Living The Hangover

We're fighting a losing battle, people, and time is against us. Sooner or later, respectability will claim all of us, and we'll be completely responsible citizens of this ugly world.

It's been three years since we've passed out of college, and while it would not be fair to say that we have been paragons of virtue, it would certainly be reasonable to admit that Bacchus might not be best pleased with his once ardent devotees. And like I said, it's going to get worse.

But every now and then, even when we're seemingly cloaked in the garb of drab generality, we have it within us to get out there and raise Cain.

And by raising, I do not mean the odd pitcher, and by Cain I do not mean beer. I mean nights when gentlemen in khaki are involved, nights when old tires are pinched from roadside puncture shops. I mean nights when rides to Chandni Chowk are undertaken, and nights that end in roadside naps halfway to Mysore. Nights that involve flirting with arson, and nights that end... well some things even this blog cannot discuss.

Still, you get the point, no? We're talking about stuff that would make family go ballistic, if family were (shudder) ever to find out. Stuff that you can tell your children when the young tykes will sneer at your (by then) comatose lifestyle. Stuff that you can repeat to each other over beer in Goa. Stuff, in other words, that makes you think life on this planet has been not been all that bad.

And while in earlier avatars, such happenstances were nothing out of the unusual on Saturday nights, they are today precious few in occurence. Jobs, and schedules and family (old and new) and all things like that prevent all from being present together under one (about to be blown up) roof.

Which is why, when fortuitous circumstances arise, it is important to make the most of them. It is important to let down what is left of one's hair, hang the consequences, and party. The aftermath has looked after itself thus far, and that is reason enough for one to suppose that thus shall be the case tomorrow as well.

Tonight being one such night, when perpetrators of the tire incident, the arson incident and the incident that cannot be talked about, all gather under one roof. Along with other worthies, capable of making hair stand on end in their own right. They shall pray once again, after a long, long, long time, to their favourite deity, Bacchus, and may He bless us all once again.

Respectability, there's a bamboo coming up your derriere tonight. Plis excuse.

And cheers

The beauty is...there are places that will happily oblige on playing these songs for you every night.

The same set of blessed songs. No DJ's creative liberties, no remixed versions and no 'ooh-we-can dance-to-this-one' monstrosities. These little pubs know their classic rock and they will play it. Commerce, innovation, keeping up with the times and tapping new market segments be damned.

And you could try and replicate the scene in your room. You could bring your buddies over, hook up some sweet speakers, order Chinese and talk about nuthing at all. Hell, you could even go beyond...no pub lets you burn newspapers in the premises, or play Monopoly, or dance around foolishly to a Chumbawamba song with a plastic chair balancing wobbily on your head. All this to rapidly refilled glasses of fruit punch, or rum and coke or whatever your poison is.

But..soon enough..thou shall miss the beer.

I still remember the first sip I'd taken ever..a pint of Fosters, shared between the 3 aforementioned idiots. And I'd screwed up my face, gagged convulsively and wondered how people could even drink the stuff for free, much less the fact that it was thrice as expensive as Coke.

But then, one learnt. That you could delay the aftertaste a bit if you drank really fast. Chug, apparently. And that you the aftertaste was smoother if you drank it really cold. And then, one learnt that if you've done a critical volume of beer already, it's the aftertaste that you are now drinking for.

And one learnt about the Cannon 10000, and how one bottle's contents could still knock you out. And the classic Kingfisher. One learnt about Kings in Goa and about Jaguar's in Bangalore and about the beer at Pecos. One learnt about pitcher cards and popcorn and happy hours and beer goggles and how much is too much to chug. 

About how blessed it feels, when you duck into a little shack on a scalding afternoon and crack open the first can, and have that first sip. About finding a spot that does not make you walk in with shiny shirts and gelled hair and dancing shoes, but just lets you be. Here's your music and here's your beer, boyo. Grin all you like.

And the buzz...hmmm.

Do you remember your school physics lessons, where you could strike a tiny tuning fork on a hard surface, and then you'd have to place it against a really tight strung wire? There'd be a folded piece of paper atop the wire, and it would vibrate in all enthusiasm if you brought the appropriate fork to the wire. Each wire had it's own fork....matching frequencies or some such shit.

I'm the strung wire. We all are, each with his own reasons. And that folded piece of paper has learnt to be inert for most of the time.

But bring on the 4th pitcher, and the paper begins to buzz. Throw in a forkful of beef chilly fry, and he'd be tapping his feet and hugging people.

Now kick in the opening bars of Stairway to Heaven, and he'd probably origami himself to orgasm.