Alcoholics Synonymous

Alcoholics are abusers of the drink of course. They are also users. They use people for purely selfish reasons; for any personal advantage and gain without so much as a token thank you. They are egoistic; manipulative; arrogant; dishonest; opinionated right up to the brim, overflowing even; have no compunctions about doing what they do; know that what they do is right, and never need more than a bit of glib justification to establish their case.

I have friends who are alcoholics. I know people who may not be friends but are alcoholics. I know alcoholics who have been through detoxification and rehabilitation often, are apparently clean, sober, going through the Program, yet retain the qualities I've mentioned above. Of course there are exceptions, but I do not include them in this rant of mine.

One alcoholic, a friend since childhood, lost his mother recently. In fact the reason he had been in a rehab for three months till the day his mother died, was because of the inhuman treatment he had meted out to her. The reason he had to part company with his wife and two sons was because of the consequences of his alcoholism. The reason he is unemployable is alcohol. The reason his mother died was due to the effects of his abuse which caused a deterioration in her already frail, medical condition. Today I consider him a previous friend. A person as easily detested as you could be indifferent to.

I know that AA requires moral and emotional support for a recovering alcoholic/addict from his family and friends because they say it is a family disease. An incurable disease that affects all those closely connected with the abuser even if they themselves do not share his choice or consumption of intoxicant. Alcoholics know that. And because they have this crucial piece of knowldege, they knowingly take advantage of it. They then expect the world and its uncle to support them in all the ways they themselves are too lazy or reluctant to do, which is everything. If they could get you to wipe their bum after they take a dump, they would. Everyday. Every time.

Alcoholics are insecure, but show off as if the world turns because the sun shines out of their arse. This is evident from their I-centred talk. It's always "I did this", "I did that", "I said it first", and notably, "But I didn't do it!". This ex-friend, at a prayer meeting for his late mother, when asked to say a few words, only talked about how he returned to this city to be with her after his father passed away, implying an unselfish sacrifice. He talked of what he did for her, he talked of being the devoted son he never was. Not once did he even mention the contribution she may have made to his existence other than calling her his mother. I know for a fact that even in private, he has expressed no remorse or regret, or even shed a crocodile tear.

The first two days out of rehab, he really seemed to be on the rocky road to full recovery. We were impressed, both with his progress and the good that the rehab had done for him. Yet, once his mother had been consigned to earth to complete her cycle of dust to dust, and he became increasingly aware of his inheritance (not a fortune, but no pittance either), he regressed to his former self. His alcoholic self. His true, real self. He reverted to being immodest, insufferable, inexcusable in the shortest possible time. His excuse for not returning to the rehab as he had promised when he was released for his mother's funeral, was this: "They've taught me to face reality, to handle the outside world, and if I don't start doing that now, when will I?" That's glib. Impressively so. In normal circumstances, he would have been there another three months at least. His counsellor told me that, adding that while he was improving, more time was necessary for a complete recovery. This ex-friend told me how he doesn't like his counsellor for many reasons, not least being that person's inability to be intellectual. I believe his counsellor just saw through him and was in the process of making him reveal his true self, when the mother's death interrupted matters.

This guy used the rehab as a good excuse to stay out of prison which neighbours and well-wishers of his mother wanted him to be in. He had a clean-up as it were, at a long, rigorous, but healthy vacation, and now with no further responsibilities, with easy access to a fair bit of cash, and the pretentious, misplaced sympathy of certain people who don't actually know him, he is going to become a rich alcoholic. For a while of course. Till the money is all drunk up, till his cirrhotic liver and his preferred lifestyle send him to an early grave. I can only hope it will be a timely one.


One other alcoholic I know has never been in rehab or through detox. He fortunately has no family to abuse and spread his disease to. He too shares the same qualities as the one above, but in varying degrees. He is obssessed with proving he is India's foremost competitive bridge player, is perhaps the only stock market trader in the country who did not make money in the fleeting boom period recently, and denies his alcoholism vehemently.

