Ahatas: The Bonhomie of the Guzzlers

 **2003**

The guzzlers are on the brink of bloating themselves into big, inflated balloons of oblivion and an unhealthily smouldering flame of artificially imposed restfulness.

It is beer and more beer for the young. Old-timers still cling to their tested brands of alcohol. But summers, at least, belong to the new generation, and it's beer.

Getting a contract for running a wine outlet now means a big, very big earner. In villages, daily sales happily reach ten thousand rupees for most of the month.

In the cities, there are *ahatas* by the wine outlets. These are dingy, crowded, not-so-clean places where the drinkers get a corner of seclusion at the cost of snacks at highly exorbitant rates provided by the keeper.

In the evenings, these places throb with the maximum pulsation of their alcoholic hearts.

Drinkers of all sorts and categories gather. Since the space is not much, they are very happy to share the tables, and a whole new world opens before the participant in this muffled, slow-paced, forgetfully throbbing place.

If we remove all other pros and cons of alcohol, one thing stands out marvellously: the bonhomie shared by persons who, aided and enlarged by wine and beer, share their unrestrained, shameless words with persons whom they have met just on this table for the first time in life.

And the topics draw from somewhere. The topics of discussion—new information surfaces suddenly. Many rumours are quashed, while new ones take birth.

All seem to have accepted, even the most belligerent ones, the principle of bonhomie and peace among the community of drinkers.

Discussions spill over like wine over a glass, and gentlemanly remarks leap over from one table to another.

It is like a beehive, a community of high-need familiarity.

The way talks are held, tongues slipping over words, but the intention becoming gentler and gentler.

Drinkers talk while time moves away sluggishly, yet so fast.

It appears as if some new foundation for some solid acquaintance has been laid. But most often, it is not so.

They talk, they depart happily with dreamy, swooning musings, and forget all about it the next morning under the glare of a real sun and a real day.