Strains of Freddy fenders song wafting through the F.M. radio took me
back to the glorious days of my youth. Drinking played a crucial role in
college days, love, celebrations, soirees, mingling amidst career
anxieties were a heady cocktail – like drinking the wild music of youth:
A time when you try to dissolve your dreams in alcohol and the haze of
marijuana smoke.
Bonds of
friendship, romance and professional camaraderie were always sealed with
a drink, the magical substance that consents to be prosaic. Alcohol
also had the power to destroy those very bonds and corrode our adult
life. As Peter Hamil states,” In our youth we become aware of alcohol,
tobacco and embrace it and later struggle to give it up”.
Drinking was as essential part of being a macho alpha male, an amber
colored world of bars, nightclubs and discotheques where men and women
would congregate to toast the amber colored liquid and exchange body
fluids.
The culture of drink endures because it offers many
rewards; confidence for the shy, clarity for the uncertain struck with
stage fright, solace for the lonely/lovelorn – and above all the elusive
promise of happiness albeit ephemeral. In the smug darkness of the
saloons life is easier when you drink – as you imagine you can live life
with greater lucidity.
Part of me still yearns for this
aimless vagabonds solitude of my erstwhile drinking college life,
carefree and without a care in the world. The sort of life everyone
enjoys._ Vinay-
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