I met my dear friend Chitradeep Chetty the other day at a local pub. A few of our friends and Chitradeep and I had gone out to catch up on the latest happenings, since I hadn’t met Chitradeep for a long time. Chitradeep is a lot of fun to talk to, and the amount of sophistication he brings to a conversation increases directly with the amount he’s had to drink, so it is always a good idea to meet him in a pub.

Chitradeep before drinking:
“…and the brownfield project we implement is done using J2EE and WebServices backend talking to ruby on rails running on 8080…”

Chitradeep after 4 mugs of beer:
“…these bloody politicians I tell you… They should all *hic* lock up the *hic* ….err….. lock up the … hmmm …. *hic* … What was I talking about?”

Chitradeep after 8 mugs of beer:
“…and the cockroaches are going to invade our living rooms, so we should buy flat screen TVs to prevent the movie box office collection! HIP HIP HURRAY!!!”

And so, soon enough, Chitradeep had sufficient amounts of alcohol in his blood stream, and we were having this very interesting discussion where he was telling me why it is a good idea for NASA to run a space shuttle on AA batteries when something else caught his attention. I noticed he was distractedly looking over my shoulder. I turned around and saw the dance floor – and a beautiful girl dancing there who had obviously caught Chitradeep’s attention. Chitradeep was always the guy to take action, and the several beers he had consumed definitely helped lift his spirits. He excused himself, got up from our table, and started heading straight to the direction of the dance floor. I was wondering if it was a good idea to let Chitradeep talk to a girl in this state, but Chitradeep had an air of confidence about him. It seemed like he had learnt some new secret moves, and nothing in this world was going to stop him. A dude brimming with so much confidence should not be stopped. If nothing, it’d be great entertainment for the rest of us.

And so, we watched Chitradeep as he made way to the dance floor. He walked up straight to the cute girl, and much to our shock (and consternation), started dancing.

For those of you that don’t know Chitradeep, his dancing skills are approximately the same as that of a banyan tree. But when he started dancing today, it was something else altogether. His new dancing style can best be described as a hybrid between a traffic police and a scared chicken. He raised one arm, made a stop signal, jumped and turned 180-degrees, and then raised his other arm, bringing both arms above his head, and hopped two steps like a frog. In this short sequence he managed to get the attention of the DJ, who skipped a beat or two in the utter shock of seeing a maneuver like that on his dance floor. But Chitradeep wasn’t done yet. He then swung his right arm round and round (while holding his left hand still) like a fast bowler whose action had gotten stuck, and, moments later, started swinging his left arm in the same round-and-round motion as well. He did a variety of such inexplicable actions, that the rest of the crowd actually stopped and started watching his antics. It was clear to to the crowd that this dude was either a sheer genius or a sheer idiot, and either way, they had stopped in their tracks and were watching this spectacle with great interest.

And then the most shocking thing happened – the cute girl that Chitradeep was after found the whole dance routine incredibly amusing, and came over and started talking to Chitradeep! Man! I can’t believe his luck! How could the cute girl have liked his monkey-mating-dance routine? Anyway, Chitradeep talked briefly to the girl, and then returned to our table with a greatly satisfied look on his face.

Me: “Man! I have no idea how that worked!!!”
Chitradeep: “Naa… She’s not my type!”
Me: “Why? What happened?!?”
Chitradeep: “While I was on that dance floor, I had a great moment of inspiration – A moment of deep awakening! I have discovered the true purpose in my life!”
Me: “From that monkey dance?”
Chitradeep: “YES! I’m going to go and help the tigers! They were calling to me while I was dancing there.”
Me: “Dude, that was the crowd laughing at you!”

I’ve heard of stories of strange things happening on the dance floor, but this was the first time I heard someone having a enlightenment-type moment! I tried to tell him that it was the beer that was speaking, but nothing I said could change his opinion. In a moment of (apparent) awakening, Chitradeep had decided that the tigers of the world needed him more than cute girls did, and he was going to go and stay in the jungles to help save the tigers from extinction. Well! That was the end of that!

On an unrelated note, another friend of mine is taking a break from work to go and live in a reserve forest to see if he can help do anything for the tigers. Here’s wishing him (and the tigers) best of luck!

Bookmark To: