MY FIRST TIPPLE

If there was an impression that when I left home for a Graduate programme I was a naive, callow, youth unwise to the ways of the wicked world, it is absolutely correct. This was also the impression my parents carried. I might have smoked a cigarette or two (at college parties and such like events to look cool in front of the girls) but never inhaled. When it came to spirits I had not even inhaled their fumes, let alone imbibing or swallowing.

I was introduced to the pleasures of alcohol by a "senior" - at that time it seemed more a pain and an acquired taste wholly without any redeeming features, an impression I quickly corrected over the next couple of years. The senior, let's call him K, was a Brown Sahib if ever there was one. He could put on a clipped Brit accent just as easily as he could break into rickshaw-puller's patois laden with the choicest expletives. He also regularly beat me at badminton and once he made me run around so much that I was too knackered to wrangle with Lagrange and Hamilton preparatory to my end-of- term exam the next day. I had to renew my acquaintance with Messieurs Lagrange et Hamilton at the end of the year.

Back to K. I am going to let you you all in on a secret that no one in college knew: at home he was known as "Jilly". He could kill me if he read this and knew where I lived. May be his parents were hoping to have a baby girl but K was born instead. It is my good fortune that I have not met K after I got to know this fact from his family circles. If I had, I'd be dead by now.

K started working for a "Foreign" Bank after passing out in 1971 and used to visit  me not infrequently in the campus. The reasons for such visits were rumoured to be a few, not the least of which was his infatuation with one of the girls in my junior class. The other reason, which I knew to be a fact, was he wished to avoid the expensive weekends that staying on in the City entailed. When the junior girl found out about the infatuation part, instead of being thankful for the attentions of what was considered a prize catch, she took off on me as if I had put K up to it. Such is the lack of gratitude in this world.

On one such visit he decided to treat some of us to a beer or two at our dorm which we shall call H9. For some mysterious reason I  paid for it and also procured it whereas it was supposed to be his treat - that was the charm he could exercise over people if he chose to. What's a beer (or two) between friends? Besides, at Rs.2.50 a bottle one couldn't go terribly out of pocket. Back in '71 that was equivalent to 30 American cents which probably was a lot for a bottle of beer, but then we were in India and in the middle of a "prohibition" which resulted in a hefty premium, no doubt. 

K insisted on proper beer mugs which we couldn't manage. So he got the only glass tumbler around  and the rest of us made do with stainless steel tumblers from the H9 cafeteria (a.k.a. "mess", perhaps in reference to the quality of food served therein). K thought that drinking beer from steel tumbler was terribly plebeian. He could say such things and still make us feel that he had said something profound.

The beer was warm and therefore we proceeded to cool it with some ice which that experience taught me never again to do. But I was callow, and knew not a warm beer from a chilled one. He then proceeded to tell how the beer tasted like horse's p**s. I did not know anything about horse's bodily fluids but thought that the man of the world that he was, he would have known. Attracted by all the hullabaloo a crowd had gathered wanting a piece of the action. All of this resulted in further dilution of the beer which by this time was really beginning to taste like horse's p**s, even to an inexperienced palate like mine. Tiring of the raucous plebeian masses and commandeering my bed K soon went to sleep, thoroughly disappointed with my bungling of his beer party (paid for by me of course which he conveniently overlooked).

Having thus had a very disagreeable introduction to beer, I was to stay away from it for some considerable time. Having given up on beer for its close association with horses, I turned my attention to spirits. Surely they must taste better, have nothing to do with horses and thus provide an agreeable experience. I was all agog and was looking forward to my encounter with spirits.

My introduction to spirits was courtesy of S's cousin from Dubai - or was it Aden? Those days the Middle East meant the area between Turkey and Israel and what we now know as Emirates was known by the un-glamorous name of Trucial Oman. Oil had just begun to flow out in shiploads and Keralites were flying in by plane loads. S's said cousin was one of the early ones. On a home visit the gent thoughtfully brought S a bottle of White Horse Whiskey (damn horse again!), a few cola tablets that fizzed in water and tasted like coca cola, and a Marlborough calendar featuring the best bikini clad babes. Understandably the demand was most for the last-named item, followed by the fizzy tablets, and the White Horse was a distant third.

The calendar was soon in pieces with sheets stuck strategically behind room doors such that when the door opened, it did so flush against the wall, and the picture was invisible to the visitor - this was important, for those days parents, uncles, aunts, grand parents, cousins, second cousins and even Nth cousins could all arrive unannounced to check on the welfare of "the poor boy living all alone in a hostel". I drew February 71 and a jolly good February it was too, right on until May '72 when it was time for me to pack up and go home. After the initial enthusiasm for the lissome lasses wore off, our attention turned to the fizzy stuff and the White Horse both of which had remained surprisingly unmolested, something I cannot say for the Calendar. 

I was determined that I should taste the spirit, equine reference notwithstanding. Water was procured, fizzy tablets dropped into it and the whiskey was added. The fizzy tablet was quite strong and managed to mask the burn and the taste of the whiskey. In all the excitement of the  "booze session", we forgot all about dinner and by the time we remembered it, the "mess" had closed for the night and we had to go hungry. With the cola masking the taste of whiskey, the drinks went down a treat and not at all like horse's p**s which was my only previous exposure to an alcoholic beverage. Soon all of it was consumed with most of us taking judicious sips whereas yours truly had had a rather injudicious and somewhat generous helpings. S had wooden legs and in any case he was a reticent sort of a bloke, so the effects of the whiskey on him could not be properly estimated.

In due course good nights were bid and everyone turned in. That's when the horses kicked in.  On an empty stomach. Thence the horses proceeded north to my head. I was in all manner of difficulties and never having experienced alcohol before wasn't sure if it was the effect of alcohol or if it was the onset of something terminal. My room was spinning on a strange oblique axis if I opened my eyes; if I did not, then my stomach wanted to exit through my mouth. I have never prayed as hard  as I did that night for the experience to end.

When I woke up the next morning the horses were still prancing inside my head and even two full sticks of S's strong Charminar cigarettes could not quell the rebellion. The night's prayers and vows were soon forgotten to be replaced by the justification that there must be a better way to consume spirits, like in a proper crystal glass for example.

I learnt later that as in learning, the trick with alcohol is to persevere. 

By persevering I have learnt the art of making spirits  an agreeable experience, something that I cannot say I did with Messieurs Lagrange and Hamilton..