Just a little bit
On the way home the other evening I passed a very loud outdoor concert and decided to detour for a moment to see what was going on. It was near the end of the show and some band from India was playing. I stopped right outside the gate and immediately had some young somewhat drunk Nepali guy striking up a convo and asking for my number.
I declined to divulge. You can get good at that here, as people often seem to think that after talking to you for two minutes you should give them your number. I am afraid I am generally a bit less friendly than I used to be as a defense tactic. I was reasonably chatty when paying my phone bill recently and the guy at the counter asked for my number. Before I could even respond he just looked at my bill and wrote it down, along with my name. Maybe collecting numbers is kind of like collecting Facebook friends here. It doesn't matter if you really know the person or ever talk to them again, so long as your list is ever growing.
I digress. Back to the concert. I'm chatting with the slightly drunk guy when I see the younger brother of another friend of mine. As soon as I start talking to this friend, drunk guy disappears. Now a funny thing about standing in a large Nepali crowd -- people often stand right next to you and stare at you and listen to your entire conversation though they don't know you or the people you are talking to. As I was talking with my friend, another guy joined the conversation. Only at the end did I find out that the third guy didn't know either of us. I had wrongly assumed he was with my other friend, he was standing so close and jumped in to our talk so easily, but no, he was just a bystander.
My friend admitted that when he walked by and saw me talking to drunk guy, he stopped because he was worried about me. Though he is much younger than me, he wanted to make sure I was okay and gently scolded me for being alone in a crowd like. And then apologized for doing so. It was quite sweet.
As the concert ended, our rock star took a moment between screaming AC/DC songs (yes, and quite well at that; my throat got sore just listening) to encourage responsibility among his fans. Before his final song, he shouted to all --
"Drink as much as you want, guys! Have a great time! But when you leave and when you drive, please please drive a little bit responsibly!"
(Just a little bit. That's all you need. And I wondered, was this little bit of responsible driving supposed to take place after people followed his first encouragement to drink all they wanted? Hmmm......)
"If you don't drive a little bit responsibly," rock star continued, "then you'll end up like this last song, on the Highway to Hell!!!"
And it was back to screaming AC/DC.