Scientists of Seduction

 “Do you want it or not, Thirty Five Rupees,” said the street-side vendor, waving the thin book in our face. ‘How to win Girls & influence Women’. We wanted it badly. I & Rahul, schoolmates from Kashipur had landed together in Chandigarh for college & shared a third floor room in sector 19-D. Away from home & its resources we were at a serious disadvantage when it came to getting a girlfriend. Between us we had a sports cycle, hardly the stuff you’d expect a girlfriend to sit on, much less hope for a moment of privacy. Every now and then we would see guys zoom away on their bikes with an oh! so pretty things clinging to them, to our heartburn; or a car parked in the lovers lane with the dark glasses rolled up. In short we were going crazy. Yes! Dammit, we needed that book. We didn’t have the money but we were going to use the Science to get the girls and get them by the truckloads and so said the book! And we paid 17.50 each and bought it.

Back in the room, we licked the book from cover to cover. It suggested many approaches, tricks and ideas but the basic principles were that every girl wanted to be approached; anywhere and everywhere; despite already having a boyfriend. And she wanted to say yes unless her boyfriend was watching. But if she said No- It was her problem and not yours & now focus on the next girl you found hot.

By sheer luck we had stumbled upon the master key for all the Girls in the world. The recipe was with us; now it was upon us to prepare the perfect ‘Soup for Seduction’ step by step. And we decided to unleash ourselves upon the poor unsuspecting pretty Girls slowly & stealthily.

To make it impersonal, I and Rahul decided to measure our daily progress on a scale of ten. It was resolved not to get dejected by a ‘N’o & not to follow up on a ‘Yes’ to maintain focus. Every evening we would head for sector 17 Market, where one of us would propose to 6 girls in a span of one hour and the other would be the scorer. After an hour the roles would be reversed. The one with less positive responses would treat the other with hot Gulab-Jamuns near the State library.

Sometimes a positive response could cost you Gulab-Jamuns as you could keep talking to her & not complete your score of 6 girls in the hour. It was here the detachment was really tested.

Once, In a hurry Rahul moved off for the next girl saying “Don’t worry its fine’, before a particularly conscientious one could complete her explanation … and she stood there with a puzzled expression on her face

We had realized that while proposing was free, a Gulab-Jamun treat for two was 20 bucks and we stopped the game after 10 days.

After ten days we were chatting up at the drop of a hat. We scanned at the bus stand, in the bus, in the Archies, Yankee Doodles (YD’s); anywhere and everywhere was the hunting ground.

The book did wonders for our flagging self-esteem. It removed our entire focus from us to the girl, the next girl and so on. It made us focus on the process & not on the person. We became yogi’s practicing total detachment with the object of our attention.

As our scores shot up, we became adept at starting conversation obliquely, innocently asking a girl walking a dog its breed, (having read up on dogs before), complimenting her choice of books in the library (having read at least the thinner book).

We became equally good at the shock approach, getting down at the wrong bus stop with the girl you fancy, making her explain you the bus that will take you to your destination & at the end of it all, suddenly admitting that you did it all just to have a word with her. It worked like a charm.

But as we went deeper into the game, our tricks & approaches became more daring and the girls prettier, our resolve of not following up started showing cracks. We broke it once and then again and again.  We borrowed bikes from friends from the Boys Hostel, each time a different bike.

“I thought you had a blue bike,” They would remember the colour, if not the make. We had our excuses ready. An accident; a friend had borrowed and hadn’t returned; it had gone for servicing.

We became jugglers, managing bikes, classes, girls on a shoestring budget.

There were countless girls we dated after that. To a lot of those gorgeous girls it didn’t matter what bike we rode or how much money we carried in our pockets. To some, yes it did matter but then they didn’t really matter to us. In fact, my particularly favourite one knew pretty well that I had just a cycle. But even then she would probably have killed me if she came to know that the day I had approached her for her autograph; I had not mistaken her for an actress. That she was a stunner was a different matter but I was just going by the book.