United by skirts and dresses. Divided by the moral police.

Saturday night was eventful, and not just because i had a goooood time but also because i was at Fuga.

Ignorants may ask what the big deal about that is. Not much, except that in the middle of the partying, the place was cordoned off by some activists who believed immoral acts were going on inside, and even had the bravado to lock everybody in. A pretty potent experience for someone who's been to the place for the first time.

We reached Fuga at 8:30 p.m to celebrate H's last week of singlehood. She was super excited about getting married (a rare feeling among to-be-married-soon couples these days), and we were super excited about throwing her a super party before that. Hence the venue - it was the hippest place in town with no restrictions on music or dancing. I've had friends go there week after week to party, emerge blown out of their skulls but also emotionally (and physically) intact. Therefore, the happening on Saturday was a complete shock.

Twenty minutes after getting onto the dance floor, the music was switched off. The DJ left us with a mysterious one-liner: "You know why guys..." Dejected, we went back to our places. Ten minutes later, the DJ calls us back on the dance floor and we gyrate. Ten minutes later, lights are shut off and everything is engulfed in the gloom of darkness and quietude. Figuring out that things are not going to go anywhere at this point, we decide to leave. And that's when we discover the problem.

Some Kannada Sangha guys had locked us in, screaming slogans on restoring the purity of the culture/down with Westernisation etc/the usual stuff. Skirted and shorted birdies went oooh and aaaah inside, while some dumbass firangs and Iranians kept hooting their asses off without fully comprehending the seriousness of the situation. Most women were freaked because they had a) lied at home about coming out partying and b) didn't know what torture was awaiting the free spiritedness that showed in their clothes. Apparently, Athena had a similar attack where the women dressed in 'extreme' Western attire were undressed so as to leave nothing to the imagination and put through more humiliation of the sort. And my, my, were the skirts short and the dresses flouncy that night. Obviously the wearers were going to be terrified.

Stranded inside for close to an hour, the alcohol flowed for the unaffected, the smoke swirled over the stressed and phones rang for the loved. At least two break-ups also happened because guys abandoned girlfriends to take care of themselves. Tch tch.

We stood in the corridor, where the glass floor was reflected by red lights underneath it - an attractive sight when you're out partying but not in the face of jobless activists to whom the lighting would only add a cheap filter to view the people stuck inside through. And they did make full use of it - when the doors were opened, in walked the cops in full uniform. Followed by media - cameras glaring into our faces, tapes rolling, hungrily searching the area for shortest skirts and most transparent dresses. C covered up R and S as soon as he saw the media because he wanted to save them the embarassment of getting caught on camera. And guess what? The camera found its way to C's crotch, squeezed into the little gap in between and SNAP!, the brilliant photographer just had a winner worthy of the Pulitzer that he could comfortably title "A young man engaging in un-public activities caught on camera by photographer XYZ."

I've never seen so many cops in one place, and all of them pinning you down with accusing eyes. And that too despite wearing full-length jeans and a full sleeve top with an almost-closed boat neck. R was shivering by the time she got out; H and her sis-in-law were laughing their guts out because they had looked right into the video camera and waved happily; S was worried about her friend's car that she had driven that night; the men were just focussed on getting the women away from the picture.

It's one thing that we went to H's place after and sanitised ourselves against the situation by resuming the party where it had broken off. And it's another to actually go out with the intention of having a good time with friends and come back with a bad taste in the mouth. One that takes its own sweet time to go away, like a hangover.

(P.S: I've tried every means to get some sort of coverage on the incident over the Internet and have had no luck so far. Generous souls are welcome to post links if they come across something.)