Be-Bop Partying

Disclaimer : Post contains Graphic Descriptions of party scenes…reader discretion advised….

Have you ever partied on a weekday? Hold on, I hear you say, who parties on weekdays? Well, to tell the truth, it’s the ones who matter who do so. The real party people do party on weekdays. And they wouldn’t be caught dead partying with the common hoi-polloi on a crowded weekend. As they say in these kind of parties, its only the hard-working salaried workers who after working their butts of all week, head like crazed to party on the weekends. The big shot salary-givers do it discreetly even during the middle of the weekday as their time is their own and they do not have to answer to anyone and can chose when they want to party. Time is the great differentiator in these things- when you know you can party when you want to, then you have truly arrived.

Leaving those preliminaries aside, I was surprised to receive a call from my designer friend Vinny, on a Tuesday night inviting me to an after party to follow the launch of his latest winter line. This was the same guy at whose pool side party a few years ago (see original post here) I made the mistake of asking an up and coming Tamil film actress, who the hell she was and how come she didn’t recognize “celebrity” me?. And when I wrote it up on my blog the next day, the post went viral on the net and I was attacked by the so-called fans of the said actress who mailed/called me a lot of threats, which I shrugged off as a minor storm in a teacup. Meanwhile I moved on to write a lot more different and interesting stuff on my blog and stopped writing on my party experiences for a long time. Till now. 

Anyway, Vinny’s parties are always a hit as the crowd is strictly top of the drawer and the whole party will be crazy fun. The parties are usually held right inside the city (ECR parties are for wannabes, the premium types rarely stray from the city centers as which cop in their right mind will try to bust one of these?) in top-of the-line night clubs, the whole of which will be reserved and cordoned off just for the invitees. There will be great music, good-looking people, plenty of exotic food and a top selection of drinks and anyone who is anyone in the party scene will kill to get an invite. So when I was invited to one of them, I took all of ten minutes to decide. To go and have a little fun. It’s been a long time, I reasoned and just one more will not tempt me back along the path to the partying lifestyle I had escaped from in the past to turn into a workaholic professional. Well as they say the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I hope that I can resist the temptation in future.

On Wednesday, I was all nervous all day, since I had been out of touch with the in-crowd for a long time and wasn’t sure of my reception in the hard partying circles. But I need not have worried. Some skills are ingrained, like riding a bicycle, and pretty soon I was partying with the cool crowd as if I had never been away from the party scene. It helped that most of the real A-listers were people I had grown up with over the years and who had genuine affection for me. They welcomed the long lost prodigal son with enthusiasm and made me relax in no time at all. Nibbling at canapés and drink in hand I was soon circulating around, dealing hi-fives and talking the talk. The secret to know in such parties (insider info coming up) is to never gorge on the food provided, however sumptuous it is. Atleast the real A-listers don’t. And if you want to be treated like one, please stay off the drinks too. It’s all fine to have drink in your hand when you circulate around networking the crowd, but it never does to get drunk. Doing so guarantees you will never make the grade to the top drawer. A drink in your hand is merely an icebreaker, to show that you are having a good time too and not be finished off in a hurry.

Of course, there are plenty of people who do drink a lot at such parties. They are what the real party people know as the bill pickers. Now if you are wondering at all these descriptions, let me explain the classification a bit. The A-listers are the real old-money people, the ones who were born in the right families, went to the right schools and made the right connections all through their lives. They don’t have to act cool, they are. The B-listers are the wannabes, the newly monied, the children of real estate developers, children of engineering/medical college owners (also calling themselves “educationists”), children of business men and hospital chain owners, children of politicians etc. In brief, anyone whose dad has newly come into money (ill-gotten wealth) and which money the children spray around on such parties (main sponsors), hoping to spend their way into the right crowd, who despise them internally, but don’t mind having them pick up the tab for such do’s. And finally the last category are the show pieces, the strictly for glamour invitees like minor actresses, models and beauty queens who are added to the party list to add oomph. They come expecting to network, pick up contacts and end up having to fob off too many people hitting on them all evening. 

To come back to the party, I was having a great time looking around, and mingling with the crowd, but couldn’t help noticing a few changes in our ancient indian “party” culture in the years I had been away. For instance, I saw a guy and a girl getting cozy in one dark corner as usual in these parties and especially because the venue (the for-alphabetically named club?) has plenty of such cozy dark corners and closed alcoves with special seating arrangement which is why its so popular as a watering hole and to come back, as the guy was hugging her and getting busy somewhere deep inside her hair (from where I was standing), the girl who was facing towards me was busy texting some other guy (maybe to pick her up later?) all the time the other guy was busy with her clothes. I mean, I have heard of serial dating/parallel dating and all…but continuous dating? At the same time? That’s a new one for me. Just shows how much I had lost touch with current events.

And of course, the usual party regulars like someone spilling a drink on their dress and everyone rushing to wipe it off (imagine a dozen hands on the front of the dress, wiping off vigorously), people spouting nonsense about their exes and to turn and see that the ex is just there standing behind listening, all kinds of regular things seen around in such parties did happen. But the one thing so out of ordinary which happened was, I didn’t stay back to close the party like I usually do, but exited at a reasonably early time (for such parties) and went home. Which was a first for me. Maybe, I really am maturing and turning into a responsible adult and family guy. Who knows? Maybe there is hope for me yet.