Shoreleave

"Hey dude ! You must go out tonight...at any cost."
"Really, you must...The fish are sure biting today" I said before relieving my collegue off his watch.
"What do you mean ?" he asked .
"I mean , " I said , "Today the fish are biting (wink wink).
The bait seems to be in great form.
The chum bucket's attracting a lot of maneaters today, if you know what I mean " (wink wink.)

Unfortunately my collegue wasn't in any mood for fishy euphemisms.He just wanted to sleep after a long day's work.

"Rest ?
My friend ...plenty rest at sea my friend...
you go out my friend , no go out- no good ah friend..." I began irritating him with my faux-pig english.

"Then explain ....I dont get these fish and chum bucket metaphors of yours"

"Er. it's an euphemism , but anyways, as I was saying , the fish are really biting today..."

"Oh! shut up with your fish and bait and stinking english lessons and tell me what bloody happened ..." said my colleague , clearly exasperated, but I was floating , light as a helium balloon , to notice any of it.

"Ok , Ok ...enough with the fish....let me get straight to the beef...
hey aren't you a vegetarian ?
Sorry  my bad...Sheesh, aren't you being a grouch!"

"You gotta believe me"
I said  "Today the girls out there were all over me .One of the girls even shouted that I was very handsome...and you know what I did? I said thank you , and she ran away in emabarrassment and then I ...."

"Ahem ! Pardon me for being incredulous, but aren't you carrying things too far ?" my weary colleague asked me...

"No , You gotta believe me" I began protesting "I've got proof" I tried to shout before he left , already out of earshot.

Miffed , I thought...Why not write about it.
After all these suckers buy anything from flying saucers to talking chimps...

 Bontang.
I had come to this city  nearly after 2 years.
Progress had made some changes in Bontang.

As in any small town , progress is measured by the number of malls you have.

Bontang had  a new mall.

Ramayana.

It was a ridiculous name for a mall.

Ask any Indian about Ramayana and he will tell you that it is an epic saga , the adi-kavya written by maharshi Valmiki, a verse made of a hundred thousand lines telling you the story of King Rama, his wife Sita who was kidnapped by Ravana, the king of Lanka (present day Sri Lanka) , in a way Shakespeare never could.

If only we could appreciate sanskrit.

But that made no difference to Bontangians.(Is it ok if I call you Bontangians , Bontangians ?)

They were all gushing about how Ramayana , the indonesian chain of hypermarkets,had taken so long to arrive , making all their waiting so satisfactory .
(Newsflash :As you read this , we have reports that Bontang Plaza , Bontang'sonly other mall had a mysterious fire that burned it down yesterday...rumors are that it was all a sinister plan to eliminate competition !)

Except the addition of Ramayana, Bontang as a city largely remained unchanged.
It was still a beautiful little idyllic town by the sea, covered by palm trees and lush coastal greenery, long winding roads ,quaint nostalgic huts and houses,  scenic locales et al.
All of it remained pretty much the same.

Then I realized the most obvious change.It was the women.
Suddenly women started looking more beautiful.Much more than two years ago.

To get to  Bontang , we usually rent a bike , along with the driver .For about 10 $ we get  a driver  who has reasonable command over english  and he will take us out into the city and take us back to the jetty .Safely.

It was the same city I had come to love after frequent trysts.

But I had a mission to accomplish that day.I had to buy some new T-shirts after my old ones got accidentally bleached with the wrong kind of detergent.(its a really long and boring story , so let me not go off tangent now)

On the way we to the city , we stopped briefly at a small store nearby.On the other side there was a house with an open window.There she was.The most beautiful girl I had seen in a long long time.

And she was staring at me.

I could feel the heat of her eyes boring holes in the back of my skull.

I ran through my mental checklist specially created when people stare at me.
(Happens more often than you think)

1) Zipper zipped .Check
2)Toilet paper  not stuck to shoes.Check.
3)No weird shit on my clothes.Check
4)Not wearing my  clothes the wrong way.Check.
5)Finally .Zipper zipped.Check.

