By Dr.Sheetal Nair
“A tippler I was,
A tippler I yearned to be,
When it rains indeed,
Tippler drunk I be,
In the weather that is,
What’d you think it’d be?”
I’m proud to be Indian, even more proud am I of my roots, a Malayalee born & raised in the dry state of Gujarat. You see what I did there? I played to your gallery, a gallery full of all the regional stereotypes you have become accustomed to. In no other country liquor has so many connotations; religious, social, political, economic and criminal.
Madeira nay liquor also does not have so many avatars in other nations as we have in India. The folklore around it is even more interesting, tread down the untrodden path into any village, deep rooted amongst them you shall find raw, unfiltered stories of the way alcohol is embedded into our food, our religion, our festivals & our rituals.
Even more fascinating is the way various classes of society treat liquor.
A CHANCE MEETING
So, a few months ago I met a lady who fascinated me with the way she held herself amongst the crowd, time & again reminding me of the allure I have towards strong women. We got to talking &she asked me what my poison was?
I quipped nonchalantly “Scotch with a dash of water”, she looked at me & guffawed. She thought I was trying to pretend in front of her by putting up a pantomime that I’m a drinker of fine rated malt.
She went onto share how she loves her “Old Monk” with Coke or water & enjoys people who are honest enough to accept that earthy or regular fare actually satiates their need for ardent spirits. Well the horrors to my pretentiousness!!
Me being me, I just went ahead & rhymed with her octaves & finally shared a glass of the fine rated manna dew from Mohan Meakin fixed by the tall lanky spinster. But this got me thinking, the multifaceted sociology and economy of liquor has not been researched upon, may be even that is a taboo. Also, the morality or perpetrated morality decides what liquor can do and how it should be dealt with by the rulers and powers that be.
PROHIBITON – WHAT’S THAT?
Till today we don’t have a uniform liquor law in the country and state boundaries can be legally treated worse than international borders.I dare you to debate with me on the amount of alcohol smuggled into Gujarat from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh & Maharashtra – the what & how of it. The queer mix of morality, economics, polity, crime and corruption is all what liquor is all about in this country. By no stretch of imagination, it can ever be stitched into one organic whole. In the Indian union we have states where prohibition is the legal state.
The reasons for this are, well we are in “Gandhi’s Land”, “Alcohol brings out the worse in men”, “Women are safer in places where no alcohol is legally allowed”, well at least in the last state which went in for prohibition, the alleviation of women from misery as one of the reasons.
This brings me to the gender bias when it comes to alcohol, it is vehemently put across our society that men become MCP’s under the influence of alcohol!! Hence, women usually don’t allow their men to drink, so does this mean men need to take permissions from there respective spouses to drink? And if they do so, what’s wrong in that?
WOMEN & ALCOHOL
Well recently a friend of mine went on to rant about how her husband doesn’t need to take her permission to do anything, since that’s not the culture they follow at their home!!!
Like seriously? When did spouses sharing information or letting each other know something become a bad culture? It’s a known fact that it is those people who shout from rooftops about their sanity who are really insane. But coming back to this point in question – Why is it socially accepted nay propagated that women have to control their men from having too much alcohol?
Usually if you deny or ask people to avoid something too much eventually people indulge in the same thing more. For example move around any dry state in the country & you shall get easy access to alcohol. So, moving from the legally dry states to God’s Own Country, we Malayalees consume the highest amount of liquor per capita in this country (Ask any Mallu, I don’t need to quote figures or any study for the same), Kappa – Meen & Kallu are just divine.
So then is drinking a matter of personal choice, or the state can dictate it?
What percentage of people would not indulge in drinking after living in a dry state for a long time?
Does liquor connect to the business environment and the hospitality industry?
Why is getting drunk and unruly a part of the Indian behaviour?
While being nearly totally absent in the developed world. Is responsible drinking not a part of our culture?
I never liked Indra as a God, he is always shown surrounded by women &indulging in wine, you see wine with women and wealth is an age-old vice truism in this country. Fortunately, in the same country, it is one of the main sources of revenue for the state exchequer. Excise is a money spinner is more ways than one. Has alcohol become a multi-headed serpent because of our messed-up thought process or lack of uniformity, or because it piggy backs corruption?
The government of India’s major metros seem to be completely embroiled in such criminal cases. It is said the dry states have a very well-oiled supply chain and delivery of liquor. Yes, they do & the drinking age is getting lower by the day. In a recent judgement Patna High Court has talked of prohibition’s negative aspects including rising liquor smuggling involving juveniles, villagers, politicians and police personnel. The judgement talks of nine categories of crimes / social evils on the increase in this pretext including drug addictions, trade of banned narcotics, rise in vehicle thefts, rise in hooch deaths etc.
So, the reason I wrote this article? Well honestly, we should do away with Prohibition, it should be controlled & responsible drinking should be practiced. This needs to be done to ensure that our society accepts &modulates this reality about alcohol that “ We can take more out of alcohol than alcohol can take out of us.”
