When I first got acquainted with Dave Besseling as a fellow journalist in Delhi seven years ago, he had long blonde ringlets of hair. Apart from leading to the customary “What hair products do you use?” chinwag at parties, it also got him a fair amount of female attention.
Last year, Besseling, who’s now the deputy editor of GQ India, wrote a feature on a man who’s proclaimed himself to be ‘Bombay’s #1 pickup artist’—ostensibly helping Indian men without the requisite good looks, charm or social skills (or blonde ringlets) to score dates being their normal selves. Besseling’s subject, Sid Malhotra, the Pick Up Artist (PUA) is a deplorable but fascinating character who claims he can teach any man how to “flick all the switches”.
The article led to a book deal, set to release on Penguin Books India later this month. It has a curious cover blurb by actor Ranveer Singh: “Besseling asks questions that don’t normally get asked.” In keeping with the spirit, Vogue asks the personal questions that don’t normally get asked.
Q1. I thought deep and hard and I believe no PUA has tried these rulebook lines on me in India. And I even live in Bandra, which according to your research is PUA central. Should I be insulted?
That’s because you’re already such an established Bandra power fixture, Anindita. Plus, you know very well the glares you’re capable of when annoyed or bemused. One good stink-eye from you and these goofs would scatter like vampires under a floodlight.
Q2. Is there a type the average PUA goes for? Asking so I can alert my friends.
Well this relates to your first question. I could never imagine any of my female friends buying into their shady proclamations. When I first challenged Sid to prove himself, I suspected to be amused at watching him fail and leave it at that, because if there was one thing I know after living in South Asia for the better part of eight years, it’s that Indian women are the most wary dating cohort I’ve ever witnessed, subject as they are to endless pestering by a generation of men whose idea of manhood exists somewhere between the troglodyte dragging a female to his cave by her hair—where, perhaps, a few Shah Rukh Khan shimmies will be enough to win her over—and the unflinching belief that any woman’s heart lies just another 20 unsolicited Facebook messages away. (I remain convinced that Facebook’s “Other” folder was implemented to keep Indian women from abandoning the platform altogether.) “No way this guy’s parlour tricks were going to beguile the most active and intense creep-detection systems in Asia,” I thought. But they did.
For Sid & co, yes, it’s always about looks—blondes being the ultimate trophy here, for reasons you can well imagine—because it’s about competition and not a real connection. They go for the ones they think they can get. They talk about challenging themselves by getting the hottest girls in the room, but with me watching and their reputations at stake, I only got to meet women like the Former Miss India, who’d become Sid’s friend. There must have been quite a few failed missions on that “grade” of “set” before and after her, but no way they’d let me see that. However much I was embedded, they wanted to control my perception as much as possible.
But what Sid won’t know until he reads the book, is that his last date with a hot American blonde wasn’t really his date, but a friend of mine, who recorded the whole thing. He was like a quivering schoolboy, and his repertoire definitely bombed, with hilarious results.
Q3. Do shed some light on signals or body language that deters PUAs. How can women set a lakshman rekha around them?
A big part of the pickup Apocrypha is this whole attention to physical cues, to body language, but after a point it’s like, “dude, she smoothed her hair because it was windy, not because she wants play from you”.
The only defensive force field you really need is confidence. As Neil Strauss said recently while promoting his new book about being a recovering sex addict, back when he was researching The Game, he didn’t quite realise then that they were just a bunch of little boys who were shit-scared of women. So as a strong and confident woman, you’re already warding off these imps. So just carry on with that. Unworthy suitors will tumble like dead beanstalks.
Q4. What are the tell tale signs of a PUA? Should women be wary of all men with peacocking glasses and/or rattails—tools used by the PUAs in your book.
I’d avoid men with peacocking glasses and rattails on general aesthetic principle, yes. You’re Vogue, you don’t need me to tell you that.
But identifying the telltale signs is not as simple as it sounds, here in what Sid calls “the Indian context”. As more than one female subject in the book attests, they are so used to men being cheesy, sleazy, disrespectful and rude, they don’t see Sid coming as a PUA because he’s so polite and well dressed. I asked a Scandinavian model if the bar was in fact so low in India that basic manners were enough for her to drop her guard, and she said yes. So for Indian women, as if they didn’t have it bad enough already, excessive politeness is to be treated with as much suspicion as a cat-call from a passing Honda Pulsar.
Q5. What is one thing you are never doing after your eight weeks researching this book?
I was just happy to get out of their world when this was done, because I do think pickup is childish and regressive and silly and just unfair to women. If anything seeped across that divide of subject and reporter, it was that after learning how they broke down psychological concepts in order to manipulate women, I would then question my own behaviour. What I had always considered a purely natural way of flirting were things they would twist into bullet points in a playbook. So even if I would ask a girl out for a drink, I’d be worried that what I’d always done naturally might be taken by her as part of a routine, and then I’d second-guess myself, and that drove me nuts. And if I was out with a girl who knew what I was working on, and I’d say something complementary or whatever, she’d go, “Is that something you learned from that pickup artist?”
Q6. What did writing this book teach you about the psyche of the Indian female?
Coming from Canada, I have always maintained that of all the countries I’ve lived in, Indian women deserve the most credit. They take the most shit the most often from the biggest packs of losers, and somehow turn out to be smart, sophisticated, and not murder anyone. It’s truly amazing. And this leads into the biggest reason I had not to write the book at all. I’ve seen my female friends suffer enough over the years, I couldn’t live with myself if I were to encourage any ‘fraandship’-seekers. These types are often, much like Sid and the pickup artists, spoiled urban manboys who see women not as equals but acquisitions, accumulation of property, and like Sid, have grown up where sex is taboo. But more than these men that might read about Sid and try out his moves, hopefully Laid in India can also function as a deterrent, and having exposed the methodological trickery will save women wasting their time on the Sids of the world.
Q7. You have a blurb from Ranveer Singh. What do guys like him need to learn from guys like Sid?
Good question! At this point, nothing. Ranveer can just show up. Women will claw each other to get at him. Which is not the dream that guys like Sid think it is. For a guy in Ranveer’s position, with that level of exposure, keeping an exclusive relationship is practically doomed, but he’s always told me how glad he is that his philandering days are behind him.
Q8. What’s the craziest thing researching this book involved?
It’s crazy to me that the book even exists. I thought the story we posted on the GQ website would get a couple of shares and sink. I didn’t think anyone in 2016 would give a shit about this guy. But within a day of the original story going online, I realised I was very wrong. And figuring out why there was so much interest, what caused so many people to react so quickly, has become a big part of the book’s subtext. So I ended up learning a lot more than I thought I would. Which is good, because I’m not very smart.
Laid in India: Eight Weeks with Bombay’s #1 Pickup Artist is forthcoming on Penguin Books India this month; pre-order here
The post How to identify the sleazeballs when you’re out with your girlfriends next appeared first on VOGUE India.