Kishore Singh: The 'grass' is greener

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The piece of paper in my hand looks the kind you might wrap a candy in, only my son insists it's what you use to roll a joint. "It is," he emphasises, "smoking paper", meaning the kind used to add a mix of tobacco and marijuana and used widely by dopeheads to light up and experience instant nirvana. He's just back from first year at college in Pune and it's show-and-tell time for the family. "Who are these guys?" I point to a picture of his friends. "That one, and this one, and this one too," he indicates heads in a group picture, "they're all dopers."

This is the kind of conversation that is most likely to cause anxiety attacks in parents, and my wife is anything if not direct. "Do you smoke dope?" she asks him artlessly. "No," he replies just as guilelessly, "I don't like the stuff." "Which means you've tried it..." she probes. "Yes," he admits, then adds, "but so did Papa when he was in college." I'm already ruing the open methodology we used to raise our kids "" there is such a thing as too much sharing. Besides, like Bill Clinton famously before me, I never inhaled the stuff.

Sensing our discomfort, he says, "Chill, these guys are amateurs, they don't even know if the 'grass' is real or not." "That's easy for you to say," retorts his mum, "besides, how would you know?" Our son grins: "They'll, like, roll a joint and lie down on the roof and say, "Let's look at the constellation'." "So?" asks my wife. "You can't see any constellation, any stars, the sky in Pune is so polluted," he replies, "these guys are just doing it for effect, because doing joints is trendy."

I'm not sure we're assured, but we're certainly pretty well informed in very little time on the regions as well as varieties of "grass" grown in India "" from the passable "Parvati" to the better quality "Gangotri" and the rarer "Kerala gold" "" all of it available at the local paanwallah's outside college. And hard drugs? "There are pushers," he shrugs his shoulders, "who'll give you stuff like cocaine free for a few weeks, and when you're hooked, they start charging you for it."

My wife is now looking green, so he says, by way of assurance, "They don't dope all the time, at least not all of them." "What do they do when they aren't doping," asks my wife sarcastically, "drink?" "I suppose that would be yes," confesses my son, "though only in the evenings." "It's all your fault," my wife turns on me, "for wanting to send him to college in Pune." I don't think it is the right time to remind her that it was she who had pushed for it and escorted him there.

Meanwhile, my son is saying it's not his friends' drinking he objects to personally so much as their mixing their drinks. "As in cocktails?" I ask. "In a manner of speaking," he hesitates, "though I don't know any cocktail in which you disguise gin and vodka in beer, and pass it off as beer to first-time drinkers." It's a ritual, he explains, you either pass it or you fail miserably. "I do not wish to know whether you passed or failed," my wife says stonily. "Relax," says our son, "I'm not there to drink, do drugs "" or smoke."

"Smoke..." my wife is now looking faint. "Of course," says our son, "everyone smokes," hastening to add, "everyone, that is, minus one." "So," says my wife, "your friends, smoke, drink and do drugs. Is there anything they don't do?" "My son's forehead furrows into creases, and then he smiles, "That," he says looking relieved, "would have to be their studies." Amen.