CULTURE (OLD WINE IN PLASTIC BOTTLES)

OLD WINE IN PLASTIC BOTTLES

By: Nasser Yousaf

Some age-old idioms have to be improvised, if not altogether rephrased, to befit our peculiar way of living here in Pakistan. One such idioms is 'old wine in new bottles,' which we need to slightly modify by replacing 'new' with 'plastic.' Reason for the aforesaid being the fact that these days inveterate boozers are forced to transfer spirits of all different types into plastic bottles to evade the law enforcers during its transportation.

It all looks so unmannerly for indeed drinking a spirit of one's choice must always go with the observance of some bare minimum manners. Pouring it into a glass from an unhygienic vessel is simply bad manner.

Ban on alcohol was enforced by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, himself an unrepentant boozer, in the 70s, but it never came in the way of jolly good boozers cherishing it, of course not without a ceremony of a sort to accompany its consumption. But no more, ever since the long arm of the judiciary put a stop to the laissez faire in the second decade of this second millennium, sending the prices of many top quality alcohols out of the reach of the less afluents who per force have to use cheaper brands being bandied by the bootleggers.

But with such measures all manners of decent manners also appear to have been flung out of the windows by those who refuse to be otherwise bullied into stopping to drink to their heart's content. It is now up to our legislators to ensure that no law ought to be enacted that forces the people into abandoning respect for etiquettes and manners that one would previously find being observed tenaciously.

All that one comes across these days is a wretched friend in need of a draft or two to calm his nerves. A used water bottle containing vodka comes out of a cellar, if the space between the two sofas in the living can be bestowed with such a dignity! 'What can I do, brother bringing it all the way from Islamabad is fraught with many pitfalls,' one hears a complaint in a lugubrious voice.

It's not really easy not empathizing in such moments of sadness especially when one has seen and experienced better times. May her soul rest in peace, our English friend Maureen Lines wouldn't compromise on any of the itty bittys attached to raising a glass to our mutual cheerfulness. Though living a lonely life before she was obliterated from our presence by the Ides of March in the year 2016, Maureen's servant knew too well which drink to serve in which glass from a bottle held in a napkin. Pray, is it too much asking for English manners in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the backwaters of the whole world?

One shouldn't drink, if the spirit doesn't induce some little bit of temerity. There was once that jolly old man in an otherwise repressive corner of Bannu whose name translated into something like 'praise God.' What a wonderful little man he was! He used to painstakingly ferment his own whisky which he swore was better than any found on the planet as it attracted servicemen from the faraway posts. One could literally testify for such a tall claim. 'How dare they,' the frail-looking man from Bannu curtly replied when once asked if none of his eight sons minded him brewing whisky round the clock in the ante room of his guesthouse.

We live in times where we don't let people drink in their livings with some little freedom while we see people all around us in the bazaars and on the roads and railway tracks smoking and injecting heroine in their beings with aplomb, and we don't seem to mind a wee bit? Why is there so little liberty in this country and such a plenitude of hypocrisy in this excruciating existence?