INITIATION

“On the other side, on the other side.

Nobody’s waiting for me, on the other side.”

-          The Strokes

(First Impressions of Earth)

In retrospect, I must have been a bit drunk. Or else, the deviant nature of the matter would have struck me then. In front of me lay three new inductees into Bacchus’ densely populated community. One had all but orally egested the last dollop of every chicken leg he had consumed in the last two days. Another one had spluttered out the feeble supper he had eaten three hours ago all over his bed, and was sleeping in contentment over it. The third one had shown, what could safely be called the gift of temperance. Three large pegs down in his first rendezvous with alcohol and he was doing what he always did best in the dormitory – clean up. I began doubting my assessment of the three froth-freshmen when the purportedly sober one started flogging the dozing-over-vomit guy to wake him up. All my doubts were quelled when the former decided that the issue was dire enough to try getting him to his senses by twanging his phallic instrument.

People comfortable with alcohol often end up thinking that time prefers to enliven itself only in its accompaniment. However, some of the most boisterous scenes often ensue when people non-affiliated to liquor end up sipping a swig or two. Take our three sloshed musketeers. They almost went berserk at the bar after a pint of Tuborg each. All those fantasies of the bibulous life that advocates for safe driving and evangelists of abstinence build clouded their notions. They liked to believe that Tuborg hadn’t yet transported him to the cosmos even though the fact that they were tipsy was quite evident to everyone else in Colaba.

The first time around is always the rubicon, my mum used to tell me in those rare moments when she would preach. The hazards of managing a job with my impish feet emulating Maradona inside her belly taught her the discourse twenty years ago. People get scarred when something fizzles out disastrously the first time around. Imagine yourself getting castigated on the first day at work, or pulled up by the cops for bumping into another sedan the first time you take out any vehicle for a spin. Mum tells me you ought to heal yourself out of the trauma and learn to walk again. She ought to know. A junkie-faced goblin as the fruit of her first nine-month ordeal didn’t impede her from conceiving a second child. Hopefully, she got it right with my sister.

Teaching caddies how to fish always makes more sense than giving them a tuna every day. Our venerated trio needed to be shown where to go looking with faded pockets. Men always like to learn the ropes on their own. In that process, however, they end up sticking to a procedure that they end up following all the time. Drinking vodka on a deserted bus stop with the three virgins, I wondered if they would end up doing the same round every time they needed a spirited fix – dissolve the elixir in soft drink cans and have people around them wondering why those guys with the 7Up cans seem to be hollering ‘pussy’ over and over again. The force of habit is often stronger than gravity, something you realise in the first month of Post-Nicotine Syndrome (PNS). Maybe, even stronger than the thrust of your bowels, as the foreign-bred Indian often realises once inside a loo in his motherland.

         At the end of the day, the bridge is yours to cross. You can only show them the flashlight, I thought, watching the repugnant form of inducing consciousness unfold before me. Your fears and inhibitions remain your own to overcome. In a world full of bon vivant - bloated bellies, you can hardly expect anyone to understand the perils of a famished body. No point even telling them if there are butterflies trampling inside.