I Might Be A Little Drunk

A peg of single malt whiskey in the evening is what Khushwant Singh is said to have indulged in for the greater part of his life, up till he died, aged 99. He has always been my favourite Indian author. Mr Singh invited you liberally into his own life and I imagine he gets a kick out of being known as a dirty old man who is addicted to Scotch. Got, I suppose. It’s hard to think him gone, even now. I wish I’d met him in real life.

Ernest Hemingway is another person known for both his drinking and writing prowess. I’ve only read The Old Man And The Sea because we studied it in school. He’s not my favourite author but if he wrote that book drunk, he has my respect. It seems to be a very layered book with multiple meanings and many things to be read between the lines. Although, to be fair, it could just be English Literature teachers who think everything is a metaphor for something else. Mostly nihilism and great human sorrow.

Being drunk, in and of itself, is not the end of the world. Far from it, in fact. Most of the best stories from Uni invariably started out with, “This one time I was so drunk…” Not just Uni, actually. Even life post-Uni. Of course, to be fair, some of the worst stories also come with the “…was so drunk” theme but these are usually in the 3rd person retellings. Most people don’t want to remember the truly awful things they did when drunk, much less recount them personally.

Drunk is a state of mind. Very often, I’ve noticed, people don’t need alcohol to be drunk. Some people are just very off. Billie Piper, of Because We Want To fame, mused in her autobiography that the two most empowering things you can give anyone are a clipboard and a badge. I understand this so well. I remember an ugly biat*h back in high school boarding myself who was study hall monitor and she had faaaaaaarrrrr too much power in her hands. Or even in adult life, smarmy men and women with well-oiled tongues practised in the art of sycophancy and a**-kissing, all the people who live in between the lines that regular law-abiding people live by. Drunk. With illegitimate power.

They say the pen is mightier than the sword. But I don’t know. Shakespeare lives on well after his death, yes, but so does Ghenghis Khan. Or Cain, you know, from Genesis, although I think he might have used a stone and not a sword. But I guess neither Cain nor Ghenghis Khan are as beloved in memory as say, Jane Austen. And then again, you have Adolf Hitler who committed genocide but also wrote a book.

The world is a funny little place where it’s hard to make blanket statements! Even so, I’d say words are magic. This is why I like writing. This is why I blog. In the vain and narcissistic hope that some fragment of my soul gets through someone else’s soul (the eyes are the windows of the soul, they say; have you heard?) and takes root there. Or as plebeians might say, connect.

And in all honestly, I fear I might be a little drunk on the power of words right now.