If life were a Malai Gola, we would suck at it

It's not life what you're going through. It's not life until you have done what I have done today, not if you weren't with us today when life happened, and not if you've never had a Malai Gola.



A Malai Gola is not whatever you think it is. It's more. So much more that it's just not real life. Your imagination, however highly you may regard it, and however much you may have seen in life, will fail you as surely as certainty itself. It can't take you where life took us. The four of us (Nemani, dude did you miss out on something or what), unknowing innocent prisoners of fate who knew not what was coming for us. The Malai Gola.


What you see here is not a row of colorful bottles. Its not even a row of transparent bottles with colored liquid in them. What it is, is packed happiness. You read that right. It is a part of the undiluted totally adulterated and can't-be-legal happiness that is, yes, the Malai Gola.

So you're standing in Chowpati, looking at the wonder that Mumbai is, taking it in soberly, and fairly confident that you have a pretty comprehensive view of the world now. You know things, been there done that, things don't shock you anymore. It is now, it is now that God, that kid up there having fun with the buttons on his console, will throw at you something to shake you up, to tell you there's more to life than you know, to blow apart your tiredness with routine and its predictability, and give you a new miracle to cope with, a new sun to arrange in your now mishevelled solar system. He will throw at you, the Malai Gola.

So what exactly do you do with a Malai Gola. It's simple. You suck on it. Umm... yeah. You suck on it like you never knew the fun to sucking. You suck on it like you were born to suck. You suck on all sides and take in as much off it as you can and then you dip it. You dip it like you mean it, and then you suck. A good long all-rounded suck gets into your head, makes you dizzy with the pure chemical happiness being secreted all inside your body, and makes you close your eyes and sigh. You sigh with your whole body, and everything around it. You see the shiny, almost guilty satisfaction, floating in the eyes of people around you, sucking on theirs, dipping it with unnatural grace, and then sucking on it again, and looking at you for assurance that its all real, its all happening. They are living it. As you are. The Malai Gola.

It breaks if you suck too hard. But that's not so bad really, nothing is much bad in the company of Malai Gola. Even so, there's an art to a good suck. A first timer may not be able to hold it for long, enthralled in the blast of the orgasmic unreal feeling he hadn't even known before. He may run out too fast, and thus miss out on the higher pleasures of a satisfied, leisurely pace of a long drawn out suck. It is essential, thus, to achieve self control if the highest pleasure is to be attained. But don't worry, really, experience is the best teacher. And a secret that I feel obliged to tell you, is that its best when enjoyed in a group. Trust me. Though I must tell you this too that do keep your voices low. For the people around, though they may seem in another universe then, can still listen to your satisfied cries, and the talk that goes with the sucking. And they might just get a bit confused as to what you're really talking about. While you suck away, making the loudest noises of it, and blessing the Gods, the city of Mumbai, and your Malai Gola.

The ice slowly nears its end, sucked away to turn into a satisfied sense of being, all inside you. By the time you reach those last few mouthfuls you will already be feeling drunk. Drunk and happy. Maybe even gay, if you are that sort of a person. And now that the ice is over, you will take a sip of the liquid left behind. You never knew it until you felt it. That sip will go down through your mouth, into your stomach, and you will know where it is, and feel it inside you and it will make you raise your arms and inhale a large amount of happy air like on an early morning. And then you will look around, put the glass to your side for a few seconds, cope with the loveliness of it all, sigh loudly with all your being, and feel large. You will feel like nothing is the same anymore or will ever be. You will feel like you know something the people around you don't and you will feel big and complete, in your very self. You will feel it dissolving inside you to become a part of you, the Malai Gola.

You finish with it, you place the glass with respect onto a bin meant for it, and you walk away, looking back over your shoulder if the glass is still there, hoping it would disappear to heaven and prove that it wasn't really real life after all. But real life just isn't what you knew it to be anymore. You feel it in your steps, you feel high and wasted. And then when you're all high already, it fucking starts to rain. It started raining on the Chowpati Beach, and the commotion. People running away from the beach, sellers collecting their stuff and running with it, and kids shouting in that sharp shrill howl of joy. And you howl too. Because you are happy, and you can't take so much of it, and you try to let it out by shouting in shrill sharp glee at the sky, and you run. You run in the direction everybody is running but its no use. The rain just took the lead. It falls on your body, and soon reaches the intensity that you suddenly feel the awesomeness of it, and let go. You stop running for cover, and you start walking towards the rain. But maybe you have to really go in one direction and its not towards the rain. So what, Ardra walked backwards so she could take the rain on her face. It was high, the whole world.

With all that rain, and all that happiness in the stomach, the human body reaches down to its core and touches it. It does what it feels, and it knows what it wants. And I wanted to stand, facing the rain and looking up at the sky and feel the water on me. It was all water, it wasn't wind it wasn't even air anywhere nearby, water was what there was, up in the sky and down on the road, and us between it, all taking it, the blows of much too great a happiness. And then I wanted to jump, so I plunged feet first into a puddle. And then i wanted to run in the water and splash it on all sides, and I did. And then I wanted to stand on top of a fucking car and raise my arms and shout. And I did.


It was liberation. It was soulful, and we had our crazy high-fives telling us how much we were in love with it. Drenched, full, complete, we were the deal. We felt big, and weren't hiding it. We wanted to gather a group of random people and sit them down in front of us and tell them, "Life is good". We wanted to breathe in, and breathe out, and enjoy it. A drenched tshirt hugging your stomach and chest is something to fall in love with. A group of four blown-away minds jumping in disbelief is something to fall in a puddle with. And a glass of Malai Gola, that fountain of joy and surreal sex appeal, is something to take home to your mom and marry with.

Suck it, bitches.