scribblings

Well a few evenings back, i was dinning at The Residency. One of our usual Wing Treats. Some Six of us who will be leaving us for the better part of the world were consoling us that they are not leaving us high and dry.

This Hotel is fairly old and good compared to the normal ones we IITians usually haunt. Though aware of its existance earlier, given the weight of my wallet i did not dare to even venture to the coffee shop there. This occasion being a different one and given that i could walk in even sans a wallet i did go there.

Actually there was a lot of confusion amongst the hosts if the place was this one or the name sake of this place which has recently sprung up right next to the another of these places probably owned by the three letter Jewellery Giants of the city. Yours truly had to come to the rescue of these people and tell them where this place is and even had the fortune(?) of guiding the Call Taxi driver into vague bilanes of Anna Road to reach the Hotel.

The menu was just tooo much for one to even taste everything served. I did manage to eat enough to fill me till my throat and had to call it a day though almost half of the dishes were yet not fortunate enough for me to taste. This is probably a problem with all these buffets that they have too many things and you end up eating nothing of what is served. Anyway i did not starve that night.

While all the food was being had, a good friend of mine who lives two rooms away from me (towards the staircase) proposed ordering something to drink. He and 'The-Professor-of-the-wing' in true spirits ordered for what was called the exotica, with a r replacing the x. This thing apparently was some mix of some alcoholic drink and some other juices and/or creams and looked in a yellowish, brownish, dirtish colour. It took an eon to be served and i was sitting right next this good friend of mine and was offered a sip of this drink. Though hesitant in the first place, i did pull up all the courage i had in my body and mind to venture and take a sip of whatever that was offered to me.

Believe me it just tasted like a strong dose of some cough syrup. That is not all, now the good friend of mine called affectionately with the most misspelt name, decides to order vodka after a series of consultation with veterans of the show. Our man orders for a small one with a cool drink to be mixed while the guy who started off all this ordered for a large one. The small one was indeed small, and it was some (1/10)th of the glassware in which it was served. The small one was duly mixed with the cool drink to give a sizable amount of liquid in the glassware and our man started to taste it. I am sure it was so diluted that the concentration of the alcoholic counterpart would be in milli-molar if not lesser but still our man does wants to put up an impression of being high and dry. I was offered a sip of the large one, which i readily accepted and this time it was a bit different tasting stronger cough syrup with stronger vapours. I ended up with a couple of sips this time.

Then there was a third round, when another guy had come and they invited a couple of hell's angels*. They were more orangish and tasted that way also but still cough syrup.

After all these rounds, i had to make an about turn to watch a table full of people with only bottles surrounding them and who said that fairer sex does not drink. The leader of this table was a female homo sapien who started off with a large whisky and followed on and on and on and on...

In the middle of this all, I was getting more and more pained with my aching back and probably my face went into all sorts of dimensions that people started tagging me as high. This is when i was unable to tolerate the pain (the literal one) and wanted to leave, when there was one other guy leaving. We just took an autorickshaw to be dropped back in the hostel. The guy who came along with me was the one who started the whole god damn thing and then he also went on to publicise that i was high.

To be true to one's self, i did suffer from a back pain and some migrainic head ache which are part and parcel of my life. This had come in as a handy symptom for people to brand me as a spirited personality. I did doze off early that night, and the next morning somebody asks me if i had experienced nausea while someone else enquired me of some sort of dysentry and the height of it all, one of the drinkers of the previous night asked me if i had gone through a stroke of some gknfngwerieicia (i m sure i got the spelling wrong) and not a soul was ready to belive that i was not high and a couple of sips of some vague diluted alcoholic drink can never get you high and dry.

They all had their time in branding me as a Drunkard, poor mee. Sob!!! Sob!!!

*Apparently, that's the name of the drink

Note: I had half a mind to title this one as High and Dry but that would make the article too dry and proove that i m high.