A third one, or as he likes to call himself "a recovering addict and alcoholic", currently benefiting from the Program to only stay clean, is similarly warped in the head. Offering to place him in an income-earning opportunity, I also gave him a friendly warning that the employer already knew of his previous addiction problems and it was a good chance for him to prove his capabilities despite the reputation that preceded him. He so surprised me with his almost crazed, hysterical reaction to this warning of mine, that I have resolved never to help him again. All he does is attend AA/NA meetings every evening, and surfs the Net all day looking for women who will pity him enough to marry him, if not, just lay him. Meanwhile, his older brother accommodates him, takes care of his expenses, doing more than he should, and getting used once again in the bargain he has made with his sibling to stay clean.

It perhaps is not possible for organisations who work with addicts to both rid the abuser of his dependancy as well as clean up his way of thinking. I believe the three persons I've mentioned above were already messed in their minds and their true personality types merely accentuated by the abuse of the intoxicants. They sorely need serious psychiatric help but who's going to help them get it? Not me!

And just as a by the way: "The Globe, issue 2, 2005, is a special issue, "Launch of Indian Alcohol Policy Alliance." A few statistics: 62.5 million users of alcohol in India; per capita consumption up 106.7% over 15-year period; sale of alcohol growing at 8% a year; 270,000 people die each year due to use and abuse of alcohol..."

What is it with us Bongs?

Travel east to west down south Calcutta's main artery. The one that links the round traffic island from Ruby Hospital to Alipore. Once you cross Bijon Setu, the flyover spanning the train tracks of Ballygunj Station and enter the chaos of the Gariahat area, you will see a rather remarkable sight: jewellery shops in quick, crowded succession.

Being a bit of a nitpicker (do they also term that anal?, I decided to count how many such shops there were over two days of travelling that road. On the left, between the flyover and the Gariahat crossing, there are 42. On the right, 36. From Gariahat to the Rash Behari Avenue and SP Mukherjee crossing, there are 28 jewellery shops on the left. I haven't actually bothered to count the number on the right. From the last named crossing to Chetla bazar, there are another 11 on the left, and about 18 on the right. That's when you almost reach Alipore. They don't need jewellery shops in Alipore. The denizens of this upscale area wear and possess enough to be classified as mobile jewellery displays themselves. In Alipore they mainly have outlets that sell all sorts of edibles. And banks. With locker facilities.

Now why there should be 135 jewellery shops on a 3-4 kilometre stretch of road is anybody's guess. And they say that Calcutta's citizens are poor. That, as a thumb rule, the "market" in Calcutta is depressed, down, accounting for about 20% or less of all-India sales figures for consumer goods. Yet Mr Biyani of Pantaloons, probably India's most successful, home-grown and fastest growing retail chain, has gone on record to state that he considers Calcutta to be the retail capital of India. What? Aren't we the poor cousins?

I decided that if I must torture myself, I might as well do it to the max. An initial guesstimate tells me that there are about that many pharmacies, medical laboratories, clinics and similar medically related outlets along the same stretch of road. Their density levels per square feet are perhaps not as glutinous as the jewellery shops but they exist. And at this point, I also need to make a note that all these shops seem to be doing well from outside appearances.

The third phase of my informal survey shows that there are thrice the numbers quoted above of eating establishments of all sizes, shapes and quality on that very same length of road.

So what is it with us Bongs? Eat as if there's no tomorrow, buy jewellery to flash at those who have none, (and those who have too much to prove that we too have it), and then go to to the medical establishments for our cure-alls and panacea to overcome or suppress the sensations and symptoms that arise from over-indulgence and overextended credit lines? That is as good an explanation as any! If you have a better one, I'd love to hear it.

Open Window 3

Thick, black cables stretch heavily across the span between two of the street lamps which flank my window. They are TV and broadband internet cables and at least two of them connect to my house. In the mornings avian life squats there, waking me. Raucous and intelligent crows, ever on the lookout for a morsel; chattering sparrows, hyperactive and temporal. In Bangla we call them shalik, I guess the English word for them is mynah, but I'm not sure. These brown, black and white birds with red beaks had a little ditty associated with their sighting when I was a kid: “one for sorrow, two for joy, three for letter, four for toy, five for diamond, six for gold, seven for...”. I can't remember the rest of it! They are a noisy lot as well, but kind of musical compared to the previous two. And of course there are the pigeons which roost in crevices, atop ACs and other wall furniture of my building and the one adjacent to it. Their muted warbling and gurgling is comforting. A pair which nest on top of an air conditioner shaded by a ledge in the adjoining building have just had a pair of chicks and they are extremely protective of their offspring.

The traffic island as a roundabout for vehicles, can confuse an unaware pedestrian. I find many of them randomly trying to cross diagonally to or from the island to get to the other side. What results is a scary wait for minutes on end as drivers race by, unmindful of these jaywalkers. The trick is to walk the circumference of the junction, to cross a single street at a time and get to the other side. Longer yes, but safer and less strenuous. I've often wanted to shout this suggestion out, especially to senior citizens and those carrying children in their arms, but they may get distracted and perhaps cause an unfortunate accident.

Vagrants and the mentally unstable or unsound abound at this junction. This morning I saw three of them. A grey bearded waif of a man sat on a curb, ignoring the traffic that rushed inches past his toes. Her head completely shaven, dressed in someone's discarded blue printed kaftan, a mentally unsound woman roamed for an hour or so under my window, giving unasked for directions to auto rickshaws which halt here to disgorge passengers. The third, an almost naked man, black with dirt and grime, lay supine on the narrow pavement which encircles the island, walking away only when it rained.

The addicts skulk in a corner of the junction that has overgrown bushes and stunted Ashoka trees. They are all rag pickers and from my vantage point, I get glimpses of them 'chasing the dragon'. Sometimes they get chased away by the shopkeepers nearby, and sometimes they get picked up at night by policemen acting on complaints of petty theft. They steal almost anything to support their brown sugar habit, and we have small metal grills over drains and concrete manhole covers missing from our driveway every now and then.

There's a man who carries clay matkas twice a week and wisely follows the circumference of the junction to get to the other side. One day, the largish clay pots clustered in a wide cane basket resting on a wooden board with castors, is wheeled along by him. On the other day, in a different sort of cane basket, he carries clay hundis or what might be called 'piggy banks' on his head. Both times he heads in the same direction and I wonder who his customers are who need such large quantities of clay pots every week.

This open window lets me look out on to a world that is as distanced from me as it is an integral part of my life. Sights, sounds, smells abound. I may not be able to touch, but they touch me... ...in places I can't reach?

Open Window 2

The view from my window being top-looking-down, I often have the pleasure of some down-blouse sightings. Many passengers disembark from auto rickshaws with their backsides first. When they are shapely and definitely female, the view is enchanting. I have a few favourites among the regular, daily passers-by and I keenly watch out for them, sorely disappointed when they sometimes don't show up at their expected hours.

I heard about a guy who set up a camera at a window of his office, recording that point-of-view of the activity on the street below him for 12 years. I'm told he calls it a work in progress. I once had a video camera with me for a week, and never having had access before to such a piece of equipment for so long a time, I filmed life from my window at all times of the day and night. It was fascinating to see what I'd filmed when I played back the tape. After about three days, I began to notice a recurring feature in the film – people carting loads, carrying burdens. Animals too, though not as many and as frequently. The other interesting feature that showed up was of people using public and private transport, the interaction of humans and machinery. Candid camera if you please.

At this point in time, at 11:54 tonight, three yellow vehicles of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, outfitted as tankers with swivel arms and pipes, are making enough of a racket to wake the dead as they clean the drains of this junction my window opens out on to. Yellow taxis are parked strategically around this 6-point crossing, and the sodium vapour street lamps give Vivekananda a dirty yellow tinge. There are about 12 lamps at this road junction and at night the view is remarkably jaundiced.

I'm listening to Donovan, once, and unfairly known as the Dylan of Britain. Wonder where he is today? Two of the songs in the compilation I have are aptly suitable to this piece I'm writing. The following are lyrics from Season of the Witch, “When I look out my window, so many sights to see / And when I look in my window, so many different people to be / That is strange, so strange...”. The other is Mellow Yellow, “I'm just mad about Saffron, And she's just mad about me / They call me Mellow Yellow...”. Both colours figure in this open window topic of mine but probably not the way Mr Leitch imagined it.

(Ah! Google and Wikipedia have informed me in 14 seconds that Donovan, though afflicted by a tendency to keep disappearing off the musical map every so often, released an album in 2004 called Beat Café. What I didn't know was that he apparently was a great friend of The Beatles and collaborated on songs with them. Well, well... don't you just love trivia?)

