G-Spotting: A Route Sans Cartography

It's early Friday night at the Vida Loca, and the smoke clouds are gathering on the mezzanine. The three of us, sitting on bar stools that don't let our feet touch the floor, are already feeling suspended—someplace between earth and sky, in a space whose pleasure principles are familiar. The first is that the evening will be stemless. Wines like Chenin Blanc, says Zarmeen, "when you do get your tongue around them cost too damn much". So, we only swill what's affordable in stumpy chalices. No mulling over single malts like Laphroig which Manna says she always sees men hunting down in Heathrow's duty-free aisles. Our corollary to affordability being, drink only what you can pronounce. So, 'the-frogginess-of-life', as most of those most pricey and pale Scottish malts sound like—being unpronounceable—are out.

The liquid contents of our drinks are visible under the dancing lights as Venkat, our server, holding his tray above coloured hair, sashays towards us. An amber double shot of RC with soda for Manna, a clear gin and T for Zarmeen and a defiantly pink drink for me. No sangrias or strawberry margheritas, even if it is Tito Puentes playing loud and Latino ritmo, it's still ginger fizz for me. And that's the beginning of an estrogen-compatible night out with the girls in Mumbai—they're non-coercive. Most times barmen wipe glasses harder when they see us, believing that a table of single women like us who aren't on the make is good ambience.

Even the girl in the frilly skirt, whose costume and act are sponsored, leaves us alone—she knows pint beers are too male-identified. Bypassing us, she slides towards the jocks, in blue jeans, tight Tees and bandanas. Them of the single defining move for every Friday night. Players of fantasy guitars at gut level who wave burning fags in the air. "Seventeen years and still their anthem is the same: Roadhouse Blues. Morrison's ghosts are killing me," curses Manna.

"Chill, Manna," says Zarmeen tipping the ash from her Gudang Garam. "Buddha Bar's Claude Challe was in Delhi," I say. Manna, still pissed, shoots back, "Yeah? And they must have asked him to play bhangra, right?" I ignore her foulies. "You still wear this?" That's the silver ring Manna bought off a Warli tribal woman on the train en route to Dahanu. "Yeah," she says, "I never take it off, nor have I eaten tadgolas since." Tadgolas, for the uninitiated, are like litchis transmuted with infinite sophistication into soft seedless pillows of nectar. The only nut in the world filled with three fruit—one for each us that we ate on Dahanu beach, with its love-juices dribbling down our chins onto the sand. The best litchis grew in Dahanu but the Enron Power Project killed the species.

"Lok Tak," I say loudly over shake-your-bon-bon Ricky Martin. "Floating islands in Meghalaya, nothing but two cottages, us and a million water hyacinths." "Sounds like a honeymoon," says Zarmeen, clinking her glass with ours, "Here's to Float-Tak." "@#$ hell, shit, these #$$%^." Wondering what the hell has happened, Zarmeen and I stare into the super-whites of each other's suddenly fluorescent eyes. Manna hunches over her RC, swears and covers her chest with her arm. It twigs in ten. They've got the UV lights on and Manna, stupid Manna's white underclothes are glowing out from under her dark blouse for all in this rocking house to see. "You stay, I'll go," says Zarmeen.

Alone now, with a subdued Manna, trying not to laugh, I ask, "Forgot?" That's the second pleasure code I mean, that isn't supposed to reveal itself till much, much later in the night. Underclothes when we sisters meet are in colour but white, we don't like no UV light up. We wear what we like, whether sporty, frumpy or frayed. The ordinary stuff sold in the darkest corners of lingerie stores, away from the satin and silk, labelled with skull and crossbones as "Could Annihilate Male Libido".Suddenly, Manna's teeth stop glinting, her arm drops, Zarmeen has obviously talked to someone. We both hear an uncomfortably familiar voice, "Hie!"

Shite, it's Afsana, I hope she doesn't upset Manna with stupid questions. "How are you, it's been what, five years?" "Seven," says Afsana, "I've been married for seven now." "Kids?" pipes up Manna. Something crosses over Afsana's Maybelline-perfect face, throwing shadows on her pea-sized diamond solitaires. Studded with more facets than she can handle in one evening, wearing five carats of ice on one finger—you can smell the provider, who must be close? "Hey, nice Shakira belt," I say. "Like it? Naffy bought it for me in Spain," she says, spinning her plaited leather belt, making its long tassels orbit around her left hip.

