Thanda Ya Garam

How often does it happen, you wake up one morning and suddenly find yourself walking down memory lane, an expression surfacing that you never thought still mattered? If everything that has happened in your life were marked as a dot on a canvas, there would be a million of them scattered across it. So many things said or heard, read or preached, felt or lived through, and how few of them you actually kept. We bury the rest, sometimes on purpose, more often without meaning to. That's what lets you move on, isn't it?

We have all moved on in stranger ways than it seems. Soaked in the name of progress, dipped in a phony sort of urbanisation, moving ahead so unsure of where to.

Lost in these thoughts, standing at the corner of my balcony, a cold puff of air hit my face and I remembered the day my brother stood all dressed up to walk the aisle, and there I was, shamelessly begging him for money. I was still in college, with no means of my own to afford anything. I'm still not sure why handing over a mere thousand rupees felt like such a threat to his honeymoon plans, but he made it hard, and none of my usual tricks worked on him. Truth works better than tricks more often than we'd like to admit. So I cleared my throat and told him straight, I need to arrange drinks for friends who've come all the way from Delhi for your wedding. How will they dance without a drink in hand? Do you really think people who don't drink don't enjoy themselves, he said. They walk into a wedding with a frown, eat with a heavy heart, and dance with heavier feet.

I'm still not sure why I've held on to this memory all these years. It must be over twenty years now, maybe more.

Picture this, visiting a friend's place as a kid meant cookies and juice, nothing more. Even the grown up visitors were offered thanda ya garam, something cold or something hot, as the phrase went. Cold meant a soft drink, hot meant tea or coffee. I remember that whenever my parents had guests over, the only thing on their minds was the food they wanted to serve. Every mother in the neighbourhood had a dish she swore by. As a kid, I started attaching names to all the uncles and aunts based on what they brought, fruit wale uncle, cookies wali aunty, ice cream wale mama ji, rajma wali maasi, and the list went on.

Those gatherings were something else. Talk, gossip, fun and laughter, all in one room.

But hey, we've moved on. Imagine this, a bunch of office colleagues settled into a cosy corner of a fine dining restaurant one Friday evening, and no drinks on the table. Picture the kebabs, the rolls, the chips, being looked at through such dull, uninterested eyes. Wouldn't they feel a little dejected too? A get together in perfect peace, amid total silence, just the polite tapping of fingers on phone screens. Wow.

Have we lost the art of a good, light hearted conversation? No, I don't think so, it's all still in there. It just needs something cold, and this time I don't mean a cold drink, to loosen it up. I know I get ten times funnier the moment I catch a buzz, sometimes a little too funny. You're welcome to replace sometimes with always, if that gives the line an extra kick.

Where have we ended up? We all seem to need some extra catalyst to stir ourselves awake. Happy hai has become the modern phrase for a guy who's had a few too many. God probably wants us happy, so he's sent the Honey Singhs and the Badshahs of the world to advertise soul stirring drinks, technically called alcohol, through their peppy songs. It isn't fair to blame the bottle alone though, we've built lives so full of stress that unwinding has become a need of its own, and alcohol is simply the easier way out, I guess.

Let the wiser people debate, contemplate and decide on this progressing society and its changing values, cultures and lifestyles. Saanu ki, I say. I'm just happy to see the welcome phrase has changed. It's no longer thanda ya garam. It's now, what would you like, scotch, whisky, beer or wine?

A can of beer to begin with, please, I said.