It was 4 am of the Sunday morning when our eyes opened. Delhi’s air is freshest at this time. The only Homo sapiens we could see other than five of us were newspaper vendors. Every vendor who crossed us gave us a very strange gaze. It took me about 15 minutes to reboot and refresh my senses to realize that I have been lying down unconsciously on footpath with my friends Gaurav, Ashu, Peeyush and Abhijeet. It seemed that we were badly beaten – kicked, punched and stamped before somebody threw us here. I turned towards my friends and with whatever little strength I had, I shook them hard my friends to bring them back to consciousness. Alike me, they also took some time to realize that they have been were sleeping (unconsciously) on the sideway. Our faces, hands and many other body parts were either swollen or were hurting awfully bad.

We slowly pulled ourselves on our feet looked at each other and then looked behind… we found ourselves outside the Hotel Shangri-La, Ashoka Road, Connaught Place. Gaurav uttered at that point of time “ahhh, they would have broken us; all because of you Raghav”. No one had strength to react to this. Abhijeet stopped an autorickshaw, but early in the morning that poor guy was not willing to give us a ride because by no instance we were looking civilized. However, after some convincing, he dropped us to my place as my parents were out of station. My younger brother, Saurabh, was at home; he opened the door after several knocks on the door because our door bell was not working. Being a late riser it was more than a punishment for him to get up early, around 5 am, in the morning. As soon as he opened the door, his sleepy eyes got wide open seeing our dented bodies. He was speechless while one by one we entered inside and sat in a drawing room. We looked towards each other and laughed loud seeing each other.

A very dramatic laughter…. “ohh!!! Look at your faces” said Ashu. Abhijeet replied “they would have killed Raghav had we been not there”. To this I replied “Yes, what a great saviours you guys turned out to be”. This humorous leg pulling between us confused my brother… He interrupted us “wait… wait  … hold on is everything OK? First of all five of you disappeared yesterday evening and today your condition is so bad. May I know what has gone wrong; I don’t think it is funny at all”. He looked anxious, angry; our careless laughter added to his anger. Being his elder brother, I could make out that our families have been waiting for us, all night long, to return home.

“Okay, Saurabh, let me tell you where we were and why we are looking so terrible”. With these opening lines Peeyush pacified my brother and narrated him our last night’s misadventure -

Your brother got to know that a DJ evening is going to take place at Hotel Shangri-La – dedicated to Michael Jackson (MJ). As he couldn’t resist that he dragged us to the event. The hotel was already bustling with MJ fans crazily waiting to enter the ballroom where the event was to take place 7 pm onwards. Well … five of us submitted Rs 1000 each for our entry passes. Ballroom manifested every bit of the king of pop. DJs there started with songs like Earth, Black or white, Heal the World and gradually as evening progressed – more upbeat and dance numbers were played. Crowd was already crazy; one could feel the aura of MJ.

At around 11 pm we started back for our homes but during that an announcement was made that for the rest of the night DJ Nikhil Chinapa of MTV Rodies fame would be taking over. This was a deadly combination; Gaurav, Ashu stressed that we should spend some more time, all of us agreed to this.

Indeed the decision to stay back was worth. Nikhil did some amazing mixing of MJ’s slow and fast numbers. Everyone danced to their core, his mixing and understanding of music was fabulous. Smooth Criminal with Dangerous and a soft number like The Girl is Mine with Do You Remember the Time.

Everyone was enjoying every bit of the evening but a group of typical disturbing dudes, very near to Nikhil’s console, were doing bhangra at MJ beats. These guys were excessively drunk and wanted some Punjabi numbers to be played….I think probably on their request only Nikhil mixed MJ’s songs with some Punjabi number which we and many did not enjoy. But then later on Nikhil ignored them as majority did not like the MJ’s desi cocktail, these dudes were annoyed with this ignorance. Some of them created troubles for those dancing on the floor. At around same time five of us also reached very close to the console. Raghav requested them to enjoy the music and let others also do the same. This gentle request was not so gentle for them and one of them slapped him. We replied back with some kicks on their butt but we were no match to them. All of a sudden… while we were struggling with them, one of them threw a wine glass on Nikhil in protest because they wanted some Punjabi numbers. After this music was stopped, security guys, bouncers approached towards us; sensing trouble the group of hooligans disappeared, before we could explain the situation we were forcibly thrown out of the venue on to the streets, no one was ready to listen to us. At this point of time ‘I am Bad’ song was playing.

So technically we were first beaten by bad guys and then by good guys. This doesn’t stop here; bad guys were waiting for us outside they gave us some knocks on our faces and we went deep in our unconscious world.

Eventually, we were first beaten by bad guys then by good guys and then again by bad guys.

So this is the story. …. “I don’t know who advised Raghav to request them to be nice”… said Abhijeet

To which Gaurav replied…. “Don’t you know he wants to meet MJ in heaven that is why he pinged those guys”.

“You guys will be in big trouble someday”… said my brother with a thank god smile on his face.

…And then there was again some laughter with many ohhhs… ouchs.

And if you missed earlier short stories from Adventures of Raghav series, then below are the quick links -

Part 4 – http://bit.ly/raghav-at-leh-part-4

Part 3 – http://bit.ly/raghav-at-ipl-2010-part3

Part 2 - http://bit.ly/raghav-at-rafting-part-2

Part 1 – http://bit.ly/raghav-skydiving-part-1