"Arre, Afsana, you want to star in the new chick flick I'm producing?" Zarmeen's back, Zarmeen's back. "We've got everything in it, bust and butt cleavage, bucking broncos, black stallions as sexual metaphors, Ford Mustangs, a 20-acre set outside Hampi where we are going to recreate the wild west. And, an all-girl crew on everything from gaffers to grips. You still ride, don't you?" asks Zarmeen, pulling up another stool. Right then, Whenever, Wherever comes on and everyone is shimmying in mirror-practiced imitations of Shakira, who has gotten the entire mtv Republic of the world wiggling from waist down. The bandana boys are being pushed back by leather-belted hipshakers.

"Sounds sexy, where are you getting the money?" asks Afsana, tucking her butt on the stool, snug in her Versaces and seamless underwear. "Abroad, my own stash and new promoters," says Zarmeen, "Hey, I'm serious, OK?" "I can't," replies Afsana, "I miscarried twice last year." Sounds like too much Tequila.... "I'm ovo-obsessed, I don't work out, I don't ride, I live on folic acid pills and yogurt, I'm scaring the shit out of Naffy, sometimes I thinks he plans his trips just to get away from me."

You haven't thought, maybe, you should talk to someone in a white coat?" I can't help asking. I can see Naffy cozying up to the next blonde thing on TV and I know Spain isn't the only place Naffy likes running to. He's always liked anything X-rated—rum, chromosomes, the movies.... Manna cuts in, "Maybe I should talk to someone besides you, who keep pussyfooting around the 'D' word thinking I'll freak." "I'm so sorry," says Afsana, "I didn't know." "Sorry? Piss-off! I'm not dead yet!" says Manna, looking like the Maidenform woman who's just lost her smile.

Zarmeen, hearing US3 in the mix, stubs her Gudang Garam out and vaults over her bar stool. Holding her wraparound skirt with one hand and throwing the other hand in the air, she's dancing, with her-every-born-to-boogie-tendon-in-her-body. She has all of us seeing jazz with the way she moves, making us think of the first wind rippling through the flag of French territory in Africa that's being liberated. Afsana joins her and in five seconds, she goes from being a paste-up collection of the world's most famous labels to a possessed dancer on the off beat.

Everyone from the jocks, nuzzling couples, girls in spaghetti straps drinking Pasoa are watching Zarmeen and Afsana, who're oblivious to the swarming eyeballs. Manna and I, wiping the fizz off our faces, are sitting up in a way that shouts, "They're with us, we're with them." And nobody, no matter how hard his or her hormones are raging, dares approach Afsana who till seconds ago was a whimpering Sonography-Devi or Zarmeen, who's standing six feet plus in her black boots.

Naffy's hands are sliding off the next blonde thing. Tito Puentes is playing again. Drunk on nothing but crackling soda, watching Zarmeen raise her skirt to get one foot on the chair, she's going to dance on the tables tonight, I'm feeling far from the 'Balle balle' people of DelhiManna is circling her index above our table—which a watching Venkat understands as "seconds". Unfettered by one-shuffle-type male partners, who freeze into icebergs when they hear the drummers from Burundi, Bally Sagoo's loops and the weird guitar wonks of Weather Report, Zarmeen and Afsana are moving like heavenly beings to everything in the mix. They look at Manna and me.

All of us now standing on the same staircase of our old highs, knowing g-spotting days are back again. Manna is banging her heels against her bar stool and mine. We lock ankles under the table, loving the smooth-bony-contact and throw our heads back, staring as the laser lights shoot across the roof and dart through Zarmeen's splayed fingers. The UV lights come on again, turning Afsana in her white trousers into luminescent high-stepper in the centre of a staring dance floor. Manna keeps looking at the ceiling with impunity, without hunching or asking for fig leaves. And just like that our gestalt completes—like the time our bloodletting mysteriously synchronised over twelve months of getting TV shows lying on the floor and ratcheting up TRPPS.

Bonding from our ankles to our tenth fingers, we know that tonight we will walk, spiral or skate up and down the ladders of each other's dna. Maybe here under the strobe lights or later in the dark, when it is just us, and lying back in Zarmeen's four poster. Dr Zhivago or whoever the dumb rutabaga was, who has you guys gauchely searching for g-spots got it wrong. The damn thing has no fixed address, it's a willful wanderer that disguises its coordinates as it moves. We too know not where to find it. But when laser lights go chasing across ceilings, and with pegs of RC, gin and fizz under our belts that help us maplessly find our way into each other's heads and hearts—that is when our g-spots glow without being touched, in, off and around the dance floor.