How a man drinks defines him. For the last few weeks I have been doing the rounds of Kolkata’s clubs — a hallowed bastion of tradition, if there be any left. And I am sorry to say that they don’t take the matter of tradition seriously enough. What I mean is, the emphasis is all wrong. Quantity prevails over quality, not the other way round.
The verandah next to the lawn in Calcutta Club with cane chairs is as right as you can get in terms of ambience when the weather is not too hot and the whirling fan overhead suffices, obviating the need to move indoors into the air-conditioning. After all, when clubs came to India there was no air-conditioning.
As soon as I settled down and the waiter hovered around for my order, I asked my host what he was sipping. RC, he said and surprised me no end. But I thought you were now a Blender’s Pride person, I asked. We all were RC people earlier, before there were too many choices. And come to think of it, those of my vintage had begun with BK. There was choice in those days too. You could have your BK with soda or water but not on the rocks as there was no flavour to relish and you only ended up burning your gullet downwards.
Seeing my reaction, he explained sheepishly, there is an offer, one for one. Then I recalled that on the last occasion he was sipping yet another concoction, Whyte & Mackay, that cost several multiples. In fact, RC to W&M spanned a range, proving that price was not the consideration. He was changing blends simply because there was an offer!
This, to my mind, goes against all canons of good drinking, which is about the same as good living. Your favourite drink is like your companion of the time. It is not as if you do not go for a change occasionally. But that is a considered, studied decision which usually takes place over a period of time and is invariably quite eventful in its own way. It begins with a tiredness, a growing disappointment with what was exciting once upon a time. Then the eye roves and rests on a new possibility and you take a sip or two with careful circumspection, like a male pigeon beginning a little dance around a female with tentativeness.
Then you take the plunge, decide to change and there is usually much bitterness in the dregs of your last drink of the old stuff or the last lap of the old relationship. The freshness of the new blend is full of excitement, even heady and it takes a bit of time for life to settle down in its old groove. The waiter then knows what you mean when you say, Ismail, the usual please (in equivalent Hindustani), and your friends know who you will turn up with for an in house.
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The change in the way life goes on in the city of good drinking stretches further. On my current visit I have tried out some of the old shops on Park Street or Free School Street looking for my chosen brand of wine. It is often not there but a very civil and courteous conversation follows, with the shop assistant, across an open counter, usually saying, Sir, have you tried the Four Seasons, with an expression that says it is not bad at all. Whether I have eventually taken his suggestion or not is not the issue. It is the civility of the whole experience that puts you in a slightly light frame of mind.
The other day the wife said she was finding her usual red wine a little too dry and would I mind getting some of the Grovers’ Rosé? Not at all, I said, and ventured out to what I considered one of the better stocked shops in the particular south Kolkata neighbourhood. It was closed. Apparently, liquor shops these days choose their own weekly closing days, I was told, and so moved to another outlet in the neighbourhood.
The experience thereafter was horrendous and bordering on the traumatic. Young men, mostly in their early twenties, crowded before barred and netted windows, jostled and ordered more by the measure than the brand, and all I can say is that there is more dignity in buying a cake of soap than the stuff that cheers like this. I know drinking is injurious to health but buying your bottle like this is injurious to the spirit, which is so much worse.
I am all in favour of drinks being available to all the classes and see nothing wrong in the poor drowning their hardship for a few hours of light heartedness occasionally. I see a lot of it in Bangalore and have been advised that alcoholism among the poor there is an issue, taking something away from the plus of the ease with which you can buy a bottle anywhere. But these young men were not poor and time was when Calcutta, as it was called then, was a place where you could buy your drink, for consumption both on or off the premises, with ease and civility.