Wines and spirits in India - Humour

				Let us start this on a serious note. India’s Constitution has something funny in it. It is called the Directive Principles of State Policy. This crazy document, apparently inspired by something similar in the Irish constitution, tells us Indians how to all be good boys, brush our teeth and go to bed when we are told. For instance, it tells us not to drink. So let us have prohibition, pray to God, be good vegetarians, spin our own cloth and live the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Never mind that the Directive Principles also say that we should have a family planning programme. The Old Man produced half a cricket team of third-raters and then, in high dudgeon, told the world, not his wife, that he did not want sexual relations with her. In his old age he tried screwing young women old enough to be his granddaughters (without success) and made a virtue of his failure by talking about moral self-restraint. But then let us get back to the main subject—booze. As a result of the Directive Principles, the states of the nation under whom, mercifully, the subject of Prohibition comes were told to make a law to enforce prohibition. Some states, smarter than others, refused to touch Prohibition with a sterilised pole. But the old Bombay State was made of sterner stuff. It then had a Chief Minister who drank Pisskey (he drank his own urine as a part of some obscure so-called therapy) and this character applied the new law with full force. The howls of protest started at once. First the Armed Forces said that since they adhered to Central law, and the Central law did not specify prohibition, it should not apply to them. So the Armed Forces continued to have their tipple. And they started selling it on the black to people like you and me. Then the rich said they needed it for their health. So a system of permits for medical purposes was introduced. Then, finding that it was impossible to corrupt the police any further, the government relaxed the law and allowed people to get liquor permits without medical certificates. The police became fat and indolent and incapable of arresting anything other than a double decker bus. Today in Mumbai the prohibition law remains on the statute books. Technically you can be arrested for possessing liquor. And yet the dry state of Muharashtra floats on a sea of booze. Bengal incidentally uses the word, “dry,” to mean anything that is prohibited. The famous poet Dom Moraes once told me that he ordered eggs and bacon for breakfast in Calcutta only to be told that that day was a dry day. He could not make sense of it till it was clarified to him that on that particular day he could not get pork. Hence "dry." No bacon. Gujarat broke away from Maharashtra (the old Bombay State) to form its own state in 1960. But the incubus of being a state to which Old Man Gandhi belonged is a burden it will continue to have to bear, at least till all those who had anything to do with him are well and truly dead. And therefore it is a dry state. Save for the fact that Scotch brought to India in barrels and packed in bottles in the neighbouring state of Rajasthan is sold in Gujarat with a tell-tale label: For sale in Gujarat only. And Gujarat practises strict Prohibition. And, in spite of the fact that Gujarat is the milk centre of India it floats not in milk locally produced by its excellent cows but in hooch locally brewed by its equally excellent and businesslike illicit liquor barons. If the policy of prohibition continues it is because these fellows don’t want it repealed—they’d end up losing their market. Not a single day passes in which a party is held by high government officials in which Scotch does not flow like the Ganges. And often it is equally dirty because it isn’t really Scotch at all. Which brings me back to the bad old days of prohibition in Bombay and its echoes today. Three types of prohibition-related characters flourished in those days. They were all called either Pascal or Michael or if it was a woman she was affectionately known as the local Aunty. The best-known speakeasy in Bombay then was a joint called Pascal’s in Khar, a Bombay suburb. Pascal’s had two huge photographs in his den that in fact was a large hall. One was of President Kennedy. For some unfathomable reason all the low life from hooch sellers to prostitutes to barbers and cobblers acquired an unreasoning affection for the American President. Pascal ceremoniously garlanded the picture every day. It was the fashion of the day, like the stickers of “Billboard” that are sported by every third taxi today. Pascal had another and still grander picture also ceremoniously garlanded with an even grander garland. It was of that very same aforementioned Chief Minister of Bombay who drank Pisskey. And correctly, too. Pascal’s fortune was made by paying obeisance to that epitome of Prohibition, the Chief Minister. And of course the police unctuously studied their nails, dirty as they were, and caught unfortunate pedestrians for walking on the road. And to this day, whenever the government gets into one of its prohibitionist moods and declares a dry day, it is still to the Aunties, the Pascals and the Michaels that we turn for spirituous sustenance. The simplest way of finding a Pascal or a Michael is to look for a roadside seller of boiled eggs. Since boiled eggs are usually eaten with illicit liquor (it apparently damps down the strong fumes) it is easy to find innocuous little homes off wide-eyed innocent-looking people who sell you all the liquor you want – of course at a premium. It is also fun looking at a shop that sells “legitimate” liquor, particularly in Mumbai. It is often likely to proudly flaunt a board as follows: Harry Pinto Wine Shop. All old Harry sells is different brands of some transparent brown liquid locally called whisky, about six brands of beer, a couple of brands of gin, vodka and rum each. He has never ever seen anything called a wine and he does not know if there is such a thing. Wine apparently means liquor in India and not Wine. The board atop his shop also has some mysterious other hieroglyphs printed on it. It could for