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Let’s drink to that, a little at a time

I was born in a family of boozers. So fanatic was my indoctrination that till I came of age, I always thought that brandy was a medicine for cough and cold.

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Col HP Singh (retd)

I was born in a family of boozers. So fanatic was my indoctrination that till I came of age, I always thought that brandy was a medicine for cough and cold. It is always better to be absolutely ridiculous than be absolutely boring, was the belief held by my pseudo-intellectual elders. An argument that liquor does not solve any problem would be promptly rebutted by the counter claim that neither does milk. On falling ill, their only concern would be whether they could drink along with medication.

I could never muster courage of not toeing their line. Teetotallers in our extended family were treated with disparaging contempt and if anyone of these decent souls did decide on a change of heart due to peer pressure, their ‘baptising’ ceremony would be a celebration of sorts. The profession of arms chosen by me gave no solace either, and I was welcomed into it with the customary ‘14 pegs’, the figure being the number of my regiment. My father’s congratulatory letter on my commissioning contained more words on drinking etiquettes than on tips for soldiering.  

As years rolled by, I developed a taste for alcohol. Wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure and it sharpens exponentially if mixed with liquor, so I felt. Wine was the greatest invention of mankind. Yes, wheel was also a fine invention, but wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza. I would feel sorry for people who didn’t drink for when they would wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they were going to feel all day. 

After gallons of spirit had gushed through my system, my inner voice one day warned me of becoming a slave to my habit. On a New Year’s Eve I made a resolution to drink only on certain occasions. But this world is a theatre of joy and sorrow; to celebrate happiness and to subdue pain were good enough reasons to drink. Soon festivals, weekends and anniversaries joined the ‘wet day’ list. To fight foggy winters with rum, sultry summers with chilled beer and enjoy a downpour with Scotch became justifiable. My brain and heart would be in conflict and it was my liver which would ultimately have the last laugh.

Finally, I decided to earn my pegs by workout rather than fail in every attempt of abstaining from it and feel guilty. I took to running and golfing, equating a kilometre’s run or scoring a par, as a sanction for a peg that evening. Within a few weeks, my stamina built up and my game improved. When the source of my adrenaline rush finally shifted from alcohol to these constructive activities, and my will power was back in play, it dawned upon me that all these years I had stupidly mortgaged my pleasure to this external source of a ‘high’, when the key to happiness lay inside me. At last, I could counter my folks who claimed that ‘reality was an illusion caused by deficiency of alcohol’.

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