Second hand Tinder is good for you!

So I saw Tinder for the first time ever last week. Yes, that means I'm too old. :(

This is why I need to meet my single girl friends more often! I'm unable to test new technology otherwise!

Anyway, it was 11 pm and we were furiously swiping left and right on a friend's profile. I was told all about their experiences on Tinder so that I could get up-to-speed. Call it second-hand Tindering, if you like. Now here was the background given to me:

"Guys have become so spoilt for choice that they won't even meet anyone who's more than 5 km away!"
"They don't want to date anymore. It's quite to-the-point."
"This guy said no to drinks even! 'Why don't you just come over?' he asked me."

Hmm. Faith in men destroyed. So glad I got married before Tinder arrived.

Swipe left. Left. Right. Right. Left. Left. Right.

It's a match!!

There we were, all four of us, celebrating the matches with clinks of our whiskey glasses and football styled ovations.

Then the conversations started. Protests by my friend, who's account we were using, were ignored wholeheartedly. Here's a glimpse into the kind of madness we were creating with our messages.

"Come to Seven Bungalows now!!"
"You're so hot! Let's meet."
"Have I met you somewhere? You look sooooo familiar."
"Let's meet now!"
"My place? Take a rick and say Seven Bungalows."

Why were we doing this? Partly as an experiment, partly for fun. You may not believe me when I say this...not one guy agreed to meet us (or as they thought, my friend). Responses ranged from "It's quite late at night" to "Why don't we have a conversation?" to "Don't you want to get to know me better first?"

1 am and 6 pegs of whiskey (at least) down. And that's when my faith in men was restored.

(Yeah maybe some of them thought we were Mumbai Police. So what?)

Rajasthan trip - A night in the village!

13 Jan 2009 People: Alpana, Chandan, Gayatri, Vedant, Fahim.

Gadisagar lake in Jaisalmer is supposed to be beautiful and we decided to make a visit. We were deciding between taking a rickshaw or hiring bikes or cycles. We were really keen on the cycles and were trying to locate stores where we could rent some. Most of the cycles were really big and while we looked for smaller ones for Gayatri and me, we stumbled across Mr. Ghanshyam's cycle store. It's the biggest in Jaisalmer and while he doesn't give cycles on rent, he sells them to mostly local buyers. Now he told us (and we didn't know this earlier) that Jaisalmer is just 5 sq. kms. and there was absolutely no need to hire a cycle. For the trip to Gadisagar, it would be easier to take a rickshaw and travel the rest of Jaisalmer by foot.

The great part about Jaisalmer is how friendly the people are. In any store we went to, even Mr. Khatri's museum, we spent a good hour just talking to the people, learning about their customs, traditions, culture, and just generally chit-chatting. With Ghanshyam, we spoke at length about Jaisalmer, his family, our families, and so much so over a few cups of tea. We got so pally that he invited us over for dinner and the night at his home in a village 'Amar Sagar' neighboring Jaisalmer. At first, we were not sure what to make of this invitation. When you come from a big city, these things can only mean trouble. You never know what the person's intentions are and we wondered if there could be plans to rob us, drug us, or god knows what. After a lot of deliberation, adventure overcame caution and we said yes. We would go to Gadisagar and come back to the market to leave for the village with Ghanshyam.

Gadisagar had a good deal of birds - with ducks, geese and other birds. We saw an amazing eagle chase, but not what you may think! It was a flock of crows chasing an eagle. If you watch enough Discovery channel, you'll know that an eagle has the same speed as a pigeon (and so, quite the same speed as a crow as well) when it flies parallel to the ground. However, when flying downwards, the eagle's speed almost doubles that of the pigeon. We saw this in action with the eagle taking it's time and letting the crows catch up with it across the sky and then in one swoop, it would just outfly all the crows by many many meters! We were spellbound, looking at the sky for almost 15 mintues until our necks hurt!

The lone adolescent eagle

We took another rick from Gadisagar to come back to Jaisalmer and had food at Kalpana again. We were in love with this joint! Ghanshyam had meanwhile arranged for a friend's rick for us and we left for his village, Amar Sagar. He told us that he would cook mutton for us and so we obliged with buying the mutton for him since he was doing so much for us. We also bought whiskey for some pre-dinner fun and chocolates for the kids.

At Ghanshyam's place, we met his wife and kids...and I really liked his wife! I was expecting to see a mild mannered woman who wouldn't talk (like the picture of village women I had), but she handed over half the cooking work to him and made him cut half the vegetables that would go into the food. She spoke much more than I'd imagined and had a nice cleavage showing blouse! I never knew!

Yumm!

While the mutton was being cooked, we opened our whiskey and had a great time with Ghanshyam telling us stories of Jaisalmer, poetry about booze and opium that is part of folklore. I'd written a lot of them down on my cell phone, but I lost my phone when I got back to Bombay :( So unfortunately, no poetry remembered!

Ghanshyam got nicely high, and was oddly appreciative of the fact that women in the group were drinking. He later told us that we were very good people coz we were free thinkers and didn't have any ill feelings within us. I must say that my thoughts on villagers changed a lot after we met Ghanshyam and his family. Mutton cooked, we hogged. In fact, Vedant, who had sworn off non-veg food for two and a half years, totally dug in! We had a convert!

