A Mid-November night's tale

It was a cold November night. The air had a strange stillness about it. The streets were deserted. A gloomy fog hung over the city of Kolkata, lit only by the pale, yellow street lights. Far away, a clock tower struck eleven. A beggar lying on the pavement adjusted his tattered blanket and mumbled in his sleep.

A car screeched to a halt. The two men inside looked at each other. A quick glance at the building and they both knew what to do. The man at the steering wheel looked again to his left, as if looking for a confirmation. The other man, the sinister looking guy with rimless glasses and a clean shaven face, nodded his assent. “Make the call,” he said.

The driver flipped out his cell phone and dialled the number.

The phone kept on my bedside table rang with the customary Sholay ring-tone. I groped around in the dark for the phone and my fingers somehow found the answer button.

“Hello,” I said in my half sleepy voice.

“KAMEENE !! So raha tha ? Get up, we’ve to go for Rajat’s bachelor party,” Pramod screamed into my ears.

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This was how my true and trusted friends Pramod and Varun dragged me out of bed last night to go to Shisha – The Hookah Bar on Camac Street. Our friend Rajat, a nice guy who has a wonderful knack of inventing embarrassing situations for himself, is getting married this Sunday and yesterday was the bachelor party.

Now before the young studs of Kolkata, who reached this page by entering the search words “Kolkata bachelor’s party” in the hope of finding leads to strippers, get their hopes high, let me warn you that I’m a very decent sorta fellow who comes from a conventional Gujju family: my idea of a nice evening is sipping hot tea and eating spicy ‘theplas’ which Mom prepares. In other words, our night-out yesterday was all about drinking Bacardi Breezer (“lime flavour please”) and a couple of glasses of vodka with Coke, nothing more.

Oh yes of course, the girls were there. And very pretty too. And they looked extremely graceful when they danced away to dance tracks from Rihanna, Nelly Furtado and the Hindi film hits. Problem is I’m someone with two left feet; the best dance move that I’ve ever managed is when I copied Chandler’s dance style when he found out that he was the best sex Monica ever had.

All in all, it was a nice, fun evening. What was even better was that after the party got over, I went over to a pal’s place and just sat and had a long chat with him. It was nice to finally catch up with him; he’s a childhood friend from school and we’d not been getting to meet up at all in the last couple of months.

And oh yes, before I complete the post, let me ask you to comment on whether you think I could ever write a suspense novel, basing your judgement on the first couple of paragraphs of this post. ;)