For the want of a fitting title...

It’s been a long time since I entered the Den of Drums and Dreams, but for occasional peeks to ensure that my blog counter kept ticking. But then, it seemed like it’s mine own visits which dragged forth the counter. It looks like the algorithm for the blog counter read something like asunder:

If(IP of machine is different from the IP captured on the blog)
{
Increase blog counter by one
}
If(IP is the same)
{
Dekh le yaar. Lag raha hai banda thoda feel ho raha hai. Kabhi kabhi increment kar de...
}

Algorithms apart, readership is not a variable I keep a tag on, for the fact remains that it is tough to read blogs. More so for my blog, for the extra parables placed per post!

As for the topic of this post, it’s the art of flirting. And no, it’s not that the author has turned candid enough to discuss ways and means of flooring gals, for he thinks that such a phase in life is either way ahead of him, or way behind. Neither paradigm suggests any better an alternative.

People often accuse me of the lack of “an ability to express myself”. Synonyms of this accusation would mean not being able to keep up the conversation with a girl, or not being able to exchange pleasantries with a girl for more than half an hour. (Thirty minutes, my!) Further blemishes include not being able to “show off” (‘Showing Off for Dummies’ is yet to hit the stands. I promise to buy a copy as soon as it does.) These allegations get hurled at me left, right and centre, day in and day out. Further, I always owed an explanation to those who advised me round the clock, on this topic. That’s exactly what this post does. It delves into details of selected, nay, hand-picked instances when I tried “expressing” or “communicating” to girls, and their reactions to the same. The latter would explain why I even stopped making attempts, thereafter.

Disclaimer: The dumb reactions given below are those of certain girls that I felt like “communicating to”. This is never an attack on the gender as a whole. I agree that guys could be equally dumb, if not more equally. Oh yes, go ahead and include me too...

Scenario I:
First-girl-to-whom-I-felt-like-communicating: “So, what are your hobbies?”
Me: “I am the drummer of our band, at college.”
Girl-to-her-dad: “Dad, you knew this? He plays the band!! I love it when people play the band for Ganpati and for weddings, in Mumbai!”
My instant reaction (non-verbally communicated), amidst a couple (and more) of clenched fists – Lady, I play the drums, and not ‘the band’! Second, it’s not what they do at Ganpati and/or weddings. It’s what they do as part of a ‘rock band’.
I corrected her, describing that my drum-kit ain’t the portable type, and about its being a five-piece kit assembled around the drummer. I went on a step further, wandering into the stretched limits of futility, to describe the amount of left-right brain co-ordination required to bring together all four limbs. The wannabe Avril that she was, she beamed: “Oh, so you play the jazz?!” There she went again, till I told her about jazz being a genre of music, and not the name of a percussion instrument.
Girl-trying-to-move-closer-to-being-Avril: “Oh! What songs do you drum for?! Boyzone?!”
Yeah, right. If there was an Oscar for “the best musical ear”, this would have been reason enough for my contacting them to stop giving the award annually. Such people are beyond awards, believe me. Imagine my drumming to Boyzone’s “Words”! Ain’t it too awesome?! And if this does not suffice, I drum for Altaf Raja too, damn it!

Scenario II:
Second-girl-to-be-communicated-to called me up. She wanted a couple of songs for which she supposedly searched the entire Internet, and even “Google Search” did not return any results (PageRanking presumes common-sense, yes). I had asked her for her search keywords, typed it on to Google, and it’s the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button that gave me the required songs!! But the songs were in the Real Media format, and it used to be part of e-mail etiquette, to send an indirect apology, if a song was sent in Real format. I sent her this message:
“Hey. Sent you the song. It’s in Real format. I couldn’t get hold of any other.”
Quarter of a minute past, my mobile buzzed. Her reply read, “I am not particular about the song being real. I could give it a try even it were the duplicate version.”
I wondered about how she, and possibly the Flintstones, survived their era, if at all they did.

Scenario III
My granddad, being an astrologer, believes in selecting auspicious dates for routine tasks like leaving hometown for studies, etc. He had told me that the 19th of June would be a good date for me to leave hometown for the city I would do my MBA in. I messaged the girl in Scenario II, that 19th was the date suggested by granddad. Her reply, quarter of a minute later, read:
“Oh! Did he predict it??”
Yes, he did. Now the astrologer, by definition, is a travel agent plus a magician. An astrologer, who tells you that you will leave home by the 19th, while simultaneously using Godsend-ERP systems to block tickets for you on the same date. IRCTC would have done better then, to recruit astrologers!!

Quick conclusion – (case-study like!)
As Subramonia Sarma sat staring into his laptop, he could not but help noting that the clock on the taskbar read 2am. He had a couple of exams in line, a day later. Will he be able to finish the portions? Will he even collect the course material? The library had only limited copies of course material, and this was an added impediment. On the other hand, would he meet girls to write a “Scenario IV”? If so, when? If not, why? He sighed, before closing his laptop, post publishing his latest blog.