(mis)adventures Of A Bachelor Boy (In high spirits)

Christmas season can really lift your spirits, especially for happy-go-lucky bachelors like us. We (Manu, Pillai, Sam, Suresh, and I) lived in a cheap, second-grade flat in Coxtown, Banglore. The four of us worked as copy-editors for a national daily, while Pillai was employed in the IT field. We had our share of kicks. For Manu, Pillai, Sam and Suresh, it was drinking, for me it was watching them get drunk.Manu was keen to enjoy every ounce of his bachelor days since his girlfriend had threatened to put an end to it by marrying him soon.Comprehending the inevitability of having to reform his wayward life and eventually giving up his love for spirits in favor of his future wife, Manu moved in with us a month before he was to get married, on a pre-condition that it would be party time every weekend. My pals agreed willingly. So did I, for a different reason. The day before Christmas (it was on a Sunday), we invited the entire editorial staff for a bachelor’s party. We pooled in the money and purchased food, rum, whisky, vodka and red wine.The day began quite early by our standards at around 8 p.m. Friends began streaming in for quick drink. As it was a working day, they took turns to get drunk and stumbled back to office to finish the pages. (Some of the pages had a few typographical errors, the next day.) As the night progressed, the booze flowed and crowd got more raucous. The aggressive ones mellowed down, while the sober types began getting aggressive as the time progressed. However, the weather played spoilt sport as it began to rain heavily. To compound our misery, our area was plunged in darkness, due to unscheduled power cuts. Booze can have strange effects on the human mind. Pillai began his monologue on Kerala’s twisted politics, Sam on Shakespearen plays, while Suresh busied himself with Aristotle’s philosophy. As the three rambled on, Manu a die-hard-canine-hater (especially of the street dogs that seemed to be in abundance in Cox Town), began to get worked up, after hearing the howl of a distressed street dog. We rushed out in pouring rain, only to realise that a street dog had fallen in a narrow pit that had been left open for a borewell. On his insistence, we began the task of retrieving the dog in pouring rain. With torchlight to illuminate our progress, we got to work with a bucket, a rope and few good hands.As fellow journalists came in for a second round, everybody lent a helping hand in attempting to rescue the terrified canine, as Manu stood supervising the operation. Persistent attempts failed as the terrified dog refused to climb into the bucket and bit the rope. Having run out of other viable options to get the dog out, we decided to go in for the easier one - to get Manu drunk until he dropped senseless to the ground. A few more glasses did the trick and Manu was soon fast asleep, while the rest of the crowd continued with their nocturnal activity. By the time the “high-spirited guests” had left, and each of my friends had drunk themselves silly, the clock had struck 3 a.m. But the party was not yet over for others. Hence I retired to bed early, leaving my drunken friends to settle down later that morning. That was to cost me dearly. I woke up around 7 a.m. to realise that the front door was ajar and had not been bolted the entire night. My Bata shoes that I had bought from Chennai last week were missing. I frantically woke up my friends to tell them of the latest development. However, Manu ignored me, Sam laughed it away, Pillai seemed unconcerned, while Suresh gave me a lecture on materialism.But I was not the only one to lose my foot ware. I soon discovered that the nimble-footed thief had also made away with Sam’s Rebook, Pillai’s Woodlands formal shoes and Suresh’s expensive wristwatch from the hall. In contrast, Manu took it as a personal insult that his weather-beaten, two-year-old shoe had been left untouched in favour of our footwear.Our search seemed futile as the thief had also picked up our socks that had been left to dry on the cloth line. The incident left a deep mark in our minds. My friends promised never to drink again, at least, not with the door left open.