Don’t blame booze, blame the unruly drinker

In films, there are comic drunkards like Johny Walker, tragic drunkards like the character of Devdas immortalised by Sarat Chandra and villainous drunkards. In real life, you do find all these types besides a fourth kind—the drunken driver. Drunken driving is dangerous and so is marital violence caused by alcoholics. But, while a campaign against alcoholics makes perfect sense, any campaign against alcohol does not. Let me explain why.

The image of Devdas gulping down glass after glass of alcohol as an excuse to forget the pain of separation and his unrequited love for Paro is etched in the mind of millions of readers as well as viewers of the film, based on the novel. But Devdas never indulged in violence. He did not assault anyone and cannot be blamed for domestic violence either. Long after having seen the film, the dialogue continues to ring: “Kaun kambakht hai joh bardaasht karne ke liye peeta hai ... main toh peeta hoon ki bas saans le sakun”(Which wretch says he drinks to bear pain… I drink so that I can just breathe). He continues to drink till his last breath and dies unnoticed outside the haveli of Paro.

In real life too, there is no correlation between the sale of alcohol and the brawls, murder and violence. Millions of people drink—the armed forces are even served liquor at concessional rates—but only a handful indulge in violence.

It is worth recalling the noted urdu poet Raghupati Sahay, better known as Firaq Gorakhpuri. An English Professor at the Allahabad University, once described as the Oxford of the East, Sahay won the coveted Jnanpith Award in 1969 that then carried a prize money of ₹1 lakh, a huge amount those days. A much-adored teacher and known for his scholarship and creativity, the poet-teacher was known for his drinking. And lores say that he spent most of the prize money drinking.

A student of his, Ranmutt Singh, once recalled an evening when a security guard came running to the hostel and informed that Firaq Sahab was at the university gate and would not stop crying. Ranmutt and his friends rushed out of the hostel, coaxed Firaq Sahab to come in and made him comfortable. The professor confided to his students that his domestic help was forcing him to part with whatever remained of the prize money.

The faithful students immediately rushed to the professor’s residential quarter, beat up the help and forced him to tender an apology. In the process, some of them emptied a few bottles of the choicest liquor they could find there.

The next day, the sober professor graciously accepted the apology from his help but resolutely called the police to complain that some students had ransacked his house the previous evening and took away bottles of whiskey and rum.

But, although Firaq Sahab was known to begin his day with a drink, continue drinking throughout the day and retire for the day after a drink, it did not stop him from engaging his classes. His classes were popular among students and he died at the ripe age of 85 in 1982, it is said, only after he had a peg of his favourite tipple.

Another man who lived long to drink his whisky was Khuswant Singh, journalist who relished his evening peg every day till he breathed his last at the age of 99. He died in 2014. He is famously said to have recited the following lines to defy the Mullahs in Pakistan who frowned upon drinking as a sin:

“Agar dum hai Dua mein,

Toh Masjid hila kar dikha;

Aur nahin, toh do ghoont pee,

Aur Masjid ko hilta dekh”

(If your prayers have the power,

Then shake the mosque and show;

If not, then have a few pegs and see

the mosque shaking like a bough)

While there is again no correlation between alcohol and creativity, the fact is that the greatest Urdu poet Ghalib rarely spent a day without drinking, lived and died in penury but that did not affect his prodigious output of poetry. Ghalib continues to inspire tipplers among whom the following couplet is popular:

“Ab kuch bhi na bacha kehne ko, har baat ho gayee,

Aao kahin sharab peeyen, ab raat ho gayee.”

While journalists in India have acquired notoriety for their addiction to liquor, although press clubs across the world are known for subsidised drinks, a vast majority actually do not drink at all. But the image is so fixed in people’s mind that former Prime Minister Morarjibhai Desai once told a newsman who had dared to question him on prohibition: “I know why you are against prohibition. It’s because you drink and drink free.”

Addiction to money, power and lust is arguably worse than the addiction to alcohol. But, then, as a Sanskrit saying—Ati sarvatra vajrate (everywhere excesses ought to be shunned and dumped)—reminds us that addiction to anything is deplorable.

But, unfortunately, we revel in excesses. People take pride in boasting that they can hold their drink and drive even after five or more pegs. There perhaps is some kind of intoxication, possibly glorified by films, in going out of watering holes penniless.

Munshi Premchand dealt with this syndrome in his short story, Kafan in which a father and a son go out to buy a shroud for the man’s dead wife. But they stop by the tavern and cannot resist the temptation of going in and spending all the money they had in getting drunk.

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator. This was first published in Yathavat.

This is a light piece and the views are the writer’s own.