Spirited away

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Nineteen years ago, when I first came to live in the Cantonment area of Bangalore, Thom’s Café was a little store on Wheeler Road which was part bakery, part grocery and part liquor store wreathed in shadows and middleclass-dom. You bought your whisky and beer from there. And since it was a family store, they wrapped the bottles in newspaper and put them into opaque plastic bags so no one knew that you were squandering the family fortunes on booze.

If you wanted wine, there was always a family in the area who indulged in some harmless bootlegging. Grape (or ginger or plums or pineapple or green tomato) juice was allowed to ferment and weeks later was bottled in used squat rum bottles and sold at Rs 40 a bottle. It was sweet and syrupy but packed enough kick to make it a firm favourite at family parties. The city I began my adult life was tempered with the aftermath of prohibition. The choice lay between home and expensive hotels...When the time came to move to Bangalore, I did so happily. It might not have an ocean; its public transport system was abysmal and if you are prone to allergies, god help you...but it had pubs. And there, if one felt like, I could nurse a beer with a mind without fear and the head held high... It wasn’t as if I poured a drink everyday or with every meal. But I liked to know that if I wished to, I would be able to do so.

If beer once steered the undertow of Bangalore, there is a newer one emerging...that of the wine drinker’s. The thing about beer is that it is associated with bonhomie and laughter. Which makes beer perfect for a picnic or an evening of fun. But then there are times when beer is just too popular for its own good… Art and literary events, charity dos and openings, fashion specials, at such occasions, when it is de rigeur to wear your most glamorous rags or your intellectual expression to be seen sipping at anything but wine puts you on par with the philistines. Or, one could settle for a cocktail.