When dawn is nowhere in sight..

It is 4:45 in the morning and I entered my house some half an hour back. As I sit on my laptop and think about the last six hours, I realize that I shouldn’t have gone out last night. What I saw makes me wonder is it that only this country (UK) is going to the dogs, or is it that the world in general is losing touch with its humane side? I fear it is the latter.

There was a bollywood night in one of the clubs on Saturday. Now being the desi that I am, I love bollywood songs, and it had been ages since I had been to a club which played bolly music. So I made a plan with some of my friends (they are more acquaintances than friends) to go there. We all met up at a metro station (there were 4 guys and 1 girl) and then walked to this club. When we reached there, we saw that most of the people in the queue were brit-born Indians. Now I know I am being very narrow minded, but I really can’t stand Indians speaking in a non-Indian accent. The group of girls standing just behind us were clearly UK-born, were completely drunk, indulging in stupid kiddish acts and were using words like ‘darling’ and ‘honey’ to address each other. Add to that the British accent. Now that pissed all of us off no ends and we decided to leave without even entering the club. That is one of the main reasons I hate to stay in this country. Everyone seems so fake, shallow and sophomoric.

Anyhow, from there we tried looking for another place where we could just have a few drinks, but unfortunately even after an hour of wandering here and there, we couldn’t really find anything. So two of the guys left as they had some prior engagements the next morning. That reduced the group to a girl, a guy and your truly. All three of us were pretty hungry, so we went to a pizza place and had something to eat and had a couple of glasses of wine. After that, we tried looking for some other bars but almost everything had closed down as it was beyond 2 at night. So we went to a 24-hrs convenience store, bought a bottle of red wine and decided to go to the girl’s house to have it. Her house was a 5 mins walk from the store and we thought it would be a good idea to go there and drink. We reached her place, but everyone was a bit high and sleepy, so the girl and I did not drink at all and the other guy (lets call him OG for convenience) had just one glass (I anyways hate red wine). Now OG is new to London. It has hardly been a couple of weeks since he came here. The girl and I have been here for almost a year now. His house was a bit far off, and being new, he had no idea how to go back. The thing with London is that all metro trains shut down around 12 at night and start at around 6 in the morning. So if you want to travel at night, you should know which bus routes to take to your place. So OG requested the girl if he could stay there (in the living room) for a couple of more hours till the tube starts running and then he would go back to his place (I anyhow had decided that I would be going back home because I knew about the buses that go to my place). Now OG is a really nice guy and it was just a matter of two hours. He had actually presumed that the girl would have no problems, but just out of politeness, he asked her. And the girl said a flat no to his face. I was shocked. And the reason she gives – “Oh, my parents would have a problem with that!”. Yeah rrrrrrright, your parents did not have a problem when you were f***ing your ex-boyfriend in your room in the MBA school. Your parents did not have a problem when he had practically shifted into your room and the entire campus knew about it. Your parents did not have a problem when he ditched you. But NOW when a really sweet guy just wants to spend a couple of hours on the sofa in your living room sleeping and waiting for the first train the next morning, you have a problem with that. I can’t tell you how bad I felt for OG. I hate (yes, hate is the right word) such girls who use guys in every possible way (btw, I forgot to tell you that I had paid for the dinner and OG had paid for all the drinks cos madam had no money on her – how convenient no?). This girl was one example, but the sad part is I now see lots of Indian girls doing similar things. Where has your self respect disappeared I say? You want equality in all the fields, yet you don’t shy away from using guys in every possible way you can. Shame on you.

Anyhow OG found out which bus he had to take and I hope he reached home safely. While I was coming back in my bus, there was a gay guy sitting right across and a couple of straight guys and a couple of straight girls sitting next to him. All through those 40-45 minutes when I was on the bus, the straight guys and girls kept teasing the gay guy about his mannerisms. They kept imitating him, taunting him in the worst possible way, just stopping short of calling him a faggot. The gay guy also tried to get back at them, but they were 4 and he was 1. Still, he put up a brave fight. I felt sorry for him. Imitating someone (specially someone who is a fag or handicapped) is the lowest level a person can stoop to. It not only reveals your own insecurities and foolishness, it also shows that you don’t have any qualitative argument to put forth in the first place. Imitation is the tool that cowards and dumb people use to ‘win’ their arguments. I somehow restrained myself from saying ‘f*** you’ to the straight group of people, but I now wish I should have given them a piece of my mind. I have been at the receiving end of such taunts from people all through my engineering and MBA days, and I can’t tell you how much it hurts. I always put up a brave face when people commented on me, swept everything under the carpet by just smiling and laughing with them and then going back to my room and crying myself to sleep. Maybe those people never realized that their words would scar me for life, maybe they never realized what is fun for them might be causing unimaginable pain to the person who is being mocked at or maybe they just didn’t care – just like most people on this planet.

All in all, the experiences of last night showed that the world is becoming more trivial by the day. And being nice in this world is nothing but suicidal.