Tripping: Chapter 3

This is part 3 of a series, scroll down for earlier parts

The incident in the car was a sure sign of things to come. The rest of the trip was to be dominated by the myriad ways of Gopaljee. It was obvious he had been up to much since we’d last met him in Kota. At every juncture on that trip, he surprised us with insights into what was, probably, now his life.

Take for instance the first night, when we went out to dinner at a place near our resort. Most of us had been introduced to alcohol in the year or so that we’d been in college but were still in the phase where we were eagerly gathering knowledge and experience around it. Gopalji however, was already learned in the matter. Or, at least, he seemed more and more so with every proclamation he made that night.

“Brandy is the illegitimate, and older, sibling of all whiskeys” he told us while still relatively sober.

A few drinks later, his views on marriage became public.

“Drink now guys, drink now like there’s no tomorrow. Once you get married, your wife will give away all your booze to the watchman.”

One of us was naïve enough to ask him, “Why the watchman?” I’m convinced it wasn’t me.

In an instant, Gopalji responded with a hiccup, “Who else do you think she’ll be cheating on you with? The watchman, it’s obvious.”

After yet another couple of rounds, Gopalji offered us his most precious gem of the night.

“Dekho yaar,” he said with the air of one who knows much more than his audience. “Everyone knows that the only, and only, route to good sex passes through the brown glow of a Jack Daniel’s before it ever reaches a woman”.

Then, in the style of a great Maharaja at the end of a beautiful literary piece, he pulled out his wallet with a flourish and pushed a fifty into the palm of the waiter nearest to him.

His gesture may or may not have explained why every waiter all the way till the exit saluted us on our way out. It may or may not have explained why, in a drunken gambling session that night, Gopalji kept borrowing money from Munnu. But it certainly explained why, the next morning, Gopalji’s wallet was lighter not by a fifty, but by a thousand and fifty.

I mentioned gambling, which is what we did most of the time owing to the absence of absolutely anything else to do in Daman. I also mentioned alcohol, which is what Gopalji did most of the time he gambled. That, and the sudden and untimely loss of a thousand on the first night, ensured that Gopalji fell into the most obvious of gambling pitfalls - trying to recover one’s losses. The net result, at the end of six days, was another thousand sized hole in his wallet and an even larger one in his ego.

Indeed, Gopalji had only two real states on that trip. One was drunk, and when he was in this state he did much of what forms the meat of this story. The other was the state commonly known as ‘just sobering up’. In this state he did just one thing, he complained. His complaint was such, “Arey fuck yaar, you bastards forced me to drink again! Now I have a splitting headache. You guys are too much yaar. Ahh, I need a brandy to clear my head”.

Understandably, this state quickly gave way to the first one.

I doubt, however, that even Gopalji would try to explain away everything that happened in Daman that year in the name of alcohol. For instance, the incident outside ‘Dara da dhaba’ with the taxi driver.

The taxi driver I speak of is the same guy who had ferried us from the station to the hostel. Yes, the same guy, even after our little ride got him pushed out of a moving car. So miserable was the state of Daman’s taxi industry that the guy jumped up in joy when we asked him to be our chauffeur for the remainder of the trip.

Anyway, one evening outside Dara’s Dhaba, Gopalji stumbled out of the car, still reeling from his tea time quarter of Signature (the financial losses had caused Jack Daniels and Co. to give way to far more mass market brands). He let the rest of us enter the Dhaba as he waited by the car. Then stepping up to the driver’s window, he gave the driver a wry little smile.

The driver responded with a nervous smile of his own. The look on his face said, quite simply, “The last time you had that look on your face, I remember falling out of a moving car. What will it be this time?”

Gopalji then snuck out a tiny bottle from his jacket and waved it at the driver. It was the quarter of Signature, with a sip or so still in it, clinging to the bottom.

“Here, this is for you, take it” he said generously.

“No thank you Sahab, I don’t drink, thank you.”

“Arey come on yaar, what are you talking about. Here, don’t be shy now, its all yours.”

“No no sir, I really don’t drink, thank you very much,” he said as firmly as a terrified taxi driver in Daman could.

