Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Woo - The blues

Turn and see, O winsome lass, the love that thou seek does not lie buried in distant lands, but is right here within thy keep – Ash the Confuser, first cousin of Confucius

As with bungee jumping, it’s always the first step that counts. The hardest and most challenging part of wooing women is the first step -- getting them to notice that you are an entity distinct and separate from the walls. This doesn’t, of course, make the subsequent steps any easier -- the veteran wooer has to endure hardships and pain, insult and insinuation, in his quest for amatory bliss.

Being your average warm-blooded hormone-infested low-down leech-happy flirtatious creep, I have been deeply influenced by the female half of this world. Trouble is, it hasn’t worked the other way around. I’ve bounced along from inclination to infatuation, from flattery to fixation, from obsession to adoration, from passion to preoccupation, without making so much as a dent on the female mind.There is this really cool friend of mine who ambles admirably through life with clinical élan, while I get tossed and twisted upon the rodeo horse of emotions that seems to constitute my existence. As was usual with him, he made it a point to give me sage advice upon learning of my latest amorous adventure. With the kindly sympathy accorded to one who flounders at a pursuit that is clearly above him, he spoke to me thus:

"What’s your strategy? “Strategy? "

You’ve got to have a strategy. You think you’ll be able to get a nice girl like that to stick around with a button head like you without so much as a strategy half the life you drain sitting near the computer ? " "So what should be my strategy?”"For a start, you’ve got to start saying Hi to her every time you come across her. You’ve got to do this for a week. Then all of a sudden, start ignoring her. Act as if she doesn’t exist. That’ll drive her crazy -- she’ll really want you then and will do anything to get you. "This was sound advice” but so very painful the girl whom I like tries to ignore me at all cost and probably will give alms if I start avoiding her still as the advice came from esteemed friend. I started saying Hi to the girl with dogged persistence every time I came across her on the college campus, dogged persistence being something I'm good at when it comes to these things. Only hitch was, because I trailed her like a love-crazed shadow, I came across her, to put it mildly, often. Being greeted lustily with a huge toothy grin twenty times a day by someone she didn't know from Adam seemed to unnerve her deeply. Then came ignoring time. I started ignoring her, acting as if she didn't exist. She turned out to be awfully good at this part -- she was even better at ignoring me than I was at ignoring her and adept at acting as if I didn't exist. When we passed out of college, she even went away to another country so she could ignore me better. As at date, we're still devotedly ignoring each other so I suppose she should come rushing into my arms any moment now.

Few and far between are those lucky enough to be going around, while their less fortunate brethren go around only in circles. Whenever quizzed about the secret of their success, they will smile back beatifically, draw a deep breath, mentally visit Rio de Janeiro with their beloveds, and give you that great con line that leaves you right where you were to start with: "it just happens". Recently, one of the members of our all male (surprise, surprise?) buddy gang finally acquired the ultimate status symbol -- a girlfriend. So we called a meeting to try and understand how such a situation could have come to pass on one whom, till a few months back, wallowed with us in stifling celibacy. Ensconced on a pillow in the centre of the room and invested with the halo of one who has crossed the sea of life, he prepared to reveal to us the elixir of love, while we held eager pencils to paper to take detailed notes. However, enlightenment eluded us, for, in his own words, it had "just happened". It doesn't just happen. Not, at least, to me. I mean, if I were to put my faith in such retrograde philosophy, I could sit around till the cows come home, waiting for it to happen. No sir, I'm a man of action. I believe in taking things into my own hands (those who read more into that last statement than I've written will have understood my predicament better than others). The most difficult kind to successfully woo are the refrigerators -- the ones who when told: “You are the apple of my eye, the reason for my existence, the object of my adulation; " She will say:” wish I have met you before i got commited to someone else"There was this other girl I thought I had an iron clad case with, because her birthday was a day away from mine. I would say to her, "You're born on the twenty-fourth, I on the twenty-fifth; our union, O heavenly one, is divinely ordained". But she failed to appreciate such persuasive logic; always seeming to think that laughing ludicrously in my face was the appropriate response. Delicate coincidences are not what the female mind easily grasps. I think it's fair to say that girls are about three hundred times smarter than guys. There was this lady who I was more than a little taken up with. I would try and drop subtle, but fairly obvious, hints to her like also ordering vegetable samosa whenever she did in the college canteen. She began to order vegetable samosa more often, which obliged me to do the same (those who know me will vouch that so many vegetable samosas were the source of, and not the solution to, the problem). Things reached a point and the samosas a number that convinced me that all that separated us from conjugal bliss was a nudge and a prod from my side, and nudging and prodding the lady in question presented itself to the male mind as a pristinely pleasant activity.The lady in question, of course, had had me perfectly sized up from the very beginning. She knew exactly how debauched my intentions were. So she took me aside one afternoon and, looking at me as apologetically as a doctor would at a terminally ill patient whose life support system he is about to cut off, said: "Ashraf, I'm going steady"

Astute observers of life as we know it are apt to classify the Earth's people into two kinds -- the FOTUs (fast on the uptake) and the SOTUs (slow on the uptake). I, however, at delicate moments like the one above, am seized by a slowness of mind that would put the most lethargic of SOTUs to shame -- thus proving my allegiance to a third category, the NUTs (never uptake). I chose, therefore, at this point, to say :"Going steady? That's nice. It's been pretty smooth sailing for me too, so far. Actually I'm getting along pretty steadily, if you ask me. Steady as a rock. We should open up like this to each other more often", and, for effect, I added "heh, heh!"She gaped at me, temper rising -- girls, when they're telling you to get off the bus, are not the embodiments of patience and coyness they're made out to be -- and said, "You're a real #$@#%@#$%#$%@%$%%$%, aren't you? I've found this guy, I really like him, I want to have his children, I want to settle down on Robinson Crusoe Island with him, and you know what the best part is? He's not you! " Since that day no samosa of any sort was included in my appetite.

However, things can always get worse. I was with this girl who had caught my fancy and summoning the kind of courage that wiser folks would prefer to call brazen stupidity, I said:” I like you" "I like you too", she said, as I gathered myself back up on the chair, having fallen off the second she said "like". Now this was new. I was stumped. She hadn't stared at me coldly and said "Are you crazy? You and I? Look, control yourself". She hadn't doubled over laughing either. What's more, she hadn't run away deciding on her way out to review the whole basis of our friendship. She’d actually said that she liked me. The thing to do, of course, was to elope that instant before wiser counsel prevailed on her. Or at least to extract a promise to see a movie together the next week. Instead she made a statement that I have since learnt never to trust or rely on.” I’ll call you next Thursday", she said. Well, sometimes your lucky day does dawn. A day on which, as you sit alone and contemplate the floor, a voice you know belongs to the pretty girl you've been eyeing lately says: "Ashraf!" Say nothing. Never does to be overenthusiastic. There could be another Ashraf around. What the heck even my dad looks younger than me, it can be anyone… a foe within my family too "Ashraf!"

This is serious. She's really fast. Have to play cool. Have to fight the temptation to jump up screaming, “Yes, darling, yes, you've finally noticed, I'm here, I love you, I'll always love you" etc. "Ashraf!" All right, don't panic. She's in heat. Turn slowly and look at her as if disturbed while in deep concentration over theory of bond pricing. "Ashraf, may can you give my pen back ?” And you know why you'll never make it first run -- because you'll never get admitted into the stadium

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