Gujarat, And Its Strange, Thirsty Prohibition

Prohibition never stopped anyone from drinking in Gujarat. It only made the stories that come after a lot more interesting, recounts Binu Alex.

I have stopped drinking since I moved to Kochi. It happened quietly, without any decision on my part.

I still bring back the duty-free two litres when I travel. Old habits. The bottles sit on a shelf now, gathering dust, like medals from a race I have stopped running.

This got me thinking about Gujarat, and its strange, thirsty prohibition.

Nobody minds if you talk about a good drink there. Nobody arrests you for discussing mutton curry either. It is the ban itself that has turned wanting a drink into a kind of low, quiet fever.

They banned alcohol in the name of one man. Mahatma Gandhi.

Everything else the man believed in, the state has quietly set aside. Ask a young person on the street who Gandhi even was, and you may get a blank look. But the ban stays. Nobody questions this contradiction. It just sits there, part of the local flavour.

My father used to drink. I never once saw him enjoy it.

He drank the way you run to catch a departing train. Fast, urgent, no pleasure in it. He never kept a bottle at home. No "company" for it, he said. He went to his friend Das Gupta's office instead, and did the job there, quickly, like a chore.

I have watched many men in Gujarat drink exactly this way. Nobody sips. Everybody gulps.

Bootlegging in Gujarat runs better than most government departments. No bills, no apps, no complaints department. If the state made it legal tomorrow, the tax collection alone would embarrass the treasury.

But Gandhi's name blocks the road, so people find their way around it. They drive to Mount Abu. Ratanpur. Or Udaipur. Or Daman. Or Diu. These towns exist, I sometimes think, purely to receive thirsty Gujaratis.

If driving feels like too much effort, there is the Health Permit.

Filling up the Health Permit form is a small education in itself.

First column: Darudiya's name. This means, roughly, Name of the Drunkard.

Next column: Daridiyano Baap no Naam. Father of the drunkard.

Every single line began with the word drunkard. Nobody minded. Nobody even blinked.

Then, one fine day, without warning, Darudiya became Arajdar. Applicant. Much more dignified. Same form, same purpose, better manners.

After the form, you go to a government doctor. This is the funny part.

The healthiest man in Gujarat stands in that queue, asking a qualified doctor to please certify him as unwell.

Not very unwell. Just unwell enough. For a few bottles.

The bottles themselves are no problem at all. They are everywhere, plentiful, patient, waiting.

The problem is the paper. The permission. The right to be seen holding one legally.

Thirst was never the issue. Paperwork always was.

So, alcohol is bad for you everywhere in the world, except Gujarat, where a doctor can certify it as medicine. Get the right certificate, and you collect your monthly quota from a shop around the corner. It is more convenient than buying alcohol in places where alcohol is actually legal.

Branded whiskey, branded rum, these are safe enough. It is the local brew you should worry about.

We were once in Godhra for a reporting assignment. Some tribal men, friends of a colleague I will not name (he will know who he is, but no one else), came to see us after a rally. They handed us a two-litre plastic bottle of Mahua, made from the flowers of the mahua tree.

I found it tasted like kerosene. Rough stuff.

Evening was falling. We began the drive back to Ahmedabad in a Tata Indica. Three of us, plus a female colleague in the front seat. Our usual driver was unavailable. This one was new, and young, and turned out to be trouble.

Tell him left, he went right. That sort of trouble.

The Roadside Mahua Episode

The Mahua sat between us in the car, fermenting quietly inside its sealed plastic, building up its own private pressure.

My friend decided the bottle needed lightening. He took a sip. Too strong on its own, so we asked the driver to stop for lemon soda.

He nodded. Then drove straight past the first shop, and stopped fifty feet beyond it, in the dark.

We shouted. He did this four times.

By now my friend had managed a few more sips of Mahua, straight, no soda. His patience, never a deep well, had run dry.

He ordered the driver to stop directly outside the next shop. The driver again stopped fifty feet beyond or may be more. No streetlights this time. Just an elevated road with ditches on either side.

My friend stepped out. We assumed nature was calling.

Instead, he walked to the driver's window, reached in, and pulled the man clean out through it. Feet never touched the ground. He simply swung him into the ditch. Not a deep one, thankfully.

It was over in three seconds. None of us in the back seat moved. The colleague up front had missed the whole thing.

Then we heard the driver climb out of the ditch. He went straight to the boot and pulled out a sword.

Nobody had mentioned a sword was part of the vehicle's standard equipment.

"You don't know who I am! I'll show you now!" he shouted.

"Come on then," my friend slurred, swaying gently towards a man holding a sword, as though this were the most reasonable invitation in the world.

Nothing happened. The driver did not swing. He turned and ran into the dark instead, shouting for help.

"I am a Brahmin! I will kill you!" he yelled as he ran.

"I am a Kshatriya! Come back here!" my friend yelled after him, unwilling to let a good fight go unfought.

When Caste Fear Took Over

It was not the drunkenness that had frightened the driver. It was the caste arithmetic, working itself out in his head, in the dark, on an empty road.

We found him further down the highway and calmed him. He refused to leave without calling the police. We reminded him, gently, that the police would take one look at my friend's ID card and arrest the driver first. Logic won. He drove off.

We stood on a dark highway at midnight. A few villagers wandered out to see what the noise was. We told them all was well, we only needed a lift.

A jeep finally appeared, decorated head to toe in flowers. It had just dropped a groom somewhere. The driver asked for a thousand rupees. We paid without discussion, dropped my friend home, and reached Ahmedabad by first light.

The next morning he arrived at the office looking perfectly ordinary. He remembered nothing. Not the ditch, not the sword, not the caste debate conducted at midnight on a highway.

We never spoke of it again. Until today.

Prohibition never stopped anyone from drinking in Gujarat. It only made the stories that come after a lot more interesting.

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff