During my college I considered that I am out in this world to enjoy my life; my life as a single person. And soon, the people like me, who must have had some kind of similar planning like mine ended up with girl friends. With due respect to all the girls reading my write-up, I am a guy and talk very much like that so please pardon my language or rather use of language if it offends you any time. So where was I? – Yeah girl friends. Did you people notice that ‘s’ at the end of ‘girlfriends’? If you have not, please notice it because I mean many girl friends not one. Now time for respect to all the boys reading my blog, when I say having girl friends, I do not mean to have many girlfriends simultaneously (purse does not allow it right?); what I meant was the many girl friends that we encountered in your college life. Well even I was one of them. Girl-friend part was totally out of my agenda but frankly speaking I enjoyed those days too when I was associated with someone. Days went by and my count of having established girl friends got a full stop right there.
Right above was the life that I mistook as bachelor hood. College got over and I got a job. In the induction training we were bossed by the HR department people like we were some kind of stupid and they were epitome of professionalism. Going few steps ahead in my professional career I realised that every morning I go to a place where I have to spend 10 hours of my day doing something for which at the end of the month I get salary. After the 10th hour I get back to a place that has a bed and I can sleep and watch movies and then the next morning I am back to the same routine. I screwed up my body in this process too. Thanks to the excuses I came up with for not going to gym and also to my mom to whom it seems like I never have food and growing thin day by day(last time when I returned back from home I gained 10kgs and I am yet to lose them). Messages and calls to my mobile decreased. Some may take it very positively but I do not because in the 23 years of mine I have spent more than half of it far away from my family and my friends matter a lot to me. One by one very good friends of mine were diving into their life which brought for them so much of commitments that it seemed to me that someday we all become a by-product in our friend’s life and all of it is fully justified. Somewhere when I look back I know they must have the same thing to tell me. Now I have developed a customized sentiment which says nothing is permanent; and the best thing about it is that it works!
There are even days I miss being at home and lately that feeling gives me a regular visit. In absence of my mom the person who takes care of my food is the dabba wala. He gives me a dabba full of food two times a day which I don’t actually cherish eating but considering my budget and the door-to-door service he provides, which turns out to be the best choice for me. Weekends are considered to be the best time in any software engineer’s full week but for me the only time I am not bore in the weekends are when I am washing my cloths; it is just that I don’t remember to be bore at that time. Lately I have kept a maid and so I have uninterrupted boredom in my weekends. Sometimes I am reminded to clean my room but I don’t know why people don’t understand cleaning the room is never in the constitution of a bachelor. Cleaning only happens when someone from the family comes for a visit and the intensity of the cleaning depends on who is coming to visit.
The one thing that is closest to me is my mobile phone. I sometimes keep staring at my mobile expecting it to ring, and at the end of the day I take my mobile, not to call anyone but set my alarm to wake up so that I reach office on time. I sometimes wonder if it is THE AWESOME bachelorhood people talk about. Or is it like over rated and is just about feel good factor? At my new apartment I have a nice mirror in the wardrobe room. It was three weeks back; I looked at myself in that good big mirror and one big question hit my mind for which I just had no answer – “What will be the story of my bachelorhood?” May be it is the high time to create one.
My first mission towards bachelorhood – Look like a bachelor.
It was the beginning of the longest weekend that I was going to have, 3 days of raw holidays. I put a new blade on my mach-3 and gave myself a nice shave; I won’t call it a 100% shave because at the end of it my shave looked something mid way to a French beard and goatee. I shampooed my hair keeping the hair back with my forehead popping right out. Next days on I made sure I hit the gym and get into the process of shedding that extra pounds I gained and toning my muscle back to shape. I got the face cream (that now had a layer of dust over it and once suggested by a very sweet friend of mine) and applied it all over my face before bed. Now was the time for the outcome. After the three long days I went to office, and before the end of the day three girls complimented me on my new looks. Then the next day few more compliments followed and the entire week someone or the other had something good to say about my transformation (that included guys too…well not in the GAY sense of course). By the end of the week I was thinking what should I add to my style quotient? I could come up with two more things; first, I should have a bike and second I must have a dog. Office and gym are the only two places that I go regularly and both of them are within a kilometre of radius, and I have no girl friends to roam on weekends so I dropped the plane of getting a bike; and I dropped the plan of getting a dog because it would make it obvious that I do not have a girl friend. End of that week, after a real long time I had a satisfied sleep.
My second mission towards Bachelorhood – Cook like a bachelor.
I started with a question in mind – What should a bachelor know to prepare? After a good research I came with an answer – a bachelor must know to prepare an awesome bowl of Maggie and a creamy cup of coffee any time in a day. Retrospection on my current strata of knowledge, I concluded that the two things I know the best are:
1) How to boil water.
