Drinking with friends

I saw this movie 'Superbad' a few weeks ago and I loved it . Not that it has an exceptional storyline but the script-writer and the director have done a wonderful job narrating the experience of 3 teenagers trying to attend a 'happening' party. The only reason they are invited is that they have proclaimed that they can buy alcohol for the party. The entire movie is based on the events of that one night and their attempts to get alcohol. I am sure it struck a chord with most of the people who saw that movie, since every underage drinker must have been able to relate to it.

The first time, I and my friends tried to experiment with alcohol is still so fresh in my memory. Let me clear something up before I proceed. Personally, I and most of my drinking friends don't consider beer as alcohol. It just is not in the same league as Rum, Vodka, Whiskey and the likes. So yes, I did have beer once or twice before my initiation to hard liquor but it was very disappointing. You ingest all that bitter liquid and for what? Nothing except a bloated belly, beer breath and a need to pee like its going out of fashion. No thank you, I will settle for a rum anyday - a little bit goes a long way. I like efficiency. Very little input and a lots of output.

Anyway, we had planned on drinking at a friend's place since he lived alone. This friend, whom we shall call DK, was sporting enough to let us use his place. Frankly speaking, I think his curiousity might have been bigger than his sporting nature. Buying the liquor was a big exercise in planning and execution that would have put the best in the business to shame. We obviously could not buy it from anywhere close by for fear of getting recognized by the countless 'uncles' and 'aunties' (read friends of parents) of our neighbourhood. So the plan was to buy it from another neighbourhood which was a 20-25 minute walk away. Even though the plan was to drink the night away, we had planned on buying the alcohol in the afternoon, the reasoning behind it being that streets are least populated when the unflinching high afternoon sun is roasting you, slowly sapping your life-forces. Also we had decided that all 5 of us would go in to buy it and buy it confidently like seasoned-pros as if we bathed in liquor 3 times a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The actual act of buying the liquor at the shop was not a problem at all, since unlike the US, during those days shopkeepers in Bombay had absolutely no problem selling it to you even if you were 10. In fact you would most likely get an encouraging smile, twinkling eyes silently congratulating you on your first step hopefully towards a long and enjoyable journey with Somdev ( सोमदेव - the Hindu god of wine) since Bacchus, Somdev's Greek counterpart was a continent away. Thankfully, everything went according to plan and we were able to buy some whiskey without problems. The only embarassing points in the almost clinical execution of our plan were that (1) none of us knew what a good mixer for whiskey was and we ended up staring blankly at the shopkeeper who had raised the question. Finally someone said coke and the shopkeeper gave us a disapproving look which said "what kind of people are you to mix whiskey with coke?". But as the old Indian saying goes, 'an arrow shot from a bow and a word uttered cannot be taken back', sure enough we stuck with coke. (2) the plastic bag given to us did not offer the best padding and the bottles kept clinking as we walked. Anyone with half a brain could have guessed what was inside the plastic bag, which was black in colour as liquor bags usually were.

We felt a huge sense of accomplishment when we finally climbed the four flights of stairs and stashed away the alcohol in a safe place inside DK's apartment. That night of drunken revelry revealed quite a few interesting things about my friends. DK delves into poetry when drunk , which unfortunately then was wasted on 4 drunk boys. YG loves chinese food and the girl who lives in flat # 002 of the adjacent building, in that order. VM, the shy and polite friend's favourite position from the Kamasutra is not the missionary one. AP can move his neck over the side of the bed to throw up without moving the rest of his body.

After that first time, there was no looking back and over the next many years I had the opportunity to drink with friends, friends of friends and complete strangers. I had a room-mate RC (even his initials stand for Royal Challenge whiskey) who belonged to the school of thought that puking your guts out was not to be construed as a sign of your body suggesting that you stop filling it up with alcohol. He merely treated it like a quality problem in the whole alcohol-ingestion operations process in which the previous batch of liquor which went into his body had some minor problems. So he would just continue drinking right where he left. Then there was the other roommate DS who would dance in his underwear, scarring us for life. Oh wait, he did that even when he was sober!

More or less, drinkers fit into a few basic moulds. There is always the talkative-when-sober guy who goes silent as soon as the alcohol kicks in. Then there is someone on the other extreme. The free advice-disburser who can give you advice on anything from matters of the heart to how to brush your teeth. The complete stranger, who will walk into your table, sit with you and buy you a drink or have you buy him a drink. The giggling fellow who finds mirth in the most mundane of things, the hot-blooded chap who is raring for a brawl etc etc. I fall under the talkative, laughing, giggling and definitely non-violent mould. I remember once I had offered some food to a drunk angry man who had got into a fight with some of my equally drunk friends at a bar. I was extremely hungry and completely plastered and wanted to eat the last of the 'daal' (दाल) but was not sure if anyone else wanted it. I may have been drunk but I had not lost any of my manners. So I went around asking my friends (they were many, definitely more than 10 ) if they wanted any of it and since this guy was also standing there, fists twitching, ready for action, I ended up asking him too. I did not want to have him feel left-out. It sounds far-fetched but he actually replied to me very politely that his stomach was full and he could not eat anything else. Anyway, the situation was soon diffused thanks to all the waiters (20 or so, I was amazed that place had so many waiters) and the rumour of a police van around the corner.

Drinking alone by myself has never been appealing to me. If the company is right, drinking can be a lot of fun. And I have been lucky enough to have had very good company most of the time. Looking back at all these fun-filled memories, I have realised that alcohol has had a minute role to play in it. It was the whole experience of sharing it with friends which makes it so memorable -the conversations and the stupid things you do, giving you an opportunity to laugh at yourself later, that makes it so appealing. Without friends to share it, the same alcohol would have amounted to nothing. In a way, a drink without friends is like watching a foreign movie without subtitles. You can definitely do it but you are not going to have a lot of fun.