Yup.I was ok.Nothing weird about me at all.

So I tried to return her gaze, but there was an intensity in her eyes that I simply couldn't match.
I couldn't look back at her. It was too intense , like the glaring sun , that I could only look at her for a few seconds before looking away.

I have to confess.I have a lot of catching up to do with my balls.I simply could not stare her down that day.

Shaken and soul stirred , I left for the city.

I asked my driver to take me to Ramayana, the mall everyone was ga-ga over.

It was in Ramayana where truth began to get stranger than fiction.

Ever seen how a crowd reacts to a celebrity ?
Me neither...

But as soon as I enetered , the security guards bowed .That never happened before.
Never happened two years ago either.
And the girls...some of them stopped dead on their tracks...started staring and then moved away...some of them smiled, coyly and walked away...weird stuff that didn't make sense.
          Then going against the grain , I tried to chat up with the girls...
bad mistake...
At one time , there were 6-10 girls around me , none that spoke english , trying to talk to me ,trying to  translate , and giggling raucously...and soon men started coming in to see what the fuss was all about and then had  a look at me and would simply walk off shaking their heads.

It was weird when I tried out some T-shirts.Some one would occasionally try to peek in.And once out wearing the T-shirt, they would say how good I looked in the T-shirt.
What a load of crap.I didn't like most of the T-shirts there.

However the weirdest thing to happen was when a cute compere (with above average command over english) started calling us.
"You sir ...
Yes Sir , You ...what song would you like , and who do you want to dedicate it to  ?"

"Er...1973, James Blunt ...to myself..."

"So sir ,  don't you have a girlfriend  you want to dedicate it to ?"

"Ok ,in that case,  You're Beautiful , James Blunt ....and I dedicate it to you " I said with my best cocky bastard smile.

Oh man , what a power trip it is to make a woman blush !

Of course , she turned off her mike , inched closer and started asking me questions.

Yes.I was a foreigner.
Yes.I was an Indian.Like sharukh khan.
No.I didn't know Sharuck khan personally.I wasn't related to him either.
No .I didn't think she looked like Rani Mukerjee.
No.She looked more like Rasnavati.* ( * name changed to protect identity )

(that was her name and as soon as I uttered this,  the rest of the gang of girls started going ape-shit about how I knew her name.It wasn't apparent to them that I was literate enough  to read her name tag which was in english)

And Thank you for letting me know that you are free after Ten PM.
No , I'd have to be  back onboard by six.   
Bummer !

So before I left , I asked her an opinion about the T-shirt I was about to buy.
She said she didn't like it.I liked it though.
So I bought it anyway and left Ramayana feeling giddy.

I rationalized that all that attention was because she was a store employee(after all) and I was a customer she was trying make comfortable.
But then , when I went to another store I got the same results.Even the store owner for some reason bowed after I had just bought a only a  cheap T-shirt.
Must've been a slow day, Huh !

I contemplated these events for a long time.
Then I stumbled on to something that helped me understand what had happened.

Here are its contents.
'
I know three guys who all of a sudden went from unpopular nerds to superpopular he-men studs with adoring women
following their every footstep in a matter of months. Here is what happened to them:

Example 1:
Wilson was a skinny bespectacled computer programming student. He was a loner, and in his entire life
he had never had a girlfriend. He went to Phoenix, Arizona to do a co-op for Tetrasoft, a wealthy software corporation--
not knowing that at Tetrasoft, one in five employees is a millionaire due to company stock options. Suddenly Wilson
found himself surrounded by starry-eyed Phoenix girls, flirting with him and offering themselves to him at every
opportunity. They took him to nightclubs. They invited him to parties. He was never without a date, or a night's sleeping
partner.
Despite the beauty of some of the women, Wilson eventually became dissatisfied with the women because all of
the female prospects seemed to “lack substance.” He began to believe that all of them were only interested in his money.
Wilson returned to college in California after the co-op and continued his nerdish life. He described the co-op in
Phoenix as like being treated like a king for six months. He said, “They're in love. A girl in Phoenix is just like any other girl falling in love. Why did they fall in love with me? I just happened to be a popular stereotype.”

