Ooty

I opened my eyes to a blue haze at about five and a half feet from the floor. My eyes started burning. Apparently that was not too much of a problem for the bloke sitting next to me. It took me a few minutes to figure out that this bloke was Sikdar. And that what he was offering me was a shot of rum, no water. ‘what the hell?’ I thought and it went straight down the hatch. To join the five or six shots of mixed liquors which were competing for lebensraum in my much abused stomach. Now we get back to the blue haze. How does one create air pollution of that kind? Well, take a small hotel room, preferably one with little or no ventilation. This room was supposed to be a four seater at a really shady hotel near the City railway station at Bangalore. There were some eight of us. The door had a prominent notice which said ‘No Smoking, No Drinking, No Gambling, No Immoral Activities’. To my shock, it was spelt correctly. Seven of the group belonged to Sikdar’s college in Delhi. It included a couple of swell chaps, one purrfecto arse, one bloke moaning about this girl, a couple of blokes I have managed to forget quite completely, and of course, Sikdar. It had been a good three years since Sikdar and I had met up, and we had managed to become delinquents of remarkably similar tastes quite independently. After a day or so of exploring and raising hell in Bangalore, we were off to Ooty for a day trip the next morning. Well, atleast the car was supposed to turn up at 6 am. And yet, it was half past 12, and no one seemed to be sleeping. Of course, people dozed off all the time for about fifteen minutes until someone decided to use them as an ashtray. Someone got sent out on refill duty. This was the most sober person around. A little later, stocks replenished, Sikdar and Sidd initiated the serious work of finished those stocks.

After sometime, Sik suggested that we leg it to where we might breathe the free air. We tripped upstairs.. found a vestigial balcony mostly occupied by sleeping hotel employees.. this was no Ritz. And then a ladder to the roof, which in our current state of inebriation was not that easy to negotiate. Having made it to the roof, we proceeded to pollute the whole city’s air. Sik lit up, Joshi followed. And after a few minutes of perfectly companionable silence, someone asked if we believed in ghosts. There is always someone like this in a large group. The guy who initiates a debate on ghosts, or something equally nonsensical like,…. arranged marriage when everyone is sloshed. Well, the guys started arguing. Finally, someone appointed me arbiter.. which was quite hairy.. I think I suggested that we kaput the guy who started the topic and find out for sure.

I don’t remember much of what happened later. I do remember waking up to a blue haze around five feet above the ground. I must have made it down the ladder to the room again. Joshi was fumbling for something on the ground near my feet. My feet, I should mention were dangling over the ground. Joshi got up. He held three of four almost completely burnt down cigarettes. We had run out of smokes. He then proceeded to smoke the last five millimeters worth of tobacco on each of them with great enjoyment. Then all kinds of cellphone alarrums started going off. We had an hour to get ready to go to Ooty.