Just a Bachelor Boy

After watching movies like Delhi Belly and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara I could not resist harking back to my carefree bachelor days.

As unattached males, my friends and I had a two track mind. Girls and evenings out. All other responsibilities were blanked out. Today, the confidence of age allows me to carry on an unfettered conversation with members of the fairer sex. However, in my teens and later I was rather tongue-tied when asked to speak to a girl.

As Joint Secretary of the students’ union at my engineering college in Surathkal I had the pleasant (my erroneous presumption) of escorting a bus load of girls back to Mangalore after our inter-collegiate cultural fest. Apart from the driver I was the only male occupant of the vehicle. Ragging is a mild word to describe what I underwent during that 20 km journey. My classmates envied my luck. Pride did not allow me to correct that mistaken view.

Later in Mysore I had this gang that behaved like heroes but turned in to zeroes in front of damsels. My friend’s sister had these attractive classmates whom we all eyed. Sadly, none of us had the guts to approach them directly. Using subterfuge, we mooted the idea of a table tennis match and Antakshari as an ice breaker. Unfortunately, one of the girls was a university player and we ended up with egg on our face. We also realized that girls are more clued on to film songs than boys.

After college I joined a leading advertising agency in Bangalore. As luck would have it our office was bang opposite Mount Carmel college on Palace Road. I soon discovered that the students sat on the compound wall of the college during lunch time and harangued passersby. Around this time the movie ‘Bobby’ was released. I persuaded my father to buy me a yellow Rajdoot motorcycle just like the one Rishi Kapoor rode in the film. By this time I used to smoke cigarillos and then graduated to a stylish pipe.

Every afternoon I would vroom up and down Palace Road with a pipe in my mouth and sporting Ray Ban Aviators. The college students would shout out ‘Bobby’ whenever I passed by. One day I saw a friend coming from the opposite direction and I shouted out ‘Hi’ to him. Unfortunately when I opened my mouth the pipe fell off and was smashed to smithereens on the road. The next one week I took a side road unable to face the laughter of the girls.

Evenings would generally be spent at Koshy’s on Brigade Road. That was also the only place where one could get an eclectic combination of vada sambar and beer, while listening to music on the jukebox.

Today, sitting on my La-Z-Boy I recalled the words of Mary Hopkins’ hit song, “Those were the days my friend we thought they’d never end….”