Bachelor Party

Every new day it dawns upon me that I will not be a bachelor anymore. The shadow of marriage looms large and it is not long before I would be stripped of the privileges I now enjoy as a single man. In my case, it is still not as bad since mine will be a love marriage. As they say, I am acquainted with the enemy :). But for people who just wake up one fine morning and realize they have been un-bachelored, I can only imagine the scene in Braveheart where Mel Gibson shouts "Freedom!! Freedom!!". Ironically even the movie name applies, Braveheart.

Making this transition from bachelorhood to martyrdom easy for us are our friends. Those faithful few who will soon join us in the chasm. They know what we will miss behind enemy lines and they try to make it up for us through a rite as ancient as earth itself. I believe the only guy who didn't get a bachelor party must have been Adam himself. After his experience, he must have had a clue how important it is. I do not wish to deconstruct this rite since almost everybody knows what transpires in it. Booze,Grooves and Boobs form an essential part of it. You booze, some babe grooves and you can imagine the boobs part for yourself. But there is more to it than just this. What it represents is extremely important. It represents the difference between being a bachelor and being finished. It is cliche to say this but when you are single, you actually are free. You may be lonely, famished, disorganized, end up cooking a pathetic dinner daily wishing somebody to be there in your life. But you are free. You are free to remain unshaved for weeks, free to be dirty and unkempt, free to ogle at girls, even free to be lonely. Now that is freedom isn't it. Free to be lonely. Believe me your better half won't let you be lonely ever. Now when you are a bachelor you are free to booze as much as you want, groove to whatever music you wish with whoever you wish and free to whatever with the boobs part.However one doesn't end up using this freedom or rather abusing it. We live as meek men most of us busy in our schedules and work. We fantasize but we don't execute those fantasies. And as meek men we move from bachelorhood to being married. Whatever chances there are of realizing those wild fantasies when we are a bachelor are completely lost in marriage. A bachelor party is a chance to make at least a fraction of it all come true. It is that one night when you live like a free man, your wild fantasies sanctified by the trinity of booze, grooves and boobs. And when you do make the transition, it is one night you will always remember and you will always remember your friends who stood by you in that phase of your life. As I eagerly await the night when my friends would throw me a bachelor party, there's just one thought that crosses my mind. How pissed is my fiancee gonna be when she reads this blog?.

Fuck It !!! Let's go bowling

You'd probably know what the title of this post means if you have seen "The Big Lebowski". For the uninitiated, I would urge you to watch this awesome movie at least once. As a background, the movie revolves around a simple bum who calls himself "The Dude". His true name is Jeffery Lebowski, however he prefers being called "The Dude" simply because he considers himself to be the dude. Now "The Dude" is unemployed and has no family as such. The only people close to him are his friends Walter and Donny from the bowling place where he frequents. The plot is such that "The Dude" gets involved in the kidnapping of the mistress of another Lebowski who is stark opposite to "The Dude". His friend Walter who happens to be a Vietnam war veteran tries to help him in this enterprise. Now for Walter everything is connected to the Vietnam episode. He even relates the death of Donny to it in a hilarious climax to the movie.

So it happens that Walter badly screws the situation every time he tries to help "The Dude". But while "The Dude" is terribly upset about it, Walter is totally unaffected and says "Fuck It man, Let's go bowling". Initially when I saw the movie, I was very irritated with Walter and the way he screws everything like a dumb person. However even then these words of his and the way he says them made me laugh. Having thought about it I realized, that no matter how badly we screw anything in our life, we should also just "Fuck It and go bowling". That's what they end up doing in the movie. They actually go bowling as if to indicate that life is all about the ups and downs , about the screw ups we are responsible for. However there is no point in sulking about it. We should accept it and move on or like they said go bowling.

Now my best friends visited me a few days back. This was after a long time that the three of us were together and decided to have a ball and where else to do it than the best city in the world, New York. It was a trip we will always remember and cherish. It was almost like the city was equal to our enthusiasm and our eagerness to have all the fun that we could in a single day. And yes we eventually did go bowling. The idea then was nothing to do with the movie or about what I have mentioned above. Although in retrospect I believe each one of us was least bothered about issues that matter to us everyday. It was like in that one hour of bowling we forgot everything. Even the concept of winning. None of us was bowling to win. We were bowling to curve the ball or to try tricks with it and we thoroughly enjoyed much more than we ever had. No matter how badly we had screwed up things before in our past, how many bad choices we had made or how many sins we had committed, it was all lost in that one hour of plain and simple bowling. We were like three best friends oblivious of everything else around us. We didn't actually say it before we thought of bowling but we did mean it though in a very subconscious way.

Things are going to be different for each one of us now. The future seems uncertain as always and worse still, marriages loom in the very near of time. I am already engaged while the folks of my friends have started a search for their brides as they helplessly watch. While every other thing remains uncertain as to how life proceeds, I do believe that even if we screw things badly as Walter did, we wont worry much about it. We'll just say "Fuck It man, Let's go bowling".