Sloshed!!!

This may be the time when a few people, recovering from New Year revels, maybe thinking 'never again'.

To me, the reader of many books, a drink seems to be what people bond over. People chat, get to know each other, bond, make deals, discourse freely and get rid of inhibitions. In some situations, its like what else is there to do? It seems rather nice and liberating.

I don't drink.

To me, that is something like saying 'I'm a vegetarian.'Or Im a HIndu. It's not a choice made out of awareness. Given the households and society in which I grew up and then continue to live in, its a given way of life.

But, a friend of mine sees it as a self-defining statement. Something that sounds righteous and above other lesser mortals who drink.

Above the women who cringe inwards when the men in their lives drink. Fathers, husbands, brothers, and now, sons. For, the men are happily sloshed and know not what they do. Its the women who face the social consequences when a husband stands in the middle of a room and holds forth to an amused audience on stuff which they don't actually follow. Or has to help him home. Or has to call desperately around to a friend to see why he hasn't come home yet. Or walk around on tiptoe the next morning when he holds his head and acts like a zombie.

Maybe the easiest solution is to have a drink or two yourself. I have a couple of cousins who do just that. When you can't cure them, join them.
But they won't admit it, bless them:-)

Like sex, this is one of our middle class taboo topics.

"The worst sin - perhaps the only sin - passion can commit, is to be joyless. "
Dorothy L. Sayers'