Domain Maximus

Two unfortunate incidents happened over the course of last weekend.

The entire weekend was spent with Pastrami, BhaktiBong and IntercontinentalMan over the course of a wedding reception, a movie marathon on Saturday and then finally a cocktails by the sea thingie in Juhu on Sunday of which I have very little memory.

Incident No. 1:

We run into an old friend and his paramour at the cocktail by the sea thing. We’ve run into them together once before, at an early stage in their relationship, when he was trying to charm her at the Costa Cafe in Juhu. That evening I did the honourable engineer thing by not walking up to him, interrupting their romance or crimping his mojo.

Instead I walked out, then around, then stood outside the window, her back to me, and made faces at him, mimed kissing and hugging motions and, finally, thrusting movements with my hips. It is, as I mentioned, an engineer thing.

Back by the sea this was the second time we were seeing them together. I make polite conversation with him and then she speaks to me for the first time ever:

She: “Wow Sidin. You’ve REALLY bloated up man!” Her eyebrows go up and she rolls her eyes.

I repeat: THESE ARE THE FIRST WORDS THIS WOMAN HAS EVER SPOKEN TO ME.

“You’ve REALLY bloated up man!”

There was a sizeable crowd when this transpired. Pastrami fought back laughter by downing a Kiwi Cajpiroska. BhaktiBong was already drunk and was at that time hitting on a slim, expensive looking table fan.

I briefly contemplated poking her in the eye with a cocktail sausage on stick. I was dumbstruck. I didn’t know what to say. In fact I didn’t speak for several minutes. It took me several drinks and one Oye Lucky Lucky Oye on the dancefloor to get over it.

Homework: Imagine if I had said the exact same words to her. Now where approximately, in my body, would she have disposed of the table fan? Why are women like that? Why do they even bring up the word “bloated” in normal cocktail party conversations?

Incident No. 2:

We’re driving to the Imax in Wadala to watch The Day The Earth Stood Still. There’s Pastrami, IntercontinentalMan and IntercontinentalMissus in the car. IntercontinentalMan is a batch mate of course but his wife is not. So she has plenty of questions about campus and all of our lives there and we respond with plenty of anecdotes.

At some point she decides to ask all of us about our dorm names. (Dorm names are the nicknames they give all new joinees at IIMA each year. It is a crucial part of tradition and many people stick to their dorm names for years after they graduate. Like “Vindi” Banga, I am told. Some more details on a newspaper piece I once wrote.)

Remember that we’ve been hanging out with IntercontinentalMan and the missus for a while. We’ve had a couple of dinners and so we’re not strangers by any means.

So InterconinentalMissus goes around discussing various dorm names until she comes to me. I am squirming now because I don’t particularly like mine: “Khujli”. (Don’t. Ask. Ever.)

InterconinentalMissus: So Sidin… what is your real name?

Sidin:

IMrs.: Tell na… What is it? And why is “Sidin” your dorm name?

Sidin: It isn’t.

IMrs.: “Sidin” is your real name? Not a dorm name?

Sidin: No. “Sidin” is my real name.

IMrs.: Oh…

Pastrami: CHOKE LAUGHTER CHOKE CHOKE

Homework: Do you have a normal name like Ravi, Abhishek, Omanakuttan or Bhaskaran? Go kill yourself.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Miscellany, Round and About. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.