Remembering Hugh

“All the Playboys come out,” shouted aloud, from outside the classroom, our very own Joginder Singh, the football coach of the school. Of the players in the school senior football team that year, there were six of us in one section and the man actually had called out in order to hand over the new school jersey and shorts of yellow and green to each selected player but the words used made each one of us blush and the classmates had a hearty laugh. The term Playboy brought to mind images of the kind I leave it to your imagination. Joga Singh was known to speak such horrendous English in a school where we were taught not just the proper usage of words but there were pretty looking teachers who specialized in ‘Elocution’ or the art of correct pronunciation. They taught us how in V we are to bite our lower lip and W the pout was to be initially formed.

For imps like us the elocution class was not only a good break from the math and other subjects where we were always trying to duck from the sight of the teacher lest he picked on us to answer any question. It was possibly class V when we always looked forward to the elocution class of Ms Sudan. She was fair, she was tall and curvaceous and she was absolutely stunning. In fact she was a model for a well-known ice-cream brand. But the best thing about her was that she wore dresses and skirts hemlines of which were well above the knees…almost to the upper thigh. The teacher’s chair and desk was at a higher level and there wasn’t a boy in the class whose pencil wouldn’t drop ‘accidentally’ and he would go down to pick the lost item and try to peep at the teacher’s legs and get a high. In our school alumni Whatsapp group, many fondly remembered what they saw ‘down under’ so vividly and with so much joy, even after thirty five years of passing out of school, showed what it meant to them. The Little Boys were fast turning into Playboys.

This was also the time when we saw the porn magazines for the first time. Thanks to our friend Prince who would bring them to school and a few lucky ones got their first look at Playboy in between classes and tiffin breaks. Prince soon became the Best Friend to almost all in the class except for a few nerds sitting in the first row. These pieces of art were known as Pondy in those days. As times went by, the flow of magazines increased and the boys got bolder. In one such class when the Hindi teacher was trying to explain Kabir’s doha, he was distracted by a student, Kanwarjit, who was constantly opening and shutting his desk top.  “Kya hai bay desk ke andar?” shouted the teacher as he put down his book to walk towards Kanwarjit who quickly raised the desk completely with one hand and with the other passed on the Playboy magazine to the boy behind. The boy behind took perfect hold of the treasure, rolled it and smoothly handed to the next boy behind…all happening under the table. I am certain that the Usain Bolt’s Jamaican relay team would have been pleased to see perfect baton changing. Kanwarjit got an earful for being inattentive in class but became the true Playboy Hero for the class. Prince undoubtedly remained the Pondy King and he later graduated to bringing film negatives of the same genre. The whole of Section C from 5^th to 10^th will always be in gratitude to the Pondy King for helping them see life’s beautiful moments.

When Hugh Hefner, the person who started the Playboy magazine died recently, a part of our generation that attained eternal knowledge and joy in the pre-internet era of 60s and 70s also  died with him. How much we longed to lay our hands on one of the magazines and a quick peep inside was completely heavenly experience. Today, times have changed when on a click of a search or a casual forward one gets to see the darkest of secrets. Our times were slightly different. It was Playboy in English with pictures or crude Hindi script of Mastram. How we held these books under the Atlas and practical copies to see and read while unsuspecting parents thought their son was getting serious about studies. The results would however pour buckets of water over their hopes.Boys will always be boys.

Thanks to Hugh Hefner the term playboy is now part of dictionary.I believe every man dead or alive would have wanted to live the life of Hugh. In one of his interviews he said during his lifetime he had thousands of girlfriends. At any given time he had seven bunnies by his side and he was proud of the life he led, not apologetic. He said, “Surrounding myself with beautiful women keeps me young.” He then goes on to describe his life, “In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined a sweeter life.” Read it somewhere that Hugh had paid a huge amount of money to reserve a grave next to Marilyn Monroe’s, someone who was possibly the first cover girl of his magazine, started way back in 1953. Jeetey Hain Shaan Se, Martey Hain Shaan Se!

