A toss with a Beer .Swirling Motions behold….

Over the years I have always held a selective prejudice towards alcohol. I believe if someone pays for my drink I shouldn’t hold my wildest urge to get tossed out. On the contrary shelling out even a shilling for a squint towards alcohol would bring out meanest of miser within me, putting even likes of Scrooge to shame. Early college days taught me to ignore the smell and taste, gulp down the acrid solution forcing through the esophagus -.at times just to boast in front of peers that indeed I am manly enough to drink a peg.
Later half showed the way to enjoy every sip of it, albeit on others’ expense – monetarily as well as physically.

There use to be numerous stories doing round of college hostels about certain guys waking up with a splash of beer on their face, using beer to rinse mouth, beer for bath, apparently even plans of filling the water tank on the top of hostel building with gallons of beer and passing an outlet in each of the parched dins of hostel aisle and bay. However, the reality never met my inquisitive eyes and salivating mouth. Outlandish it may seem, yet some guys use to get that extra kick of energy by the smell of beer. The group parties often accounted to famous anecdotes about people on the other spectrum of emotional un-stability.

I can recount my three experiences when couple of pegs drove me to the un-traversed land of fantasy and tranquility. Perhaps then I realized how good a beer or vodka can be when you are looking for a stress buster or adding a Xing to your one-dimensional persona.

On my first trip to Goa, I had controlled aggression towards attacking a mug of beer at shocker of a price; mostly because the seeds of morality and strangled wallet created a double decker huddle. Yet the land of sun, sand and beaches decided to bid me with one last splash to the elusive zone of getting bowled out – mentally .Martin’s – advertised as Sachin’s favorite joint - was the place where we rounded up our sojourn to Goa. The ambience was amazing and adding cherry to the pudding was the presence of Narain Karthikeyan , the then Formula 3 champion from India.

NK had won a car rally that day and apparently there was a party thrown from his sponsors at Martin’s. And as a part of acknowledging NK’s achievement, it was decided that the drink for all the people present at Martin’s will be paid by the benevolent sponsors. For few of us it was a monsoon rainfall on deserts of Sahara. Prior to that those odd rounds of Kingfisher or few Scotch was the maximum I knew about the drinks. That day it all started with Australian beer, followed by Mexican cocktail, topped with Russian Vodka and rounding it off with a French Wine. Metaphorically the world globe was pouring inside the goblet. And after the fifth round of Foster’s Beer , it was game, set and over and out for Addy. I never had prior experience of what it feels like when your senses looses its coherence . That day I sensed myself on the top of a Helicopter, swirling and gyrating at the speed greater than those fans .One moment the kick lifted me upwards, floating in the sky. The next moment I came zooming down like a bungee jumper. The harmonic motion of my adrenaline flow synchronized with every single breath I took.
In- I go upwards: Out- I mellow down
Finally I was carried to the apartment where we stayed.

In the wee hours of the morning my resistance gave up. I spilled over every single drop that I coaxed inside my body. Bucket full of slugs and swamps came rushing through my mouth, nostrils and eyes. The intoxication vanished as quickly as it had gripped me.Whole of next day I was crippled with severe hangover yet the sensation that I experienced last night brought a mischievous grin across my lips.

On another occasion, on my maiden trip by plane, I was overwhelmed by the very atmosphere of Chennai Airport. Those were the days when my credit card was the key to treasure of Monte Cristo. I had read in the card offer that I could avail snacks and drinks free of cost, at the airport lounge. What would have been the better occasion than this to celebrate my maiden trip on Air. Just to ensure that I don’t miss out the dollies , I pumped in couple of extra cans of bear. Now I was ready to fly- free of any anxiety and apprehension.

As my bad luck has always been, here too a woman in mid-fifties and another in early seventies, I presume, was my co-passenger. With nothing much to offer to these ladies in terms of intellect and humor, I decided to pour myself amidst the black sentences of daily newspaper. The occasional kick from the beer in tummy blurred my vision and suggested that I wasn’t in full control of my senses. In the midst of heavy duty world politics news , there was one full page article on World Bikini’s Day.

Man was I reading correct??? Or my senses have indeed got hallucinated???

I had heard of Mother’s day. Father’s day, Women’s day. Flower’s day, even Dog’s Day. But what is this Bikini’s day. The beer kick didn’t loose any time in me jumping on those lines searching for Pamela Anderson, Victoria Streisand or even J Lo. Playing a dampener to my spirits, there wasn’t any spicy stuff written or displayed to set about a humdinger in my fantasy land.

I laid back contemplating about such an august occasion of Bikini’s day. I was hanging there in mid-air where I couldn’t even surf those odd channels of Russian Television where I could truly appreciate the essence of the D Day. I turned my head side ways and found my co-passengers snoring with their head held high. The impish beer didn’t loose its trait. My fantasy broke a new barrier when I starting fancying these two ladies clad in skimpiest bare minimum representing India at World’s Bikini Day across the Bondi Beach in Sydney. I could see those sultry figure competing with rest of the babes running towards me...in an urge to meet my open arms….and then…

Smack!! I suddenly got a hit on my face. The fantasy swirled out into reality. I was back at my seat sitting beside an elderly woman. The effect of beer was gone because of unintentional slap from my co-passenger in her sleepy state. Perhaps she too caught the strong frequencies that the beer effect was sending through my antenna. My Bikini day celebration ended with it.

As the final part of the trilogy with the beer- me and couple of my friends decided to make a short trip to beautiful Pondicherry. The long drive from Madras to Pondi on East Coast Road around midnight is one of the awesome experiences. The cars rocket upwards of 100kph speed, at times loosing contact with the surface because of air gap generated at such high speed.
We reached Pondi around 2 o’ clock in night and immediately went in search for a local beer shop. Finally after handing the pub guard few extra bucks we managed to get hold of couple of bottles. It was enough to make our trip fruitful.

In Pondicherry ,alongside the beaches there are several government offices and of course a big Gandhi ji statue. That day the essence of beer threw kitchen sink against our nationalism. Three of us sat underneath Gandhi ji’s statue and started gulping down those myriads of fantasy and tranquil drops that the bottle carried.

However, the bout didn’t last too long .A local cop saw us, maligning the Father of Nation’s virtue and ideology, barged in.Perhaps his sense of nationalism paid him monetary dividends in huge measure.We had to shell out even the last coin that softly jingled in my back pocket. He drove us out of our senses , out of the beach and out of Pondicherry. Then and there ended our romanticism with the bottle of beer.