash. The guy’s composure will make you tear your hair out. He will be the first one to sleep on the eve of the exam and the last one to wake up, very much in the Virender Sehwag mould. Just avoid confronting him and you will be fine. (Warning: Don’t commit the folly of trying to match his genius. And if you decide to do so, then ask The Surrenderer to take out some extra time and prepare a schedule of back papers for you too.)

The Contriver: He is a true champion! Has a never-say-die attitude. Every semester sees him getting caught cheating in the exam, but he never gives up. New exam, new day and a new technique out of the repertoire. Chits in the 8-pocket cargo pants/cap/belt/shoes, chits inside the pen’s cap or mechanical pencil, a ready-made answer-sheet (Bluebook), bribing the copyist, breaking into professor’s office, hacking into the college database, writing on the palm/desk, scribbled pencil case/eraser, engraved pencil, programmable scientific calculators, data-blank watches, the list goes on. You name it and he has been caught doing that. The guy is a legend. Would do anything but study. Ever tried to counsel him into mending his ways? That would bring out the Socrates in him. I will tell you what you would have gotten in response:  ”Denial is the Keyword my friend. Never ever admit to cheating. Always remember as long as you believe in it, its not a lie. If need be, invent a plausible story and stick to it at all times during the investigation. Say it enough times with conviction and emotion till the teacher himself starts doubting what he has seen and becomes conscience-driven.“. There is no end to the get-aways that he can suggest but the poor guy when gets caught himself, starts crying uncontrollably like a high-school gal, about how this small mistake can jeopardize his and his family’s whole life.

The Social Worker: He is the Florence Nightingale of college. Pardon the loss of sexual orientation in the comparison. He is as sweet as they come, I mean the male Florence Nightangles. One-third of his time is devoted to studying and the remaining two-third in teaching others in the hostel/college. All the chicks flock to him like addicts flock to drug peddlers. Shockingly there are people like The Surrenderer and The Contriver who have their entire preparation based on that two-third of The Social Worker’s time.

The Discussant: Well, the name itself is a give-away. He is a thorn in the flesh of The Shush-er. He is the most chirpy guy outside the examination hall once the exam is over. Majority of the students lose majority of their estimated marks on their way back to college/hostel, courtesy The Discussant. Not to mention, that he will most definitely be the quietest after the results are out, often giving company to The Optimist in doing you-know-what.

The Shush-er: He is a real nerve wreck. Will shush anyone who is discussing the question paper after the exam. He will try to keep himself as distant from The Discussant as possible, after the exam is concluded. He believes, the more the question paper is discussed, the more his estimated score will come down and you can’t blame him for that, can you? It happens to all of us. Speaking about myself, I always left the examination hall thinking that I have absolutely nailed it, 100/100 you see. But by the time I reached my hostel, I would be struggling to even clear the subject, hanging on to those elusive 35 marks like grim death.

The Narada Muni: He is one irritant that you must have confronted. People hate to have him around before the exam. He will be going from person to person, one hostel-room to the other, interviewing everybody about their extent of preparation and their strategy for the day of reckoning. Of course, if questioned back, he will say: “Oh! Me? I haven’t started yet!”

The Hypocrite: His belief in existence of God grows exponentially during the exam season. He starts chanting the various Chalisas from the preparation leaves itself, replacing in memory, thesine-cosine tables that he by-hearted earlier. You know who I am talking about, right? The guy who makes that Ohm sign at the top of his answer sheet. Rings a bell?

So which category from above do you belong to? And do you have more interesting categories to share with me?

This article was first published by me on News That Matters Not. Here is the Link