HOOCH HIKING IN TAPI TOWN.....................
As Gujarat’s news shame and its worst kept secret come to fore, the state, it seems is divided in two kinds of people.
The first kinds are the social drinkers, who enjoy their alcohol in a stately ambience, guzzling from fancy cut glasses that rattle with cubes of machine made ice. Sipping on either single malts, chardonnays or chilled fizzy beer, Russian vodka or the flavour of the month Bacardi. With starters and hot nibbles from an up market restaurant down the road. With music and conversation flowing along with the booze. Maybe a little dancing or, a lot more, if they get lucky.

The second kinds are those who are labelled drunkards or ‘darudias’. Their day ends with sipping a hazy white coloured fluid from a dirty plastic potli that reeks of rotten fruit and chemicals. This is the liquid that gives them an instant high, not for them any fancy bottled stuff [no, Mr.Mallya, that won’t work] or even the Rs.40.’quarteriu’that requires soda or water but is not even half as potent. Food is the last thing on their mind because the shot of this sharab zaps their senses till they are ready for the next. Anyone trying to even initiate a conversation would be sure to get a hearing of the choicest profanity.

Surat is certainly no exception when it comes to this divide. As most social conversations revolve around the headlines of the week, majority of suburban Surtis looked at the hooch issue indifferently, stating it is not an issue that concerned them,’’kuch bhi peetey hai toh aisa hi hota hai’, ’ae loko ne koi fark nahi padey’.’Yeh sab slum area mein hee hota hai.’
Well dearies, the truth of the matter is ‘hooch hooch hota hai ‘is closer than we think, here is why-

I live at Parle Point, the area that is more notorious for snooty socialites than for illicit liquor but, at a distance of five minutes from my house is the Ambaji temple, the river banks alongside the same are often used as temporary breweries to concoct deadly brews.

As if that is not close enough, my toddlers masseur, a robust woman who comes in from Katargam has single handedly raised her three children not because she is a divorcee but because her husband spends all his earnings as a barber on the ‘potli’.

My housemaid, a pretty young twenty something, refuses to marry the love of her life because the rent of her home and ration are paid by her. Her father and brother are jobless [conveniently] and depend on her for their daily dose from Bapunagar.

My cook’s spouse is a teetotaller but her son in law often turns up at her place in Limda Chowk,asking for an ‘English batli’, for which she happily spends saying, ‘amara ma batli no rivaaj chey.

Lurking over our labourers, whether in Dumas, Bhimpore, Udhna Magdalla, Hazira, Bhatha, Dumbal, Machlipith, Varachha, Ved, Adajan, Pandesara, is ‘lattha ni lut’ the smooch of the hooch is much closer home than we think.

Tapi town tattle- Sakhi Mandal-Gujarat’s new AA group=Anti batli Aunties.