Those days when there was a perennial flow of my liquid diet…

It was six years ago when I left Madurai for a job at Chennai. As a bachelor it didn’t take time for me to settle down in Triplicane, deemed the bachelors paradise of Chennai. Took a mansion for me… oops so they call it, it actually is a 6 x 6 room with a cot and an attached bathroom. I felt triumphant, felt like a goliath… I could smoke in my room, I can play cards and I could drink there too. I felt like a KING at my 6 x 6 kingdom.

Being in advertising, an industry where you act like you have no work to do till it is dusk. And then hurriedly finish every thing before the next dawn. That ways I have boasted to all my friends, relatives, enemies and others that I am a workaholic who works a minimum of 18 – 20 hours a day. They didn’t know that I only start working by 6p and then I take a 3 hour break by 8p for my liquid diet sessions. While I say I took a break for a drink, there was never a day when we quit with one. Every day was a marathon, one became two and two became twelve and finally it became pukey. But all that was fine and fun. It was about 14 of us who were into this binge drinking sessions. I being a good father fearing boy took a break invariably at 10 when my poor father would call me from Madurai. No slur, no signs of being drunk would be shown when the father speaks. The poor man and his wife would hang-up pitying their son who is working that very hard. Poor parents didn’t know every one in advertising hardly works during the day.

We finish this madness called drinking by 12a when somebody would remind us of something called dinner. We would then go in search of hotels in the city that would be open till then. It would be 2p by the time dinner would be over, back to office and work for 2 hours. When the milkman knocks the door is when we guys used to hit the sack. But we were used to getting up before the dhobi knocked the door, which is by 8.30a.

There were times when our concerned colleagues asked us to go to alcoholics anonymous. There were also times when we expected a call from Vijay Mallya thanking us for making his company achieve their Q1 targets.

All was well for the UB group till I got married. That was when I had someone called my wife or do I call her warden arrived in my life. There were 3 basic questions or points she had against my favourite activity, drinking. (1) It is bad for health, so don’t do it. (2) It is a sheer waste of money, so don’t do it. (3) Nobody in our family drinks (what a lie!!!). So don’t do it. The net result being a big hurdle parked across what used to be my favourite past time.

While I have managed to drink these days, occasionally once in 4 days. I still miss those days of late night drinking and dinner at 1a.

All these said I could still not spot a slump in the value of the UB stock.

Long live alcohol… Long live alcoholics.