Subir Roy: Not quite wine and roses

OFFBEAT

With a heavy heart I scoured the shelves of FoodWorld, which these days stock a decent collection in wines and came home with a collection of four bottles, of varying prices and countries of origin. Not that I have anything against wines, so long as I can chase them up with something stronger.

But the regret is that the wine bottles symbolise the virtual breakup of the steadiest drinking partnership I have known for almost a quarter century. It all began when there was a long strike at Kolkata's Anandabazar group. I had nothing to do, nor did the girl I was going around with and we routinely got drunk at that pleasant eatery Astor on Theatre Road. When she was almost bankrupt (I had become so long ago), the strike ended and I went back to doing late nights at The Telegraph.

That was all right but I had a new problem. Drinking at odd hours at Astor I could do without, but I had rather got used to drinking with this person. So as a convenience we decided to get married. Our priorities were clear. Neither of us could bear a peer who couldn't bear drinking, and we could only think of marrying someone who passed for being a good drinking companion.

Life went on and I soon realised that Shakespeare had indeed defined the various stages of a man's life but for me these were additionally signposted by my relationship with the cup that never fails to cheer. Childhood had truly ended when in early college days I tasted liquor, rather liked the taste of it and felt grownup once in a while at one of those cosy, perfectly respectable Kolkata bars where all good people seriously discussed the world's problems while downing their measures.

The memorable part of early working life was living it up virtually every evening. The most endearing fellow was the liquor shop owner in Bhubaneshwar who would be woken up off his charpoy at 2 am to part with a bottle against an SBI cheque. The next morning he would be so decent as to come behind the counters to my desk to give me back my cheque and take cash instead "" lest the cashiers come to know that the young probationer was the drinking type.

The most sober ends to drinking bouts I ever had were during my next posting at Shillong where by the time I got back home, the cold had made me dead sober and good enough for a little nightcap before turning in. Marriage essentially meant drinking at home after getting back from work. Children came and we shifted to Delhi, but life didn't really change except that there buying your liquor was such a pain.

The big change came when we shifted to Gurgaon, at the National Media Centre. Jug and I could now really savour our drinking without having to worry about driving back home as our houses were two minutes' walk apart.

Life in Bangalore has been better in many ways except that as I keep cutting down on my daily consumption, I realise I am well beyond half the seven stages of a man's life that Shakespeare spoke about. The slowing down has been a fairly smooth affair, except for the odd little jolt like the one the doctor administered the other day. He took one look at my wife's cholesterol count and said, beer and hard liquor were out, all that could be permitted was a glass of red wine.

Nothing wrong with wine, and she never kept pace with me in volume terms, but still these milestones do put you in a reflective mood as you realise that a teammate is out of regular fixtures and good for only exhibition matches, twirling a wine glass between the fingers.