When the Hunter became the Hunted

Over the years, I’d become used to the idea of being the one engaged in a perpetually bootless pursuit of tail. That I was not to be one of the Don Juans of the world was driven into me when I was about seventeen, and the first girl I’d ever tried to ask out gave me the raspberry (a story that merits a post of its own, surely). She spoke in no uncertain terms of what she thought of me, and went on to elaborate on the defects in my demeanour, outer crust and general appearance to all and sundry.

Therefore, if an egg (or for that matter, a bean or a crumpet) had walked up to me a couple of years ago and asked me if anybody had ever bothered to try and pick me up from a pub, I would have laughed at him. I would have asked if he were trying to mock me, and warned him with the cautionary tale of what happened to the little children who mocked the Prophet Eliza (they were eaten by bears, in case the reader was wondering).

But then, nobody ever told me there are girls, and there are girls. It’s the latter that I shall talk of today – the women who turned the hunter into the hunted.

Cut to: Northern Ireland, March 2006.

Almost a year ago, a few friends and I decided to pop in and pay Gerry Adams and his drinking mates in the IRA a short visit. After three exhausting days spent photographing IRA graffiti in Derry, Ballycastle, Giant’s causeway and Belfast, we decide to partake of the blushed hippocrene at one of the numerous taverns that dot every British (and Irish) city.

The Irish, I must hasten to add, are among the friendliest people that a chap can hope to meet. It is nigh impossible to go anywhere in Ireland without being drawn into a conversation with the locals – whether one likes it or not. So, we were not surprised when the three middle-aged people at the other end of our table began to ask us what we were doing in Belfast.

It was as one of the chaps decided that the best way to regale my German friend would be to show him pictures he’d taken of the holocaust memorial in Berlin that the lady with them began to talk with me.

She was probably in her forties, and as unlike Stifler’s mom as was humanly possible. After disposing of the preliminaries, she began to tell me about how she worked for the Revenue Service, and how her life was often very lonely and boring. I assented mutely, thinking nothing of it whatsoever. When she began to talk of how rarely she managed to get out and meet nice people, I began to grow slightly uncomfortable. A few minutes from then, I felt a hand grab my arm ever so slightly.

If life were a Shakespearean play, I would probably written, ‘Exit Hurriedly, followed by bear’ and that would have been that. But it was not, and I began to signal to my friends that now may be a good time to check some other pub out. They apparently found my discomfort highly amusing. But, thankfully, my German friend’s patience was running thin in the face of the other chappie’s almost inexhaustible pictures from Berlin, and the exit I had been fervently wishing for was executed with great finesse.

Cut to: England, September 2006.

Ryanair, as I have had cause to mention earlier in these dispatches, has this distressing habit of flying out of airports in the middle of nowhere. It was while staying the night waiting for one of these flights in a nondescript little place called Bishop’s Strotford (Ryanair called it London) that I decided to grab an ounce or two of a restorer at this quiet, little pub.

I walked into the pub, a Harry Potter held close to my chest. After asking the bartender to dispense a pint of the needful, I settled down in a cosy nook and began to read of what would indeed happen to the horcruxes. It was as I was getting to the particularly exciting bit about Ron snogging Lavender (yes, I’m an adolescent, and found parts of Harry Potter 6 to be the very best erotica I’d ever read) that I heard a voice pipe down towards me from the next table.

I turned around to espy a plump Englishwoman in her early thirties.

‘Is that a nice book?’, said she.

‘Oh, I say, yeah, rather!’, said I, trying to hide the cover of the book. I was not able to find the adult cover to HP 6, y’see.

She smiled, and relapsed into silence.

And I went back to the book. I had just begun to contemplate how generally awesome it would have been if I’d studied at a school like Hogwarts where one could snog Emma Watson in the common room for all it was worth when the voice piped up again.

‘It’s considered anti-social in this country to read books at a pub’

‘Er… I’m sorry…it’s like, I was here alone, and so I thought I’d kinda catch up with my reading. There, I’ve closed it.’, I said, rather flustered at having apparently committed a faux pas in the land of the stiff upper lip.

She continued unabated, ‘So where are you from? My name's *^^(‘

After we’d exchanged names, and I’d told her I was from India, she told me that she’d always wanted to visit India, and that it was so very mystical.

I grinned non-committaly.

‘You know, the Kama Sutra and stuff, it’s really cool’, said she.

I hummed and hawed, for the Kama Sutra and I had never been formally introduced. My Kama Sutra education was limited to a few clips of Indira Verma watched surreptitiously on a mate's mobile phone.

It was then that she spoke again.

‘So do you want to see the sea? I could take you’

‘Er…I’ve lived in coastal cities all my life, so I’ve seen more of the sea than the average beach bum. Besides, British beaches are rather chilly at this time of night, I believe’, I said. The terrible memories of Belfast had begun to rear its ugly head again.

‘Ah ok…’, she said, ‘so, where are you staying at?’

‘Er… me? I’m at this B&B called the Phoenix Lodge, right down the street.’

‘Oh… you don’t have to stay there tonight, you know.’

I couldn’t help but notice the maniacal glint in her eyes, and I must admit it scared me some.

I gulped down my drink, looked at my watch and said, ‘Oh my god! Look at the time, its almost midnight. I’ve got a really early flight on the morrow. I better rush to bed now.’

Cut to: Germany, last week

I was at one of Germany’s prettiest cities last week, enjoying the hospitality of a friend who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the best night-spots in town. It was at one of these places – which, the connoisseur may wish to note, offers the cheapest alcohol outside of Goa – that we were having a tipple. We had just ended an extremely interesting conversation with an Irish chap who seemed to have taken it upon himself to tell us his life story. It was then that we noticed this middle-aged woman who bore more than a passing resemblance to Chyna walking towards us. I observed that she was sporting a bindi.

She walked up towards me, and folded her hands in a Namaste.

Being a well-bred, young Indian boy, I folded my hands and wished her a cheery namaste. Now that I think of it, Messrs. Guinness and Jaegermeister may have been responsible for the namaste being a tad more effusive than planned.

She immediately sat down next to me, and began stroking my cheek. To say I was terrified would be an understatement. Though I was aware that a man always holds the trump card in encounters of this nature, I was also aware of the muscles that rippled within her t-shirt. I could not bring myself to contemplate what would ensue if I pushed the woman away, and therefore contented myself with little shoves accompanied by ‘Please… what’s happening?’.

She then began to sidle closer to me, and was pretty much all over me – which felt rather like having a sackful of coals thrown right at your face.

At this point, my friend decided to intervene.

‘Listen, why don’t you just go away?’, said my friend.

‘You don’t know anything about his culture. Don’t shove your oar in here; fuck off!’, said the well-muscled one.

I made a mental note to murder whichever Indian gave her the idea that it was in our culture to appreciate the act of ugly, unknown women thrusting themselves upon us.

It took about two minutes, a lot of pleading, and something I did not follow, before the woman walked away looking particularly malevolent.

Note: Pretty women are urged to note that ugly is the operative word here. I do not mind, nay, I would welcome pretty women – unknown or otherwise – who decide to feel me up, or otherwise hit on me. For some reason unbeknownst to me, the only women who seem to be even remotely interested in a piece of the Warrier are either middle-aged, ugly, or both. Hint hint!!

The author has been single since he can remember. Pretty women (age no bar, caste no bar, race no bar, height no bar as long as you don’t mind midgets) are encouraged to consider the exciting possibilities that this unfortunate concatenation of circumstances present them with.