A Lover Boy

 

The title of this blog post is not to offend anyone. I am just describing an incident as it happened.

On a train journey, I came across a Muslim boy sitting on the opposite berth. He must be in his early 20s, had full beard of at least 20 cm (quite long for his age), and wore white salwar kameej like a lot of traditional Muslim men do. At first glance he looked like a regular guy. But on second look, there was something weird: in the name of luggage, he had carried only a red backpack which was also mostly empty. A “red” backpack did not go well with his looks! But I guessed that he could have loaned it from some friend, as a possible explanation.

The boy offered namaj right on his top berth with full yoga-like poses twice in the day – once in the morning and once in evening. After offering evening namaj, he started making some phone calls. I noticed his calls after a while, since he was talking for over an hour.

He was talking to some girl and she told him about some of her hobby or interest, and then he told her, “Now I am coming to know about your hobbies and how wasteful those are. It was much better if you could develop a hobby in namaj (Muslim prayers)”. It was weird. How could he call offering prayers as hobby? Anyways. After a while I noticed that he had been making one call after another. And then it went interesting when I paid a bit of attention.

It became clear that he was calling only girls and talking from the point of view of courtship before marriage. It seemed as if his marriage proposal was in progress with all those girls. And many of the girls were sisters of his friends, because he often talked about their brothers as his friends. And whenever the girl on the other side of phone told about some other girl, he would ask, “which number of sister she is – i.e. how many sisters she has?” It was clear that he was “expanding” his knowledge of girls in his target group.

He talked to one girl addressing her as “tum”, to another with “tu” and then with one girl he talked calling her “aap”, with full respect. He talked to one girl in Bhojpuri, one girl in very fluent Maithli and then many girls in Hindi. This guy was a James Bond!

The last call he made was really interesting. The girl on the other side of the phone told him that she considered him as a “bhai” (brother). Then he said, “If you considered me as brother, then why did not you come to meet me when I went to your home that day? What is wrong in meeting your brother?” I felt sick listening to this cunning guy.

Then, he asked the girl that she could stay at his parents’ home when she had to appear for some exam. She asked about how did his home look like. And he replied, “My house is not as good as yours, but you will feel nice there.” He said it in such a loving and polite way that it impressed me. He was playing with the girls' minds. Then, the girl said that she was not comfortable staying in a house which had other males. He replied, “There are no males in my house! Only my father is there, my younger brothers are there and my sisters are there. You will not feel bad there; there are no males there.” So, according to him, his father and brothers did not count as “males”? It seemed that his answers or arguments were not good enough - but he added a last sentence as assertion which was really convincing. For example, "my house is not as good as yours" was a weak argument, but he added, "but you will feel nice there" as a gimmick. Similarly, he counted the number of males in his house but in the end said, "there are no males in my house", as a gimmick. I think all frauds and cheats use certain techniques to trap and play their victims and perhaps this was his trick. He might have learnt that people did not remember our full answers but always remembered the last few words, so may be had devised such a trick. Otherwise, his contradicting statements did not make any sense to me. I could also notice that he mentioned both brothers and sisters in “plural”, indicating a large family. In the end, he told the girl that his mother will be calling her tomorrow, to ask her to stay at their house when she has to appear in her exams. 

I know that I found this guy interesting also because I have never had a girlfriend of my own, and hence I would have certain curiosity about such guys and their ‘charming’ ways. And I would also accept that I saw a Muslim “lover boy” like him for the first time. I have seen enough ‘road-Romeos’ in public places, but never a Muslim guy, whom I thought were better behaved and did not make girlfriends. Perhaps with mobile phones as a ‘game changer’, such boys are thriving even among traditional Muslim families.

Anyways, all said and done, it was an interesting experience to have. The last memory I had of him was when I thought that he was like "Musafir Ali" of the web series Ray (played by Manoj Bajpayee). 

- Rahul Tiwary