Ghanshyam's house had a ceiling only in the two bedrooms and his kitchen. The rest of the house had no roof and considering that it hardly ever rains in Jaisalmer, I guess it's okay. The rest of the house had no roof at all. One floor above, was a terrace (above the portions of the house that had a ceiling, of course) and after dinner and drinks, we went above to look at the stars and hear the silence. Ghanshyam's wife, Padmini, came to me later and asked me if the girls and guys would be sleeping separately, to ask us our comfort. Now (1) we didn't mind sleeping together at all and (2) they had just one more spare room anyway; so we obviously said it was no problem. She is just a sweetheart and said that it was her duty to ask us, and she put down four mattresses in the spare room.

Rooms in this house had no doors. The only doors were between the house and outside the house. The bedrooms had curtains for privacy. And we were loud! Thanks to lack of sleep and whiskey, we were jumping and rolling all over the room. Since Gayatri and I sleep without our bras, we took them off and kept them under our pillows. When Chandu found a red strap under his pillow, he didn't know what he was looking at and pulled it out to see what it was. And he was like "What is this doing under my pillow?!?!?!". Like lightening, Gayatri was onto him saying "Why don't u wear it, why don't u wear it??" We have pictures of Gayatri sodomising Chandu and asking him to put on her red bra, but I don't think it'd be appropriate to put it here.

Some time later, we were lying down, all exhausted with the masti. Vedant, by the way, was fast asleep and snoring as usual. From left to right, these were our positions - Vedant, Chandan, me, Gayatri, Fahim. Now since I was still not sleepy, I kept sliding my hand up Fahim's arms (over Gayatri), therefore not giving them any privacy. Eventually sick of it, Fahim got up and decided to teach me a lesson. And for the skinny man he is, man is he strong! He caught hold of me and pinned me down giving me almost no room to wiggle in. Chandu, who was getting increasingly kinky during the trip, got into the action and I was molested (no no, not literally) by the two for a good ten minutes, with Gayatri egging Fahim on with "Le usko, le, le!". Again, we have pictures that just cannot be shared. Unfortunate.

After a lot of wrestling, we were through for the night and went off to sleep. Finally. I don't know how the rest of the household got any sleep with our screams and shrieks. Or how the rest of the village must've reacted to all the racket. But I guess Indian village people treat their guests very well, coz we were not asked to shut up at any given point of time!

14 Jan 2009 People: Alpana, Chandan, Gayatri, Vedant, Fahim.

The next morning, we did the village thing to do - brushed our teeth outside the house in the open and spat the foam into nearby shrubs! Some hot tea and breakfast (leftovers from the earlier night's dinner) done, we perched ourselves outside the house and sat and talked with Ghanshyam, Padmini and their kids. Many villagers who were on their way to the town on their regular day at work, stopped by to enquire who we might be. We were introduced to every single person. Most people are sorta related and there are a lot of aunts, uncles, grandmas and other far relatives. A wrinkled old man who was one of the curious passersby, turned out to be an ex-snake charmer. Since snake charming is now illegal in India, he no longer had any snakes (I'm glad the law's working!) but he did have the famous wind instrument, the been. He played a few songs for us and went off on his way to Jaisalmer. We were having a really good morning.

Snake charmer

Ghanshyam then took us to his aunt's house for some chaas and a look at her authentic desert house. He later took us to a nearby garden and a semi-dry well which is used as a swimming pool when it's full. The pool had a lot of leaves and flowers strewn all over it and looked very dirty, but he threw a stone in it and when the layer of floral debris rippled away, the water was crystal clear! The garden had radish plants growing and we helped ourselves to some fresh radish for snacks!

Ghanshyam's aunt's house. L-R: Gayatri, Vedant, me, Fahim.

We finally left the village in an autorickshaw to get to Jaisalmer. Again, this was free, courtesy Ghanshyam. He had treated us like kings and queens! We owe a lot of thanks to him to make this trip so unique to us!

We were leaving Jaisalmer the next day and we still hadn't seen Jaisalmer fort! We kept procrastinating everyday and never really got to visit it. So we decided to make a trip and at least go around the fort once. Actually, we had seen so many forts that we didn't really want to learn any more history at this point. The Jaisalmer fort is not one I would recommend. Families that lived in the fort during the king's time have received the rights to continue to live there and it is thus not government property. So the fort is full of houses where people live, shops, restaurants and what not. It doesn't really give you the splendour and magnificence that you usually get when you see a fort. However, it must be something living in a house with that kind of architecture!

Jaisalmer fort

We'd come to an arrangement with Kalpana, the restaurant, that evening to give us a table at this terrace that they had but did not use. We would get our own alcohol and use their table, cold drinks and food. It seemed like a perfect place for a drink and a view. After we were all freshened up post the walk inside the fort, we headed to our joint. As Chandan and I sat out (The others were all in the room at the time. It involves a big story concering the loo. We better not get into details.), it started drizzling. Now like I said, it hardly ever rains in Jaisalmer, and this was amazing! It was already quite pleasant and it got even colder. We opened some whiskey and made ourselves comfortable.

This was the only night that we really got high. I dont know why, but no matter how much we had been drinking all through the trip up until now, we had never gotten drunk. Not even at Ghanshyam's place. At 0000 hrs, while we were returning back to the hotel, my phone beeped- it was our friend, Saurabh's birthday, back in Bombay! So there we were, on the road, screaming "Happy Birthday!!!" to a seemingly overwhelmed Saurabh! He eventually hung up on us when we wouldn't let him take any other calls he was getting on call waiting, and we walked on, swaying, to our hotel room!

Didn't do too much except scream and run that night. I remember Gayatri and me running through the hotel hallway into a common balcony and jumping into our balcony from there. And I remember Gayatri standing on Chandu - it was part of our cleansing ritual for we were trying to get the new kinky Chandu even kinkier! And then, I remember sleeping.