The bad news from Itaewon has left me nostalgic, more than depressed. It is a strange feeling, wishing that you were there when the stampede occurred on the Halloween night, helping the victims, rather than in the safety of your home, thousands of miles away. I carry such frolicking memories of the locality that it is well-nigh impossible for me to imagine that such an orderly and welcoming city, arranged almost like Lego blocks and lit up like a control panel, could face a crisis of civic administration and evaporation of common sense?  I had left the Indian shores for the first time in October 2015, and descended upon Itaewon in Seoul. For the next eight days, I got intimate with the lanes, by-lanes and corners of this business-cum-entertainment district. Internet had informed me that Hooker Hill, located somewhere in Itaewon, was the promised land – “Emerge out of Gate Number 7 on the Metro Station, take a right, then a left, walk past the assorted international food shops, climb up a little hill through the alley, spot the American post, take a right turn and behold the heaven”. I had written the instructions on a piece of paper, and carried them in my pocket. But I messed up the instructions from the very beginning, coming out of Gate Number 5 after failing to find Gate Number 7, and found that the area was too huge and busy to harbour seedy night hideouts!  I asked around for Hooker Hill, but got blank faces for replies. People had never heard of it. Koreans are polite people if you are an American. For the rest, they do nod yes or no, but have no time to look up from their mobile screens and books.  If Hooker Hill did indeed exist despite the locals not knowing, or unwilling to talk about, it must be the abode of egregious perversion. That is exactly the kind of place I was looking for. I failed on day one, rather made do with a seedy bar-cum-parlour, where you drank with a hostess. Her drink, whatever you ordered, was invariably turned out to be sparkling water or diluted turpentine.  She was not a Korean, perhaps was a Filipino, and two of her friends hopped and chattered around us. They sound like birds in their language, for their accent is very light, and lithe are their bodies, while their faces betray constant amusement. It was not a bad first night in Itaewon. But I had failed to locate the Hooker Hill. The next evening I began my search a bit early in the evening, and made enquiries from the local shopkeepers. I gathered that the desired destination was just a glorious name for a dilapidated, old area, and whatever was the enjoyment I sought could be partaken in and around the main nodes itself, in the same area where I had spent the last evening. They sounded as if they did not want me to head there, but provided directions nevertheless. I went up a deserted hillock, came down and walked through a maze, took two right turns and two lefts, spotted lots of dog carcasses hanging outside a meat shop, came across two columns of American soldiers marching past and whistling as they did so, and finally located six black cabins atop a small mound with a stool placed outside each of them on which sat garishly decorated damsels, while their pimps wearing black shades and holding automatics, stood in rapt attention. That this was the Freedomland I was looking for, I did not feel the need to confirm. I had reached the place I had marked on the internet, but the settings were too tricky to play around with. I was a foreigner in a strange land, on my first trip abroad, and the idea of being amid guns and damsels behind closed black glasses was quite unnerving. Who knew what trick they might pull? I hung around in suspended animation. I did not have much money on me, neither the passport, for that matter. Yet I feared to tread in, such was the aura of that place. I had reached the Timbuktu I sought, but did I dare to disturb this universe? Why on earth were there guns for? The girls waiting outside the cabins were no mermaids either. They were of similar class or quality as the girls I had drank with in the bar a day before. Compounding the anxiety was the simple fact that there were no aspirants, suitors or customers, headed this way. Some kind of a Hooker Hill! Should have been christened Hookie, or Haunted Hill instead.  As I grappled with my dilemma, a biker arrived on the scene, halted with a screech, parked his bike opposite a cabin on the other side of the road, and confidently entered its premises. The guard, or pimp with the gun, drew together his legs with gusto. The damsel kept sitting, but drew out her hat in acknowledgement.  The black-tinted glasses drew shut behind him, giving that particular cabin the look of a black bunker. I had seen enough to realize that I didn’t belong in the Hooker Hill, so I slowly walked my ass off to the main recreational area where the girls I had met the previous evening accosted me with frivolous giggles and body jiggles. I felt quite welcomed in their joint. There I quenched my thirst, sowed some wild oats, and kept going back every day for the whole next week. The lane became fully aware of my existence, and I had at least seen if not sampled all the faces on the menu. Enough merriment in a week of revelry to make for a lifetime of memories! Shocking is to note that those same alleys and by-lanes got choked by a human tsunami. Huge crowd had gathered in the district to enjoy Halloween after a gap of almost three years.  With almost a lakh people celebrating on the streets in the area, the police had chosen to spare just 137 cops to maintain order. Many concerned citizens had been calling the police and the fire department since the evening itself, for the burgeoning crowds showed signs of mayhem, and worried them.  Many cops were busy attending to a political protest in nearby locality. Revellers got stuck in narrow, downhill lanes, pushing and jostling against each other, got asphyxiated, bled from their nose and mouth, and lost their lives. No emergency medical aid was available. Bystanders provided CPRs to the injured, spread-out on roadsides. The numerous clubs in the area kept running all this while, even as 158 fellowmen got crushed. What caused the commotion is not yet clear. Were drug candies being passed off for fun, or did the crowd go berserk because some celeb had been spotted?  Did fire break out at some local club, or was the pandemonium a natural outcome of the geography, one cannot say. I would surely give my arm and a leg to know how did the glass cabins of Hooker Hill hold up against the crowd surge, and did the Filipino girls save any lives on the fateful night. But I have no means of knowing, and that is all right. On my next visit to Seoul, if I ever go, I would definitely visit the same joint in Itaewon, and light a few candles.

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