Pot luck, it was decided, for our next adda with friends at our place. It went quite smoothly as we ran through the list of those coming, opting to bring this dish or that. The first ripple occurred as each offered to bring his own choice of liquor. When my turn came, there was a chorus that since I liked single malt whisky so much, I should offer up a bottle. My protestation that I went gaga over single malt only in print, to have something interesting to write about, and a retired journalist could hardly afford such stuff, cut no ice.
You must be true to your written word, I was firmly told. I managed to save my skin and wallet by eventually offering to produce a bottle of McDowell’s Single Malt. Single Malt isn’t single malt, the bullying crowd chorused. I got away only by darkly suggesting that if the makers of Single Malt got to know that someone was questioning its authenticity, they were quite likely to force down his throat a free ticket on the house airline, whose flight would definitely not take off, with the pilots protesting, “No pay, No fly”.
Then someone asked, shall I bring along some ice? That really touched a raw nerve. No, it’s winter and demand for ice will be low, I said, and couldn’t help adding ruefully, bring along some water if you like. After a moment of silence, someone asked, you don’t get enough drinking water in your apartment complex, do you? That had an effect opposite to oil on troubled water. No, we have enough, but the taste makes it hardly fit to drink and if you wish to spoil your whisky then don’t blame me, I blurted out.
It is possible to live with all kinds of discomfort. When I was a child, we lived for a time in a small town bordering the Chota Nagpur Plateau, with summer temperatures well above 100 degrees (those were still Fahrenheit days), no electricity and, naturally, no fan. And there have been spells in Delhi’s winter when a smog has hung over minimum temperatures of four degrees (now Celsius) for days, redefining the boundaries of bleakness. But to be condemned to have to drink water that may be safe but is utterly tasteless and worse, bordering on the brackish, is to suffer another version of the slow Chinese torture where water drips endlessly on the forehead of the prostrate victim from a little hole in a suspended pitcher, until there is no forehead left.
It is not as if just whisky refuses to go down with this foul water. Perhaps the greater casualty is a decent cup of tea. If decent water is scarce you can go easy on the hard stuff; but how can you survive without several cups of decent tea in a day?
The original misfortune is of course to somehow end up in east Kolkata, next to the wetlands, where the piped water sourced from the Ganga and freely distributed in the older parts of the city is not yet available to the residents. They remain unpersons — not yet legally included within the decent water boundaries of the city. A fat water main, in fact, runs right in front of our complex but that water is not meant for us.
So we have to make do with groundwater brought up by a not-so-deep tubewell, while being told month after month, year after year, that the area will soon be brought within the borders of Kolkata proper. Then all its troubles – with water, water, everywhere but not a tasteful drop to drink – will be drowned in water that can at least be so called.
The irony does not end there. About 50 yards down the road, the water main has a massive U-shaped valve. With much ingenuity, the long-term locals have loosened the nuts on the iron plate over the valve, as is common along many large water mains going through the city.
So when pressure in the water main is increased early in the morning to supply water to citizens more equal than us, water gushes out of the valve. Now slum dwellers helping themselves to water from the mains is understandable, but there are no slums nearby. Instead, the water gushing out is freely used by cleaners washing a row of taxis, black and yellow and “tourist”, and the odd poor family.
I can now understand how revolutionaries are born. Here I am, unable to swallow decent whisky when it is fouled up by being mixed with the wrong type of water, having to pay through my nose for jumbo-sized canisters of popular brands of bottled water — and right in front of my eyes, the tastiest drinking water out of the Ganga is being used to wash cars. The affront to the environment, public order and good taste is enough to drive a person up the wall, of water maybe.
The Boston Tea Party unleashed forces that affect US politics even today. The stuff that the deprived and oppressed like me have to make do with, which ruins both the cup that cheers and inebriates, is enough to galvanise even a laid-back fish eater into a bloody-minded anarchist.