Gopalji would have nothing of it though. He took the bottle and thrust it into the cabbie’s shirt pocket. Gopalji had the same demeanour one has while bribing a government official, while the official acts as though he’s doing one a favour by accepting it.

The driver, who figured that it was just easier to accept the damn bottle, stayed quiet, looking foolish with a tiny bottle sticking out of his shirt.

After a terribly large meal at Dara's, Gopalji cornered the driver again.

“So… now that I have made sure you have a good party tonight," he said pointing to the bottle, "why don’t you do me a little favour?”

The driver stared at the two sips in the bottle and wondered what kind of party it would have helped him have, even if he did drink.

Gopalji didn’t wait for the driver to respond as he continued, “Nothing much really, I am sure you get requests like this every day. No big deal at all.”

The driver stayed quiet, presumably out of fear.

“Basically, my simple request is – Why don’t you arrange a girl for me tonight?” said Gopalji.  

A girl, he said. A girl. The rest of us were just a little way down from the cab when one of us overheard Gopalji asking the cabbie for a girl.

“Gopalji’s asking the cabbie for a girl”, said the eavesdropper.

“A girl? Like a girlfriend?” asked another.

Tch tch, such little kids we were.

“No, you moron! A girl, like a girl for the night.”

Aghast, some of us ran back to Gopalji.

The driver was holding the quarter out to Gopalji, obviously quite distraught, “No please sir, I don’t know any girls, please, just take your quarter back and let me drive home to my wife and kids. Please.” Looking back, I remember the driver’s helpless expression as he said this and it’s safe to say that he sorely regretted having ever met us at all.

“No no, let it be. It’s okay, you take the bottle. It’s fine if you can’t get me any girls”, said Gopalji, very obviously hurt by the driver’s thankless behaviour. 

Having heard this conversation on getting there, for a few moments our shock momentarily transformed itself into nearly parental anger. We weren’t sure, however, what we should be more pissed off about, Gopalji seeking out hookers or him trying to get our driver drunk while he was at it.

A girl, Gopalji had said, likely just for the night too. Gopalji’s new life or whatever that was, obviously had more to it than we thought.

Also as inexplicable, was Gopalji’s little cameo at the Ghazal (plus dinner) function we crashed the next night. Only kind of drunk, Gopalji walked up to the organiser of the Ghazal event and mumbled something in his ear. The organiser nodded and smiled the false smile of an organiser, while pointing towards a table with both arms. I’m not sure what Gopalji told the guy and am even hazier on what the guy’s response was. Next thing we knew, however, was that Gopala had jumped up on stage and grabbed the mike. For the next five minutes, Gopalji treated that sombre gathering of drunk Ghazal lovers to ‘Jaana O Jaana’. Sure, the mindless automatons at Indian Idol may not have been able to appreciate the delectable rhythm of Gopalji’s first song, but the fat ghazal singer, put on hold thanks to Gopalji, clapped along till every lard of fat on him could feel Gopalji’s pleasant vibrations. As for us, we initially froze in horror seeing Gopalji on stage. Soon, however, we realized the audience was high enough to have hummed along to anything from Michael Jackson to a cat wailing. And Gopalji was a lot better than either, who cared what Indian Idol said. 

After the success of his performance, Gopalji drank with animated abandon that night. At some point, he came up to me and started to whisper, in a voice suddenly sober.

“Arey Sushant, you know why I do all this? Do you?”

I didn’t, and he proceeded to tell me.

“Sushant, soon after I’m out of college, pitaji will have me married and I’ll have to take care of the gaddi as well. These are the only years I have to have a good time. U.P. is not Mumbai you know, it's not even Delhi. Life will be very different post marriage.”

He slunk away before I could answer, and proceeded to be drunk again. 

There are many other little stories I could tell you from that trip, but the gist of each is in the same general direction. We were stumbling into adulthood, in a way progressively more cockeyed with every step. On this trip, one of us went looking for a girl, on sale. On subsequent trips, only more could happen. Little did we know then that these could be, in fact, the best years of our lives. 

Many more trips happened after this one, and they continue to this day. Those are of course, different stories.