example say: IMFL No 3460 and CL NO 325608. CL stands for Country Liquor. This stuff, highly potent, is made from oranges and other fruit. But if you want it to kick like a mule there is a brand called Double Ghoda (Double Horse). IMFL is something else again. It stands for “Indian Made Foreign Liquor.” Apparently only foreigners, preferably white-skinned ones, make whisky, gin, beer, vodka and such. We Indians are too high-minded and above such ugly occupations. Therefore, even if we do make them, they are “foreign liquor,” but since they are made by Indians they are called, naturally, Indian Made Foreign Liquor. Since whisky is the Indian drinker’s favourite tipple let us see what Indian whisky consists of and how most of it is made. There is this venerable old liquor-distilling organisation which started off making tolerable whisky in Kasauli back in the early days of the last century. It was then owned by an Englishman. The Englishman left India in the first wake of its Prohibitionist nightmare and sold out to a retired captain of the Territorial Army. This man’s talents lay not in distilling whisky but in what he thought was singing. He inflicted hapless audiences with impromptu renditions of film songs. They say that two minuses make a plus. Never was this more untrue than in his case. Bad film songs sung badly do not a good musical performance make. But we are going off the track. Back to whisky. I have actually seen it done in their distillery. They get a huge quantity of ethyl alcohol (100% pure). To this is added a huger quantity of water. Two-thirds water to one-third alcohol. Then is added colour, mostly molasses from the nearby sugar factories. Premium brands are treated with synthetic flavouring agents. Other brands can take their comeuppance. The whole thing is bottled and a label is slapped on. And that is Indian whisky – or most of it. To make it attractive, fancy names are given and often fancier bottling is provided. So you have everything from Single Malt and Peter Scot (two of the more tolerable brands), to Queen Anne, Diplomat, President and so on. Some one is yet to name a bottle Prime Minister or Chief Justice but it will not be very long. Then we have Indian whisky “blended with the choicest imported Scotch.” The procedure is as follows. The whisky made in the traditional way mentioned “hereinabove” (a legalistic Indianism so fondly resorted to by most of us) is given special treatment. A small toothpick has its tip dipped in real Scotch. Then this wet end is transported to this huge vat of Indian spirit and ceremoniously dipped in it. Voila! Indian whisky blended with Scotch. It would have been simpler to just whisper “Scotch” over the Indian vat, which is what I suspect most of them actually do. As for other Indian liquor what is surprising is that most of them are actually good. The rum comes close to good Jamaican rum, the gin to some of the better English gin, the vodka is actually better than Stolichnaya and the beer is far better than anything made in the US. Where Indians score is in their own liquor, which for some strange reason they refuse to name. The people of Kerala produce a potent rice spirit that they call Arrack. The people of Goa make something from the cashew fruit called Fenny. It smells to high heaven but the Goans swear by it. In Madhya Pradesh the tribals produce another highly potent liquor from the Mahua flower. No name and no marketing. You either go there and drink it or you don’t get it. It is probably the best of the Indian spirits. No hangover and the kick of a regiment of mules. And it tastes good. Smooth as silk and a mild undefinable flavour of flowers rather like Carlsberg freshly brewed. Tequila would lose in any competition with Mahua. We also observe “fasts.” These are not necessarily to improve our digestion or our health. They are a religious observance. They consist not of avoiding food. They consist of eating perhaps more entertaining, if vegetarian food. You abstain from not just the normal food of grain and cereal. You also abstain from meat and fish. In other words you don’t eat meat and fish or drink just because it happens to be a particular day of the week. Apparently drinking or eating meat on other days is not sinful. Then there is this peculiar New Moon observance called “Gatari Amavasya,” which is followed with much fanfare here in Maharashtra where I live and particularly so in Mumbai. Till this particular New Moon, which means till the beginning of the month of Sravan, there is no religious restriction on food or drink. The day of Gatari Amavasya signals the last day of indulgence. You are supposed to drink till you drop into a gutter. Hence Gatari Amavasya. From then onward for a month you abstain from meat or fish or liquor. The moment the month is over you are at it like a deprived animal unlocked from his zoo cage. I have never understood how all this offers a greater closeness to God or whatever. But then we are all Prohibitionists. We believe in simple living and high thinking. The appeal to vegetarian food, to teetotalism and to ceremonious adherence to religious ritual I suspect began with the helplessness of a Hindu population put upon by Muslim rulers and later by the British or their Indian vassals who had by then become degenerate yet tyrannical dinosaurs. It resulted in extreme levels of poverty (hence the vegetarianism), a feeling of helplessness that had lasted hundreds of generations (hence the pursuit of religion as a form of escapism) and the inability to band together resulting from extreme economic deprivation. This deprivationist approach could not have succeeded ordinarily but it had to as a result of the loss of self-confidence that must have been the norm. The only way this could be made to happen was to elevate it into a high religious and moral principle. What evolved over hundreds of years cannot be taken away in the fifty or so years of independence. Our present hypocrisy is merely a hangover that refuses to go away, having pickled our collective brains for those deprived centuries. We Indians have far to go in the Self Confidence Department. —Sharad Bailur, Mumbai, India, 6/17/2001