The details are getting a bit hazy now. It is going to be a year soon. I am talking about my travelogue. So let me resume my Exchange Escapades, lest they become a distant memory which I am able to recall no more, except with the blurry wistfulness with which one remembers the best times of one’s life.
Yes, I do remember them like that. I also remember them as being trying and taxing; one of the most life-changing phases in my life. But like I had said once - more on my personal life in my autobiography.
So here we were. Back in Brest after our first trip to Austria, Southern Germany and Slovakia. We had made some friends and went out partying with them. At least I did. With these two Indian women - the Ruchis - for what can be described as a ‘girls’ night out’ in Yankee parlance. We went pubbing and I decided to throw caution to the winds. When was I going to get the chance to get absolutely mind-blowingly-deliciously-debauched, in a place where no one recognized me?
A disc in forenland is a place to hook up. I had a ball, dancing like a lunatic on jail-break.
It was crazy, wild. More than alcohol, it was the thought that I could do whatever I wished that intoxicated me. Although I realized during the course of the night that social conditioning is stronger than one assumes it to be. I could not cross the line. I realized I didn’t want to.
Towards the end, I got strangely depressed. None of those people I had danced with, or spoken to would remember me beyond the stupor of their hangovers. I would not remember them either. Where were the people who really mattered?
Lately I have realized that your adolescent notion of invincibility is actually something else. It is part-fear-part-denial. One grows up.
Hey - do you believe in rock ‘n roll,
Tell me, can it save your mortal soul,
..And can you teach me how to dance real slow?
1 comment:
had a similar feeling sometime back here in London
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