I was introduced to the beautiful world of alcohol through books. My dad, an aficionado of dark rum, allowed me to read the popular books in his library when I was about 15. I loved those books — mostly crime and detective fiction — where every action, whether with the gun or after the characters had undressed, had to be preceded by a scene where alcohol was sampled, because alcohol is a plot-thickening tool.
Raymond Chandler famously said, “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” I would like to rephrase: “When in doubt, have a man or a woman drink an extra few pegs.” Guns and alcohol, much like good women and bad men, were the sure-fire ingredients of all the engaging crime novels that I’d read.
One of my earliest influences was Ian Fleming: the suave James Bond usually had a drink in one hand — martini, shaken not stirred — and a hot girl in the other. As I reflect upon this today, perhaps because the act of drinking preceded that of making out, I was prompted to try drinking when I was just 16. There were other reasons too. My dad once asked me to take a sip of rum from his tumbler, and when I made a face at the awful taste, he asked me to take a bite from an omelette he was eating, before the next sip. That was a winning combination, and to date, on rare winter evenings when I long for rum, my mind turns to that omelette.
But blaming dad for my later years of fighting alcoholism would be diluting my own mistakes. An unlimited access to books and movies when I worked on ships later, were the real reasons that took me downhill, polluting in the process, my rational thinking. As I moved to the officer’s mess via the academy on completion of my training, alcohol continued to heighten the often mundane life, particularly the evenings. I tried cocktails that I had read about in books, learnt how to pair tandoori meats and mess food with wines in place of mignon steaks that I had often read about, and learnt about the appropriate crystal ware. During my alcohol-fuelled years, I had several near breakdown moments. I fought depression, could barely focus on work, and had become that pessimistic guy whom everyone wanted to avoid. But I was lucky and my boat of sanity kept righting itself after every such ordeal. Besides a loving family, there was Hemingway, of course.
Ernest Hemingway might have been a bad influence on many, but not me. Let me elaborate. It’s no secret that alcohol was not just his lifeblood, but he had also extended the habit to the characters he wrote about. In A Farewell to Arms, for example , Frederic Henry loved his martinis. In the short story, The Three-Day Blow , Nick Adams, nursing a breakup with his girlfriend, enjoys whiskey, chatting with his friend, Bill. As a young officer, I remember reading that Hemingway never drank when he worked. In fact, he was quoted as saying that he could spot those who drank and wrote, in no time. This tiny fact kept me on track for many years, as I had also been groomed not to mix work and alcohol, something that I’ve scrupulously stuck to even after quitting a life in uniform in 2014.
While still in the service, however, as I moved from one unit to the other, it took me some time to develop a taste for Philip Marlowe, the hard-drinking, chess-loving detective created by Raymond Chandler. The books led me to watching movie adaptations and the taste for hard-boiled crime stayed on. In fact, almost all the short stories that I have written thrive on a noir-ish essence that is integral to the storytelling.
Not blaming here, but the gods, as stated in our ancient texts, have also kept the lure for alcohol strong for us, and I’m no exception. The other day, dealing with a hangover, my friend remarked, “It’s somras yaar , even the gods drank it.” When I asked him if there was anything written on how to deal with a hangover in our religious texts, he smiled and whispered, “Two options: either start praying, or drink some more.”
I had his attention when I said there was a third option too, “Find out in the books of yore about how the gods dealt with alcoholism and hangover.”
The protagonists in Kulpreet Yadav’s spy thrillers are tough-thinking, alcohol-drinking men. His latest book is Murder in Paharganj (Bloomsbury)
