My First Visit To A Nightclub

Today I am going to make an effort to describe what my first ever visit to a nightclub actually turned out to be like. Well, I am not ashamed to say that I was just of the tender age of 15 when I made my first entry into a celebrated nightclub of Calcutta (let's keep the name of the place a secret). The fact that I had the guts to visit the place at that age has also been kept a secret from my parents for reasons that are obvious. Well, I would try my best not to make this a boring account, so here goes my attempt....

Firstly, let me disclose that prior to visiting a nightclub, I had a very poor impression of what such a place would actually be like. To tell the truth, like an innocent 15 year old, all I knew about a nightclub was the fact that it was supposed to be a place where people danced like maniacs, got drunk to the hilt and then a bunch of other weird activities followed. That was my notion of a nightclub in a nutshell, poor me!!! So initially I was damn scared of visiting a place about which I held such a terrible impression in my mind. In fact, if it wasn't for my extremely benevolent elder cousin brothers and sisters, I would never have visited the place at the age of 15. But what to do? They were so very keen on letting their kid brother experience the beauties of life, hehehe.

Now let's get down to the actual crux of what I want to say. The first thing which scared the living daylights out of me was the gigantic build of a group of people who I later learnt were known as "bouncers", and that their job was to kick out unruly hoodlums. I became completely motionless after hearing that, and it took me quite some time to regain my senses. Then came the next part, the part about my grand entry into the nightclub!! I could hear from outside the sound of music (not the Hollywood movie, but some Arabic song whose name I don't seem to remember), and I made up several impressions in my mind regarding what I was going to see after my entry. But all I could eventually see was the sight of ten odd couples gyrating to the tune of that pathetic song (it really was pathetic!!). The mere sight of them moving their bodies all at once in that comical manner made me burst into peels of laughter (even though I am not a very good dancer myself). I was just beginning to make sense of what was happening over there, when all of a sudden, I was literally pulled to the dance floor by my cousin sister. Oh god!! My worst fear had come true, I was there in the middle of the dance floor looking like a complete fool with nothing to do. But the realization hit me that I had to do something. All the nervousness had made me deaf to the music around me, but that was the least of my worries. There was an army of people staring at the dance floor and I was looking like a complete idiot!!! At my last attempt to salvage some pride, I reluctantly started to take a few steps (the combination of those steps cannot be described as an attempt to dance, but still I tried). That sequence went on for five more torturous minutes, and after that, I immediately fled from the dance floor. Phew!!! I thought that at last I had made my escape.

But I was so very wrong!!! Escape was still a long long way away. Now comes the most shocking part. Here it goes....

Mind you, at that time, I was only 15 years old. Even though I had the idea that people are attracted to the opposite sex, but I was completely alien to the concepts of homosexuality and my innocent mind had never figured out that such people even existed, and it was this ignorance which caught me completely off-guard. Let me try to describe what exactly happened, even though it is very difficult for me to do so. I was standing at a corner doing nothing, when suddenly a guy came and patted me on the back. He initiated a normal conversation and asked me my name and other similar things like that. At no point of time did I realize what was about to happen a few minutes later. Like any other polite human being, I also responded to his questions in a polite manner (when somebody enquires about your name, it is sometimes impossible not to reply to it). After some time, he offered me a drink of beer which I accepted (today I realize that it was a wrong thing to do). But alas, I was just a 15 year old and I did not have the maturity to understand what was right and what was wrong. I went on and took a few sips of beer, without suspecting that things would go so horribly wrong in the next few moments.

I had just begun to regain my composure after drinking the beer, when suddenly out of the blue, the guy beside me caught hold of my butt!!! I was too shell-shocked to do anything, for a few moments I just stood there numb with fear. I don't remember everything very clearly, but this much I remember that after standing still for sometime, I let out a shrill scream!!! That was all I could do, since I was too scared to do anything else. After that, things became blurry. All I remember is that on hearing me scream out loud, a few people immediately came to my rescue and I was freed from the clutches of that monster (yes, he was a monster!!!). I came to know later that the people who rescued me on that fateful night were none other than the bouncers themselves, the very people of whom I was so very scared. After that incident, I never ever felt scared of bouncers again, hehehe.

Well, that was all about the episode which actually happened. When I retrospect about the incident today, I feel that maybe it was wrong on my part to visit a nightclub at that young an age. But then again, thousands of young people visit nightclubs every single night and manage to come out unscathed. Maybe it was my wretched luck which made me the victim of that horrible incident, or maybe it was something else. Actually, I did not possess the inclination and energy to find out the reasons for that. So after a few months, I forgot almost everything about it, I really did. Now after all these years, I have tried to write about it. I have tried my best to be accurate, as far as my limited memory could permit. Whether the account is readable or avoidable I don't know, but I have tried my best to present the facts in the best possible manner.

And oh yes, one thing surely needs to be mentioned in the end. Even though I have visited every single nightclub in the city at a later stage of my life, but somehow I have always managed to give that particular place a miss. The visit I have talked about was my first and last visit to that place, and I don't regret the fact that it turned out to be like that. Somehow I had developed an aversion towards that place which has stayed with me till today.