BOOKS
like to dance as well... As I danced with the air hostess, I kept looking at Jay and Sujata dancing in a corner. They looked like they were very much in love. My partner on the other hand had started to get frisky. She was touching my shoulders and running her hands slowly through the hair on the back of my head. She was hot, but I was being cautious. I had had many experiences where girls had come after me, just because of the family I came from. There was a certain high to being pursued but in the end it always fizzled out for me. They wanted to be with me not for who I was but for my family. The Birla surname made a difference to them that I could never understand completely...
I decided to take a quick break and head up to my room for a breather… I had just got out of the bathroom when I heard the doorbell ring... I walked over to the door and looked through the peephole. It was an Asian lady... ‘Can I help you?’ I asked her. ‘I come for you,’ she replied, now sidestepping me and walking into the room. Dressed in fishnet stockings and a miniskirt, the woman had long, flowing hair that reached down to her lower back. She wore way too much make-up and her cheeks looked like they had been painted red. Her top was a flimsy red thing that barely clung to her frame and her nails were long and pointy. She quickly made herself comfortable on the edge of my bed...
‘I think you have got the wrong room number,’ I told her, still keeping the door open. ‘You Yaaash?’ she asked. ‘Yeah, that’s my name,’ I said. ‘Then right room! You sit!’ she said with a very accented voice. It must be a joke, I thought. Was this lady a prostitute? ‘What can I do for you?’ I asked her, still taken aback that there was a lady sitting in my room who claimed to have been sent ‘for me’. ‘You, me, we boom-boom,’ she replied now, pointing to the bed...
‘Listen, I don’t want you,’ I tried explaining to the woman. She was a Filipino prostitute, and wasn’t exactly my type. Also, it was no secret in my group, I was still a virgin. The very idea of my first time being with a woman like this made me uncomfortable. ‘I take off my clothes?’ she asked, now pulling a strap off her shoulder. ‘No, no, wait,’
I wasn’t just Yash, the guy all my friends knew, the guy who went to college and bunked lectures; I was a Birla. One thing I’ve learnt about life is that though today you are here, tomorrow you may not be. I lost my entire family in a moment.
I quickly mumbled, ‘we’ll talk.’…
‘You know, your duty to your family is very important but this business is very bad. You should not do this,’ I tried to tell the lady... ‘I know! But where money come from?’ she demanded. ‘Why don’t you get a job in a store? You are beautiful, you can get any other work you want,’ I replied.
‘If I beautiful then why you no bang-bang?’ she quickly asked. I was taken aback by the question… I gave a lame excuse: ‘I’m not feeling too well.’ She put her hand on my forehead; it was cold as ice. ‘You no fever!’ she said. Pulling her hand away, I continued my explanation of what I thought she should do instead. The lecture lasted twenty minutes and, by the end of it, the woman looked like she wanted to reimburse whatever money had been paid by whomever and leave my room… Up ahead I could see Sujata and Jay sticking their heads out of a room, looking at my face. ‘What was that?’ I asked them and they quickly shut the door, laughing loudly at my expense. When I banged on the door, Sujata opened it and looked at my face sympathetically. Inside, Jaideep and Jay were on the floor laughing and throwing their hands up in the air. ‘Who did that to me?’ I demanded. ‘We were listening with our ears to your door, Guddu,’ Jaideep replied.
Totally embarrassed I turned red. ‘Guddu ne to bhaashan de ke bida kara diya usko!’ Jay shouted, still laughing at a joke that I failed to understand. ‘We thought today would be the day you lost your virginity, Yash!’ Jaideep added, clearly pouring a vat of acid on a very touchy wound...
In the end I found out that Lalit Modi had sat in Bombay and called up some people to orchestrate this whole thing. Gautam and Jaideep had been part of the prank as well and Lalit had somehow convinced my dad to join in...
Sitting in Bombay, Lalit and my dad received minuteby-minute updates. ‘ Ab woh kamre mein gayi hai. Yash usko kuch bol raha hai, yeh accha nahi hai... bhaashan se darke bhaag gayi woh.’ I could only imagine what they had been told.
Much has been talked about my bodybuilding in the media, and, while all that is okay, to me this is a way of life.