I’m not the adventurous types, not in the least actually. Often I’ll choose to just stay at home and watch TV if the journey involves changing more than two modes of transport, which explains why I’ve always had such trouble getting to Essel World. But, when it comes to alcohol I become slightly more daring. Now I’m not saying that I drink a lot. In fact I’m probably a medium or even bordering on a low degree drinker when it comes to actual alcohol consumption. My daring comes from the fact that I am an adventurous drinker. And my adventure starts and ends at the location, and this is the one, singular bone of madness in an otherwise dull and mundane existence. Because I find great pleasure and a sadistic sort of joy in drinking in some of the most downtrodden, unimaginably awful, dimly lit, curtain for a door places and those appalling places are where I find my adventures of cheap beer.
For those of you who haven’t had it, cheap beer is a most wonderful elixir. It will, and I’m willing to sign a stamp paper to this effect, cure you of all your ailments- mental, physical and even existential. It may even cure of you of problems you didn’t know you had, which is a particularly neat trick. Now the skeptics amongst you will say “But Suyash old boy, how can you say that expensive beer doesn’t have the same jolly good effects?” (Sorry, I always picture skeptics as old British men with moustaches) But I will retort with – “Fucking try it would you!” Because anyone who’s ever had cheap beer knows that expensive beer is just a farce. It’s a label with a mark up, in a place where the music is loud so you can’t talk and the women are dressed revealingly so you can’t think. Cheap beer on the other hand is served in places where there isn’t much music at all, except for the guy playing Altaf Raja on his mobile phone which after 2 or 3 cheap beers you may actually enjoy. And these places certainly have no women, which makes keeping your mind focused a much easier task.
But don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to say that cheap beer is meant to be flavored with tears. You don’t have to get depressed while having it, in fact, for all the RGV movies that show these bars as dens of sorrow, I can’t recall a top ten good time memory that didn’t happen in one. It’s possibly because my fellow adventurers are a hilarious bunch, or it might be that we just go to these bars too god damn often and can’t remember much before or after that. Either ways, every memory is linked with laughter and a rocking good time. So I thought I might as well pen these times down, or at least type them up as I collect my thoughts through the haze of a hangover. For some it may make for an interesting read, while for others it may make for a damn good reco.
But if you choose to read these stories, be warned, there will be in-jokes that you won’t get. But that should only encourage you to come out for a drink, or make your own in-joke over a table at a bar. And there will be stories with no start and no end, just a middle, simply because I forgot everything but the middle. And every so often I’ll slip a well placed anagram into the mix, just to fuck with you. So here goes, Chapter 1 – Sainath and the Rat.
Bar – Sainath
Location – Wadala. Just up the road from St. Joseph’s High School.
Size – It’s huge.
Place – You’ll always get a table.
Ambience – Bright and well lit with high ceilings and cushioned chairs.
Unique Plus Point – You can smoke in the non AC section.
Rating – 4 out of 5 Beers.
If I had started writing this sooner Sainath would’ve been an ever present in my entries. This is primarily down to the fact that it’s located just 5 minutes away from my current residence, which I can only take as a sign from God himself that I should patronize this awesome bar as often as possible.
Sainath is a really nice place to gulp down some cheap beer. It’s bright and well lit, the service is fast and not the rudest, plenty of windows so it never gets too hot and there’s almost never a cacophony. It’s also my most regular haunt and one of my most preferred places in the city. But this next story doesn’t do it a great deal of justice. Actually it pretty much kills the place if you just read it out of context, but if you were there you might not have cared as much, you know, it was sorta ok. Let’s just say there was rat…
It started with a friend of ours named Mihir who’d come down from the States. He hadn’t arrived recently, he’d been here for months but we hardly ever met him. As such, when he called on a Friday night (high five for convenience), we assembled at our most beloved watering hole. A game of musical chairs followed instantly as our people showed up in turns, and then left at odd times as well. One of the early departures was Bawa, who’d entertained us no end with the tales of his previous births. He had become hopelessly convinced that he was Jesus and Hitler in his previous lives and that his Hitler rebirth was just a giant ‘revenge against the Jews’ clusterfuck. He didn’t mean all this of course nor did he think it through, which was apparent from the fact that he also said he was Bhagat Singh in another life, missing the obvious flaw in being Hitler AND Bhagat Singh, but Bawa tends to rant and we tend to tune out.
We tuned back in when Pandu made his usual 11pm entrance; his job keeps him late, but gives him the advantage of late mornings which makes mid week drinking a particularly convenient experience for him. He is also a mad drinker with a penchant for pace. I’ve seen this man launch a quarter of whiskey in about 15 minutes, which is a story I barely remember because the evening just got stupider from there. On this day, he started making up for lost time almost immediately, starting by stealing a small peg from me when I wasn’t looking and then acting like it was a perfectly acceptable thing to do. It worked out though, as I promptly ordered some more booze which is the ideal result for any situation.
As the glasses turned over, the numbers had dwindled down to 4 people. Pandu and I were holding our own inching through our third quarter while Chabbs and Mihir, absolute non drinkers, were busy stuffing their faces with various foods, which by the way aren’t too bad at all. It was around this time that Mihir began to talk about cheap bars and how he wanted to tour the worst of them. I, of course jumped with glee at the prospect of another soul to sacrifice to these dungeons, but Sainath had other plans. As if to say to him “son, you don’t need to go anywhere else,” Sainath brought out a rat.
It was more or less chilling on the next table with sort of a “WTF” expression that made us look like the ones who were out of place. Had it been a bit larger I might have thought it was a dog that someone had brought in with them. Slightly less hairy and I may have called it over for a drink. I’ll admit I was mildly freaked out, but my drink was on the table so I was faced with an almost unthinkable choice (not as big as Sophie’s choice, but the same ballpark at least) On the one hand I could run away to home and to hygiene and on the other I could stay for whiskey and perhaps more whiskey. This may seem like a tough choice for most, but for me it’s more of a foregone conclusion, “Ek aur” I heard myself say as I planked down on the seat and proceeded to tuck my pants into my socks.
The evening went pleasantly on from there, except for a few nervous glances in the direction of the rats table. At one point we even felt bad for the rat and the lack of service his table was getting but this thought crossed my mind deep into my third quarter and like most thoughts received at this stage of the evening, I chose to ignore it. The night ended with the rat well out of sight, and that is exactly where I like my bar rats – unseen and unheard, which left me and Pandu with a happy high and an interesting tale and left Mihir with a wholly skewed view of my beloved Sainath. But such is the existence of cheap bars, they can freak you out and sometimes scare the crap out of you, but they leave you with what’s most important – a story