One of the streets which meet at this junction is directly in my line of sight across the traffic island. It leads south into the super built-up density of Behala, but more importantly, it acts as a passage for the wonderful southern breezes which Calcutta is blessed with most of the year. A scientifically informed person told me it's known as the Venturi effect. Let's not get into an overdose of trivia though... Suffice it to say, during the monsoon, the breeze is cool and damp and even if I could afford an air conditioner, I wouldn't need one with this breeze blowing through my open window.

Open Window 1

I may have a problem. I get claustrophobic if all the windows are closed in the room I'm in. Regardless of the weather, at least one window should be partially open. In heavy rain as well. A few raindrops never hurt anyone...

The window of my room looks out on to the busiest part of the locality I live in. It is a junction where six roads meet around an eye-shaped traffic island that has recently been renovated. The island has a statue of Swami Vivekananda painted in a glossy shade of virulent saffron. SV in stone faces west-north. He has his back to two much smaller statues painted in glossy milk-white which too have their backs to him and they face south-east. I wonder if it's some Vaastu influenced positioning. Strange... These two figurines in their typically seated position on the gate-posts of this little island are those of Shri Ramakrishna and Ma Sharada Devi, SV's real life gurus. SV's statue is in the middle where the pupil of the eye should be and is enclosed by carefully tended foliage of different shades of green. Somehow the designer of this installation has managed to fit in the colours of the national flag into the whole scheme of things. When dusk arrives, a man comes and switches on lights which shine on spraying fountains that ring the railings enclosing the island and its occupants. Every morning, another man balances on the locked iron gate and religiously garlands the statues of Ramakrishna and Sharada, after removing the dried garlands from the day before. The island and garden are ornamental, and the public cannot enter or use it. It serves no purpose other than to minimally regulate the heavy, unruly, constant traffic flowing noisily around it and under the view from my first floor open window.

A friend once commented, after visiting for the first time, that if we could somehow mute the noise of traffic, the sight could be akin to an acid trip without taking recourse to LSD. I had to agree. The noise is deafening. The roar of buses, horn-happy drivers, revving engines, broken exhaust pipe mufflers, loud voices of passers-by and irate drivers are a fugue in cacophony.

The world passes by under my window. People... Animals... Things... Somewhere between 2 and 4 am there is a distinct respite in the traffic noise and the streets are eerily empty of human life. Stray dogs rule then, and once a week a man herds goats down the road, presumably to be slaughtered. The patter of their hooves on the tarmac sounds ghostly when I'm in bed in the dark. The sodium vapour street lamp casts a glow through my open window that etches pictures from my imagination into the ambience.

One night, awakened by the strained growling of a diesel engine under tremendous stress that was rattling the glass panes and causing seismic vibrations to course through the walls of my building, I looked out to see a lorry carrying three huge, thick logs of wood trundling off. As the noise began to fade into an echo, leaving behind a hollow silence, I turned to return to bed when jingling bells suddenly punctuated that emptiness. The moment was surreal. In my sleepy state, as if in the grip of some psychotropic substance, I watched a small wooden cart drawn by an emaciated pony, carrying milk canisters, canter around the corner and up another street. The bells were strung along the harness, and their sound was an amazing contrast to the lorry's that had just gone by.

In retrospect, that scene was a film noir camera moment from a B-grade movie with nothing available to record it but my mind. I imagine the long, terrified scream of a woman in the silence left behind by the horse's bells. Cut to shadowy presence in darkened window looking down on street from where scream originated.

Imagine a Google-less World!

Google is quite amazing. Really! Okay, even if I do state the obvious... Well to move on, I had loads of time to kill and a good broadband connection, so after idly updating the Google taskbar on Firefox (there's an update out for this also for those who want to know), I googled an old girlfriend's name, someone I still carry a torch for. And guess what? To state the obvious in boring repetition, I found a reference to her on the 7th page.

Now I expected her reference to be in the category she specialised in as a professional, but no, her name came up in an associate site of bharatmatrimony.com. Surprise, surprise! It was an endorsement from her husband, and he spoke about how they connected through BM, a fairly detailed account of him and HER meeting, and how they married eventually.

Amazing, huh? They call this the Age of Information Explosion. They say there's an overload of information, often overkill. But we can never have enough, can we?

Can you imagine a world without Google? I shudder horrifically!