2) How to prepare boiled eggs.
Obviously I needed to work on this mission. Criterion for good Maggie for me was, it must have vegetables, must be soupy and above all must be edible. I bought carrot, capsicum, onion, tomato and French beans for vegetables; to literally make my Maggie soupy I bought the “sweet and sour vegetable” powdered soup packet; and for the edible part, I thought I must call my friend home to help me prepare it. This friend of mine, whom I called that night is a true bachelor, he knows to prepare Maggie and he also to prepare coffee. He suggested that I must get butter to fry the vegetables and to have eggs in the Maggie. But to have blobs of boiled white eggs right in between the Maggie seemed to me stupid. Then he clarified that he was not talking about boiled eggs but about scrambled eggs. He fried the vegetable in butter and also taught me how to scramble the eggs. For the Maggie part, he put the soup powder into the water and then the Maggie. After the Maggie was done he garnished the Maggie with the vegetables he prepared. In the full bachelor style, without even bothering to pour the Maggie on two separate plates, we helped ourselves with two spoons and started eating it from the utensil we prepared it and let me tell you, at that moment I felt heaven can’t be better than this.
For the ignorant guys and girls like me, do you know that coffee changes colour from dark brown to cream when you stir it well with little water; believe me it does. I saw it that night myself. We thought of ending our dinner with a hot mug of coffee. We moved around 3 kilometres walking that night to search for Nescafe classic. Why Nescafe classic? It is because it is the only coffee that meets the bachelorhood requirements and standards. If you ask me what the standards are, believe me, no bachelor knows it but it is something universal and no one questions it. I felt preparing coffee was comparatively simple. The coming days of the week I had Maggie almost all the day and a mug of hot coffee after that. By the end of the week I was confident that I have achieved my second mission. I am almost mid way to my ultimate bachelorhood.
Mission three towards Bachelorhood: Flirting!
This is one critical mission. Even though I was confident that I can flirt, I had no benchmark to determine its success. Any bachelor, no matter how lonely or immune to girls, they must know how to flirt keeping decency intact. Now to clarify, flirting is not stalking or a derogatory remark. Flirting is adulating someone for no apparent reasons (not even to impress). You praise a person to such an extent that though he/she knows that he/she is being over praised and yet enjoys it.
I was clueless how to go about it. It was around 11 PM at night when my usually dead mobile sprang to life. You remember I mentioned about a very sweet friend of mine who gave me a face cream? Yes it was her call. She is currently in US. When we both finished our common phone etiquette I flatly said – “Seems someone is looking gorgeous today” and that was enough to start. I continued adulating her and she chirpily giggled. I was grateful to my presence of mind and sense of humour without which it was almost impossible to spice up my banter for entire two hours. The end of the chat I was really happy. My happiness was not because that I successfully flirted, it was because though it was night in India and I was dead sleepy I gave a smiling start for a day to someone (It was day time in US). Though I knew I do not have any bench mark to measure it, I surely knew that I have royally completed my mission.
Final Mission: Attain the ultimate purpose of every moment in a bachelor’s life.
I always wondered if for one day I can be no one; for one day I belong to a place where I know no-body and no-body knows me; for one day I do not have to follow the society norms and just for one day I be just ‘me’ without a vale of pretence. I got a chance pretty soon.
We planned for adventure sports for a day with the office team. At the time when I got into the bus I wanted to forget everything about myself and allow myself to vibe along with the trance of that moment. To every song that was played along the journey and to every event that was organized by the adventure guru, I made sure to live every moment bit by bit. The heights of the rocks scared me and the lyrics of the songs made me emotional and I let myself be so.
The next morning at the office I came across an email that read –“If given a chance what do you want to steal from me?” I thought of asking the same thing from one good friend of mine and the reply that she gave me put a smile on my face for the entire day. She said – “I wish I could steal the way you live the moments of your life to the fullest”. I knew I have accomplished the final mission of my bachelorhood.
That day I came back a bit early from office. Obviously I was happy. Bachelorhood was no longer an over rated thing for me. This is the time which is one of the best and the prime time of anyone’s life. We tend to develop some uniqueness which is very much common in the community of bachelors. But at the same time when I look at one of my colleague who is married, and has a cute little daughter; he is all ready for some unadulterated fun. I wonder if bachelorhood is all about a mind-set or a way of life. Then he comes to me and says that he could not join us in the adventure-trip due to family commitments then I feel a bit different; as if he knows how much he may have that mind-set, he is bachelor no more. Someday I will be out of this community too, everyone does some day. I call it as a promotion in life but right now I am not in a mood to be promoted. But someday when I get married, I would write about my awesome marriage life too. But right now I am in a mood to enjoy my new looks, my bowl of Maggie with a mug of coffee, a little bit of flirting and every moment of my bachelorhood.
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