Happy New Year???

I've known for a while now, that I'm going straight to hell.... a fact that never bothered me, till I actually found myself there, and now I'm scrabbling like a demented missionary in search of good deeds to inflict on unsuspecting friends, family members, and the general public in the forlorn hope that it will make up for all my lapses over the past 38 years, and save me from the hideous fate that will otherwise befall me.
New Year's at the Bandra gym (if you have visions of sweaty catholics weighed down by crosses as they perform unspeakable calisthenics, it's gymkhana, otherwise known to the English speaking world as a club). A slice of catholic hell of unsurpassed proportions, our distress rendered even more poignant given the hostess with the mostess we left behind and an inanely well marinated idiot at our table. I have spent many a new year in this city, in many a bizarre manner; on an obscenely bejeweled, shiny tanga, gatecrashing a stranger's very cool terrace party, blithely unaware of wardrobe malfunctions at Bombay gym (though I did wonder why i was so popular...!), in harmonious, reflective peace with a best friend on the crumbling stone walls edging the sea at Navy Nagar, getting pitzily stupid watching DD at home, giggling through a blackout at the President, being restrained from hurling myself into a pool......... I even have hazy memories of the Catholic gym at Marine Drive (I think?) coerced into the dastardly birdy dance with a floor full of morons.
But never, NEVER have I been subject to the utter misery that was New Year's at Bandra gym. The sight of mandatory appallingly dressed macs (always a handy way to alleviate boredom) jiving their guilt ridden hearts out (the fool at our table insisted that jiving is very difficult and is possible only with mac jeans. Given his abilities on the dance floor... {an event that cause the rest of us to rapidly distance ourselves}, paled when the band ran way as the President of the club deemed this year critical enough for a speech, only to return to the likes of Inglebert Humperdink and a floor choc full of mechanically gliding couples, who I swear were muttering 'one two three, one two three' under their breaths, which carried on interminably.
Utterly defeated, Sarolta and I got romantic on the dance floor, which might have encouraged the band to lapse into a horribly laid back reggae tempo, leaving us flopping about the floor (tennis courts on an ordinary day) in vain, like washed out, inappropriately dressed Rastafarians (actually, it was the others that let us down - Csikoskar and I were rather in character...) in a submissive dance to the great God of joints. Naturally, the minute we managed to beg a ride back, the music turned to a more festive imitation of a conga! Typical!
Thank God for sinfully dark chocolate brownies, an encore pole dance and the indefatigable Bhraman mahilas!