Example 2:
Michael was an unpopular underweight Caucasian from New Zealand who described himself as looking like a
chicken embryo with an Adam's apple and glasses. He visited Japan, not knowing that in some places in Japan, everyone with blond hair and blue eyes is a fantasy object for women with romantic fantasies about Westerners. At Otaru college in Hokkaido, Japanese women went crazy for Michael, and he slept with many Japanese women for about a year until he contracted a venereal disease, and his days as a stud abruptly ended.

Example 3:
Geoffrey was a middle aged goofy guy with low self esteem who joined the Navy as an electrician, He was not a
classy person, and he couldn't tell the difference between a high priced steak, and a local greaseburger. Nor was he
athletic-- he was overweight and perspired continuously. But he visited the Philippines, where American dollars have 40
times the buying power of Philippine currency. Like Wilson and Michael, Geoffrey became a kind of overnight celebrity;
he became a popular fantasy object for love-starved Filipino women. Being in the Philippines really boosted
Geoffrey’s self esteem. But when Geoffrey returned to his home country he was just an ordinary guy again, and had no
luck with women.

The common theme to all three stories is that they were ordinary unpopular guys. They each did nothing to
enhance themselves, but in spite of this they were surrounded by adoring women. Girls fell in love with them because
Wilson, Michael, and Geoffrey accidentally stumbled into situations where they fulfilled a glamorous popular
stereotype. '

I could've been any of the stereotype, I rationalized.So I decided on not posting this originally.

I hate being a stereotype.I also hate being branded a liar ,so I decided not to post anything about it until I knew for sure what had happened and I would post only if I could repeat the results .

A  week later , we went out in Yosu, Korea.Yosu was freezing now.My friend and colleague wanted to buy some hair dye(he is greying at the tender age of 20) .As we were roaming aimlessly searching for a english speaking salon , we spotted a group of girls staring at us.
I gave my usual 'cocky bastard ' smile and my colleague waved.
Something weird happened.
They started screaming in a way I'd seen girls scream when they see their favourite celebrities.
We were dumbstruck.
"That's never happened to me before ! " said my bewildered colleague.
"yeah , me neither " I said rolling my eyes.

And something more crazy happened.
The girls began following us.
"Fuck , I think we're being followed"
"Yeah , lets just play it cool and walk along..."
"No , lets stop and chat them up ..."
And then we turned around and began chasing them.
Ha Ha , the hunter became the hunted ...

Seeing us chasing , the girls ducked into a nearby building.It was a gaming parlour.We went in the gaming parlour with all guns blazing...only to find it overcrowded and the girls hopelessly lost in the sea of semi-sopoforic gamers.
Tired by all the excitement  and badly timebound, we just came out and continued our aimless journey.

But At the end of it all ,It felt good.
Really good.

What was great was I had a repeat result in a completely different situation with different variables and value systems, and It felt really good.

I realized that seduction is a game of logistics.Location, time, social value, attraction all have to add upfor an opportunity to present itself.
Even with one element missing , it all gives way , like a pack of cards.We realised that after we lost the girls in the gaming parlour and had no time to search for them.

Severely constrained by time , we stopped horsing around and came to do what we originaly intended to do.But finally  we ended up visiting an ancient buddhist monastery instead of getting his hair dye.So much for logistics.
We both were high that day.He was constantly telling me how this had never happened before and how good it felt...

"Man ," I said to him"I love Shoreleave.Lets do it again next time....only it'll be better than before. I promise "

And all he could say was "This has never happened to me before"
"Me neither...me neither" was all I could say.