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Friendly embarrassments

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by Dr. Madhav Prabhu

Friendship day is something which reminds us of the most beautiful relationships we ever had. When amongst friends you can be yourself, you don’t need to fake, you don’t need to act, you don’t need to be embarrassed for what you are or shy to express your stupidest ideas. But there are times when friends do put us in a tight spot.

Have you ever been in a situation where you could be the odd man out? The feeling of being alone in the crowd of friends yet being the subject of the crowd, or feeling as if you were in an alien world, someplace you would never want to be.

Every person has moments to remember where his friends have put him in a tight spot and the experiences are ones we remember all our lives.

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Some of the worst outcasts in a group of friends are people who don’t drink fermented grain and fruit juice something we loosely call alcohol, usually, these individuals rely on coke or Thumbs Up for giving them an entry into the elite company of those who can consume liquor. The reason for the choice of cola coloured drinks is because, when you have a glass in your hand it feels as if you may have developed a taste for the harder once or sometimes even get away with saying that you have mixed it up.

Saying you don’t drink is embarrassing. Holding a fruit punch is even more embarrassing. There is always a friend who wants to offer you a drink, that’s only if you are a virgin with alcohol, because he wants to apparently baptize you to the religion of alcoholics. I can assure you that the love for you is over once you have converted and then you need to buy your own drink every single time.

There are also sermons on how to drink, which drink is good, how to savor the drink on your tongue before you gulp it, how to dilute it and what diluents can be used. Then there is another friend out there ready to convince you that the drink is good for the heart to a point that you would think you will have a heart attack if you do not drink. Then again if you do attempt to try it out and be a little soft you are told you are with a ladies drink and that men have separate drinks which they have to choose. Somehow I don’t understand what’s a gent’s drink and a ladies drink, both give you a kick right and once drunk where is the difference between gentlemen and a sweet lady. Somehow nobody trusts you if you don’t drink, the person who is drunk will always drive, he will never trust a person with normal sensorium to take him home, you have to sit and watch him ferry you at the edge of the two worlds with your heart in your mouth and sometimes wonder if it was better being drunk.

As if the drink is not enough a simpleton has to put up with food too, and if the poor guy is a vegetarian then all hell breaks loose. It starts from the discussion of where to go Ratnasheela or Vinayak savji, Ambica, Maratha or Bajirao, Barbeque Nation, Niyaz and all that, somewhere the vegetarian voice is lost like Manmohan Singh in Congress party, imagine if you say let’s go to Suruchi and have a gujju thali how many would still come around for the party.

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We then have categories of friends, some hardcore who will eat anything but restrict their palates only for social sanctions, some only chicken, some only mutton, some eat only rice from biryani and gravy from curry but not the meat, some who don’t eat in a non veg restaurant and some who need separate utensils for veg food. You enter the place you have smoke, flavour, and curry all over, all of it makes you feel so alien, why did I come here.

Then you are shown the menu it has only the thali system and you have the residual veg thali which looks like an orphan child in Big Bazaar in this if you are at a place like Queen’s kitchen they offer you black mutton imagine the meat first and then imagine it in black hmmmm.

The only saving grace is the egg curry, this dish is one of the most controversial ever. Some believe its non-veg others say that since the eggs are not fertilized, they are nothing but vegetable proteins. It’s actually convenience, it’s a vegetable for the vegetarians and nonveg for the other group. But here in our situation it’s more of a compromise, first its your friends saying if not mutton atleast eat egg, as if it’s out of sympathy for a malnourished pauper and many times you do indulge in a way to say that I am also eating non veg and I am fit for your company. There are requests here too like atleast take some gravy, try one piece and so on. You also get sermons on how animal proteins are important for the body and how meat had all the iron and vitamins in the world. Sometimes though you get lucky and your friends give you lots of sympathies, ayyo you are eating veg, order something more or perhaps paap you are eating veg please don’t contribute to the bill the rest of us will go Dutch, as if veg food is not food at all, as if there is no substance to it to deserve a bill.

There are picnics like Tillari, Jamboti, Pargad, Amboli etc etc where you have to carry your dal rice because your friends are going to cook chuli warcha mutton. But still it’s worth going with your friends because their company makes every morsel that much more tastier.

The perils of gentlemen don’t end here, we are scared to even more when we are to perform the most ancient art form, the dance. Most of us have two left feet as they say and shaking the body is quite some effort, but friends being friends need to take you along. They expect you to be there on the dance floor and you feel like you are a log of wood, just when you are about to go away someone will pull you back exposing your stiffness more and more. Some can perform excellently but for us, we have to find other forms like snake dance, jump dance and parade dance, actually all these are not dances but weird voluntary motor activities which at the peak of music cover up for your lack of agility. Then there are few friends who will teach you to dance or rather attempt to do that, by the time you are completely convinced you cannot dance there is a beautiful girl on the floor and you can’t afford to leave, well what happens after that is what certifies we have evolved from monkeys because the dance forms soon start mimicking our ancestors. Not going on the floor is a spoilsport and you don’t dare do that. But on the dance floor, it’s almost an alien planet on which you do a moonwalk. Then there are dress codes too, you don’t do walts in jeans and disco in formals but somehow you are stuck with the opposite dress every time your friends decide to take you for a dance. But however alien you feel in such dances they are the only ones you remember in your life as memories of days with your friends

Recently I witnessed a fancy dress competition and the theme was freedom fighters, there were lines of Jhashi ki Rani’s, Kittur Chennama’s, Tilak’s, Gandhi’s and Nehru’s but one student and his parents read it wrong, and dressed their child as a British army officer, imagine what the child went through standing amongst hordes of freedom fighters, I can imagine why the British left India. I actually felt sorry for the guy he was quite well dressed though and I remembered once such instance when I faced a similar situation, I went to the beach in formal wear and leather shoes, and it was not only me the entire group of decent gentlemen friends, we had to quit the beach looking at the expressions of the semi-nude foreigners who had made it their home, beach is not a place for well-dressed gentlemen it seems.

There must have been many such things you remember having done with your friends, memories which you can never forget, at that moment they would embarrass you just like your mother does when she thinks she is too cool to stay out from your friend’s group, but its all worth doing for the company of friends.

5 thoughts on “Friendly embarrassments”

  1. Real friends want you to join the pack irrespective of your choices, hence the coca cola and egg curry make it to the final dinner. All the examples mentioned above are so relatable. Thanks to the writer for helping us rekindle all the funny, memorable incidents spent with friends.

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  2. Oh Wow !! What a write up. Just too good. Sums it up all. I being a non – alcoholic, non- vegetarian, Maratha to the core, & hard core mutton eater, tried food at each & every restaurant & many others mentioned herein at one time or the other with family n friends. Also visited all the places like Jamboti, Pargad, Amboli, etc, on week ends, cooked on site ‘The Chulivarcha Mutton’ & the ‘Shikaricha Mutton’, encountered some very interesting situations, with some of my senior bureaucrat friends saying to me in Kannada, since I don’t drink alcohol & drink only milk “Nimma company yenu upyog illa appa. Yenu bare halu halu ashta anti, Yavaganu swalpa Alcahal nu anna appa.” Or some of my defence officer friends have to be convinced saying ,”मेरे अभि दूध के दात नहीं पडे “, create some pun & tide over the situation. And at times I am held in esteem, with friends appreciating & wondering how I have kept away. Any thanx a lot Dr. Madhav Prabhu for the lovely write-up, which most of us would relate to.

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