Page 16 of One Indian Girl
‘Not allowed, not allowed,’ Jyoti said.
‘You were at Club Cubana. What happened?’ Shruti said to Akhil, Brijesh’s maternal cousin.
‘Nothing. We had a few drinks. Then we thought, when we have the most beautiful girls in Goa partying alone, what are we doing here?’ Akhil said.
Shruti blushed. Even though the girls protested at the boys coming here, they secretly liked it. This is how we girls are. At times we want to be wanted, even when we deny it. My bachelorette wasn’t really a singles’ party now. However, I was too drunk to care.
‘You look too beautiful,’ Brijesh said. The DJ switched to Honey Singh’s Blue eyes, a slow couples-only type song, possibly to get drunk single men off the floor.
‘Obviously you have had too much to drink,’ I said. Nobody could find me ‘too beautiful’ otherwise.
‘Well, I have had a few. But I always find you really beautiful,’ Brijesh said.
Sweet, I thought. The tequila in me gave him a hug.
‘I messaged you,’ Brijesh said, ‘several times.’
‘You did? Oh, where’s my phone? I don’t even know where my phone is.’
‘I wanted to check if you would be okay if we come. I tried to stop the boys.’
‘It’s okay. The idea is to have fun. All this segregation is not to be taken seriously,’ I said.
‘Nice music,’ he said.
‘You want to dance?’ I said.
‘I am not much of a dancer,’ Brijesh said.
‘Neither am I,’ I said.
I held his shoulders as we swayed gently to Blue eyes. The girls went into an ‘aww’ and ‘how sweet’ overdrive.
See, I can be a ‘good’ girl.Am I not trying to be a good girl?I told mini-me, my personal chatterbox and eternal critic. Mini-me, however, had slept off. Alcohol does this to her. I guess that is why most people drink anyway. To shut up their inner critic. So they can do whatever the hell they want.
‘Ouch, Brijesh, you are stepping on my toes,’ I said.
4
It was 4 in the afternoon. Everyone who’d partied last night had a hangover. We had come back to the hotel at 6 in the morning and gone straight for breakfast. I remembered sitting with my mother and ordering pancakes. I couldn’t eat much, as I kept dozing off.
‘Wake up. This is so wrong, what you did. Brijesh’s parents will think what an uncultured and irresponsible girl they are getting. Who drinks like this?’ my mother had said, shaking me non-stop.
‘Even their son did. In fact, he puked and passed out at the club,’ I’d said.
‘He’s a boy.’
Even in my exhausted, hungover and sleepy state, my feminist antennae were up. I stared at my mother.
‘So what if he is a boy?’ I said. Clearly, the alcohol-induced confidence had not left me.
‘Eat quickly. Get some rest. There are bhajans today. Please wear something decent. Why do you youngsters have to do such parties the night before bhajans?’
‘Why do you oldies have to do bhajans the day after our party?’
‘Just because you have started to make money you will say anything?’
I had kept quiet. I didn’t mention that this uncultured and irresponsible daughter of theirs was paying for her own wedding. One crore rupees, or 150,000 dollars, wired from my salary account as the wedding budget. Did she even care?
