I'm here at TGIF, Bangalore with three colleagues whose connect with me has made them friends. I'm in the place called hip and cool, and as i enter here for the second time (the first was over a month ago) I decide its overhyped. But then most places in this city are. Still, it wins over most other so-called metros.

And so we sit, on those US style seats, so they say. Feels like any other chair. There are expatriate men and women, the gorgeous beauties sitting to the right among the two rows of seats, the wannabe beauty queens straight out of bunking classes and looking around for fun, flirting with their eyes, the middle aged ones - don't know who named them that, for are they gonna be presumed dead at 60 or 70? and here comes the waiter, hat on his head, dressed as a cowboy, but pity there's no horse for them to ride - they may well do with mares. And then the girls with straight-out-of gym looking escorts, or rather boyfriends, who sit with obsequious looks while their partner flirts and sends surreptitious looks to the hunk sitting across the bar. The college girls have their companions too - thin as rods, with jeans size 20 slipping off their waists and greased hair, long or pulled back for that impression, jerky at every reaction and desperate to please. And there are those middle agers - just nostalgic about the time they could flit in and out as they liked without having to ward off calls from bosses and family - demands that bog them down. There are some couples too, trying to understand, to look deeper, through words and eyes.

But are all are here to enjoy or to escape. More of the latter is seems going by the lack of families. Why isn't this a family place - coz it's not for kids or parents or spouses. It's to leave them back in time and enjoy with other people. Bored of nagging bosses, bragging colleagues, that college coach or teacher immortalised in Pink Floyd's "We dont need no education", that behaviour they have to put on at office and before their wives, that nature they have to fake.....

And then there are we. Four people, dressed casually, here to just enjoy, and ya also to escape. The AC is on at a temperature that would freeze the place if empty of its food-devouring and booze guzzling customers - now its chilling, and we look forward to getting our screwdrivers, and iced teas and beers. Its beating the cold, not the heat. We do the latter every day at work. We like music that makes sense, which has lyrics that fly u to the place it was written for, that we can connect to. We read books that provoke, which we can't devour like we do the steak but ruminate. We like movies that have some direction and script, not the midsummer madness that is dished out to unsuspecting, and the uninitiated general audience. We don't like to judge - atleast we try not to. We play around with conventional thinking - and levitate our imagination. We abhor blind acceptance of anything, and we dare to question the basis of reason.

Our drinks arrive. So will the food, in sometime. We like it devoid of religion, of culture or creed. We like to have fun. And our definition might be different from convention - if there is any, and we don't care a dime's worth. Two are tipsy, one of them is plainly acting just for the heck of it.

And so we eat, and we drink. And we talk about us, the degradation of politics, of the 'cool' culture and the ridiculous things it makes its followers do, the sanctimonous show all around, music, food, movies......and wonder how a guy who was in London for a year could accept its accent to end up with something thats truly a hotchpotch. We see other people around and we do comment. We like expressing opinions, but not judge. There's a difference, and we realise it.

I see my friends now as i drink, each one a character, but not unique - there are many of them out there, for people hardly remain true to themselves, subconsciously or otherwise adhering to some code, some thought which morphs some part of them into robots. I look around through the blue screen of smoke, through to the one sitting diagonally. Always in a full sleeved shirt and a clipped accent that belongs to neither India nor the land of the Queen (this is the one-year-in Britain). He acts formal, and is hanging like a spider, not sure what to do, how to be, coz his thinking actions are locked, frozen into a reverie dictated by convention.

Time for the food. It's a treat to the senses. Laughter all around, some are shouting to be heard over the inexplicable disco number, a clear crash from the earlier notes, now perhaps being belted out by some tipsy-as-liquid DJ. The cigarette smoke swirls, and curls and disappears. I feel light without levitating. I feel good.

We live among hypocrites and paradoxes. And yet you can be what you want to be, unsullied by custom, rituals, trends, religion or culture. You just have to desire to choose what you are, and what you want to accept. Atleast when you are sombre. Just be.