The Cow Ride

The day was like any other, all of us went out to Vasant Vihar, spent an obscene sum of money at TGIF (that place used to be nice – I swear – heard it’s closed down now..) and then headed back to my place, bottles of Vodka in tow, can’t remember why but that night we had BLUE MOON vodka with us. In retrospect 2 bottles, 5 guys, Holi the next day it should have been a normal night of drinking – but it wasn’t… We started with a couple of bottles of beer each – drinking with Dad – young men now and all that – anyway the beer drinking went on till about 11 or somewhere there and then we venue shifted to the roof where the stories of the girls and Akhil’s miserable whining about his love life or the love life of his now ex- girlfriend continued.

I started mixing the drinks and for some reason those days we used to have a “rule” the first drink has to be a shot – well not for some reason – the reason is pretty clear now – immaturity – but i think you never really appreciate a person who drinks moderately till you’ve had your fair share of miserable days with forehead splitting hangovers that last till the first drink of the next night. So the shots started and in two rounds we were through with bottle no.1 and then we had the brilliant thought, “let’s go for a walk” so off we went – 5 guys talking loudly and nicely tipsy – simpler days those – drinking was taboo no doubt but times were safer there were hardly any police vans inside residential colonies in Delhi (even a bureaucratic one like this). In our stupor and excitement we came across  a cow – a normal everyday cow – grazing along the sidewalk very peacefully. Somewhere between listening to the various accounts of how ugly “Dundee” is to what a bitch Shagun was to leave Akhil for him, Robert got bored and gave the peaceful cow the fright of her life by suddenly jumping onto her back. There’s still doubt in my mind as to whose expression was more priceless – the cow’s or Akhil’s – both aghast at the thought of a Robert astride a cow digging in his heels goading her to take flight. After a moment’s hesitation take flight she did and how!! The cow dashed for 100 metres thrashing about and all credit to COWBOY Weir for not falling off – in fact i can bet you a million whatever he can’t do it sober – that mount and the subsequent dismount were copybook – mind you the observers were as drunk as the rider. There was a lot of natural applause and of course the usual, “Why the F%&K”. The one person who was silent through all this post ride exchange was Cassy, he was sizing up the next cow and decided he too wanted to feel the wind in his turban. Never one to back down he gave that cow a chase, this one though was smarter and started to sprint as soon as it saw Cassy charge, halfway through the sprint it realised it’s size, I suppose, and turned right around to stare  Cassy in the face – it was a scene right out of a corny hindi movie – the two stared at each other and then the cow charged – man! it was hilarious to see Cassy run for his life. The “walk” continued that night and it included 100 mt dashes and conversations with obscure people on the road after which we returned to the roof and the second bottle – the second bottle was quicker to finish than the first and a lot of merry making resulted in the lawn downstairs to be peppered with digested dinner. I was carried down during the course of the evening sometime and we all made a mess of the room. The next morning being Holi we woke up pretty late were invited to house of one of Dad’s friends to celebrate – the first thing that was thrust in front of us were glasses of super strong bad tasting Bhang – the last thing you need to cure a hangover – to top it all there were these kids running around revelling in the fact that they had water cannons to drench us – till this day I hope and pray that they had a similar experience with pesky kids – the kind you want to kill for hitting you in the back with a balloon on a hot day when you are hung over cause surely they’d have grown up by now and will have a few stories of their own.