While falling in love was something that happened very often with me but it remained mostly one sided. If at all someone I have come across who could come close to the standard definition of the term Playboy was a friend from college. Let me just call him Ranveer for now. Ranveer was a fair looking, tall fellow with light brown eyes. While there were many boys in college who would have been better looking or charming but none could match Ranveer when it came to talking, especially with women. Wherever he went, you could see people enjoying his company. He came from a good public school and he was staying at Chanakya Puri. While we were in second year of college, he told me about his crush on a girl from his school, one year his junior. It took him quite some time and one day he invited me to his colony for a game of football and after the game we went for a walk where he introduced his girlfriend to me. Wow…she was possibly six feet tall and extremely beautiful with big eyes and a slender frame.

By the time we were in third year of our graduation, Ranveer was going steady with the Tall One at home and was pally with a host of other girls in the college. Hindu College never had a good girls’ basketball team but Ranveer made sure he tagged me along to the court every time a match was on. In the team was a very petite girl Radhika who was an apology to playing basketball for she covered one hand over her eyes to protect her complexion from the sun while dribbling with the other. Although Radhika and her team did not win many matches but crowds would throng just to see her. In those days there were radio programmes where people could send out requests and there would hardly be a programme where one song or another was not requested for by an admirer for Jersey No. 9 of Hindu College basketball team. It took Ranveer a couple of visits to the court and the girl was head over heels in love with him.

Ranveer officially now had two pretty girls madly in love with him. He also was more than friendly to many more. You had to see him at any party and realize his real worth. There was something about him that girls found irresistible. He reminded me of Lou Bega’s famous  song Mambo Number 5:

A little bit of Monica in my life

A little bit of Erica by my side

A little bit of Rita is all I need

A little bit of Tina is what I see

A little bit of Sandra in the sun

A little bit of Mary all night long

A little bit of Jessica here I am

A little bit of you makes me your man.

To lonely people like us Ranveer was Osho, the Eternal Guru. The other gyan we could amass elsewhere but the art of ticking with girls was something we looked up to Ranveer. Not that he never tried to help me but possibly it was missing in my DNA and so found happiness in the company of Osho.

Radhika graduated and joined an international airline as an air hostess. Before leaving she shed loads of tears and we felt Ranveer would melt in love and stay loyal to this beautiful girl if not to the tall one back home who by now had joined St.Stephens College which was just across the road. Ranveer and I were part of the college football team and we would always take the first University Special at 12.30pm back home. In order to get a place to sit, we had one day gone to the place from where the U Specials started and were happy to find an empty seat. As the bus moved a number of students climbed in and soon the bus was almost full. A very pretty girl with long hair came to stand near our seat. We both looked at her and smiled to each other. The very next minute Ranveer nudged me with his elbow and said, “Get up.” I was surprised and looked at him while making an awkward face. “I said get up quickly.” And I obeyed my Master. Ranveer offered the empty seat to the pretty girl. No sooner had she taken the seat than Ranveer started a conversation with her and by the time the bus had moved from the university area towards Lutyens Delhi, the two were in such a mood that you could not have guessed that they had just met 20 minutes ago. The girl got up from her seat after some time and so did Ranveer and both got off the bus together. Bemused I took my lost and forced evicted seat back and wondered how Osho managed…Dhanya Hain Aap Guruji.

Ranveer was now to be seen often with this beautiful girl called Sonya who happened to be the niece of a member of the World Cup winning 1983 squad. They were seen everywhere…at the cafeteria, at the basketball court and on the footpaths around the college. One morning when Ranveer was sitting with this new found love, Radhika returned to college after her training program abroad. She got for him plenty of stuff including T shirts, perfume and sports accessories. Ranveer accepted them all, thanked her and then introduced her to Sonya. Radhika was no fool and she left them teary eyed and was not seen in college thereafter. I felt bad for Radhika and so did many of our other friends. We tried talking to Ranveer who was unmoved by our protests and explanations and pretty much unrepentant.

Ranveer later joined the armed forces where I heard he had hooked on the commandant’s daughter at his place of posting and got into big trouble. But Hugh Hefner of our times always lived life his way…never to change, never to look back. Last heard he had actually married his first Tall Love who had gone on to become Miss India and then after a awhile they parted. I am sure my friend Ranveer too believes in Hugh’s dictum of, “Several girlfriends are easier to handle than one wife.” Surprisingly my friend too almost used the same simple lines while starting conversation with women as did Hugh and it worked for both, “My Name is Hugh Hefner.”

SS