Vizag Diary: Continued...

25th February, Saturday: 9:00 PM

Abhishek is a tall and moody fellow. Tirthankar is stocky and comical. Both of them work in HSBC's BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) outfit in Vizag as Assistant Managers. I'd stayed with them during my visit in Vizag.We had a plan to go to a newly opened Pub in Vizag. Two others joined us. Aditi, a Manager in HSBC and Abhishek's friend and her sister Ekta, a Manager in HSBC and has pretty eyes. I’d come to know that this unique group visits regularly TDS a.k.a Ten Downing Street, the pub. But we landed up in Chrome, the oldest between the two pubs in Vizag. Raison d’etre -some new DJ, Sanjay Datta. The pub was small and may be a tad too cozy for some of the couples over there. But the music was crap.

The girls decided to move to TDS after a drink. So we followed them in Abhishek's red, old Maruti 800 .The girls lead us in Aditi's black, sleek Opel Corsa.TDS was more spacious than Chrome and it had a small dance floor too. The pub was already geared up for the Saturday bash. We reached there at the right time. Abhishek and Tirthankar moved straight into the pub with a comfort of entering their bedroom. The ladies accompanied me. Unfortunate we were as there was no table available for us. But we managed a table by sharing with a couple. I was told that ninety percent of the people in the pub were HSBC's staff. The music was enthralling. A couple of drinks; Tirthankar, Abhishek and Ekta dashed towards the dance floor. Aditi and myself sit there for another half-an-hour. Gulped one more pitcher of beer. The beats grew louder to our ears. The intermittent flashes of disco lights slipped of from the colorful nails, bare arms and drowsy eyes. We joined the party.

Flashes of lights and beats of sounds all around. People from the rank of senior management to newly recruited fresh graduates; everyone was dancing like there would be no end. Every weekend, they come to the same place and shake their legs with the same tunes and with the same people they work through out the week. May be this way they have formed their social-language to survive in Vizag, which is a small and not-so-happening city. People from all over the country with different cultures and languages have gathered here. They are so far away from their home. In India, which is so big and diverse in cultures, one can find himself alien in other parts of the same country; and most of the people here are below thirties and for some of them its their first job; thrown into the tough and hectic professional life from the casual and fun filled college/university days. Most of them work whole night and sleep the entire day. Yet they don’t crib and refill their energy bottle to work for the entire week from the weekend.

I looked out for my gang members and I found they were busy dancing in the crowd. Then, I spotted Abhishek standing alone in a corner, letting out smokes like a steam engine from his cigarette nonchalantly. I asked him- “what happen?”. Without looking at me he said - “ So much noise around. People are trying to forget themselves and the reality under this jazzy light- so untrue yet so real for this moment”. I tried later to think about his words. What is the reality to these people? They work in a virtual environment. They speak with HSBC’s customers all over the world. Their colleagues were from different parts of India. They have their family, friends and close ones in their native place. Some of them have a family here also. In some cases, where both husband and wife work, they only meet each other in weekends. Reality is a multi-face dragon here and it’s very difficult to identify the original face of the dragon. All the faces change their position randomly.

As the night grew older, the prices of the alcohol shoot up. I was going to buy a bottle of beer, when I found Tirthankar, standing in front of a table. He was dancing and looking around for someone. I thought he was looking for us, searching. So I tried to call him. But I was wrong. To my utter shock, I saw him grabbed two chicken kebabs (deep fried, spicy boneless chicken pieces) from a plate on the table and dispatched in his mouth immediately and again joined the crowd. I wanted to emulate him, not for the food but for the beer and I ended up in a mess. I saw a half-empty beer bottle on the adjacent table.

I gathered all the courage and took a couple of sip from the bottle and then I saw a fat, grumpy face lady approaching towards me with disdain in her eyes. As the thumping sound of her feet coming nearer, I looked out for help around me and saw my friends looking elsewhere with a I-don’t-know-you-kid face. I did the best acting of my life and tried to convince the lady, that it’s a mistake on my part as I thought that was my bottle of beer. She wanted to blurt something before her husband who was not in a mood to wrangle over this petty issue, drag her out from the scene and pushed her into the crowd. “God is kind”-I whispered. Then came my brave friends and the idiots broke into laughter. I joined them too.