Onion Soup for the Drunkard's Soul

(Dedicated to the only professor who thinks I am of Tamil parentage)

Have you been stopped receiving indirect hints about the membership openings at Alcoholics Anonymous? Does a half empty glass appear half full to you when you are on your penultimate peg? Is the first thing you desire every morning a black coffee? Can you actually pretend to be sober while you are stuffed to your gills? Then, hold your drunken breath, you are not being true to the code of the drunkards, the oaths and protocols of the distinguished few who have managed to immerse their whole lives to boozing and staying inebriated in all their waking hours, if, they can be called awake. So here is another vignette, chosen carefully and written with the toil and sweat of a few sober people, in an attempt to rouse the world to the joy of staying sloshed and never to put down the cocktail until you are being dragged homeward bound.

The Reformation

J.D. was a drunkard. He also was in love. Usually one begets the other, but he managed to perform both individually, with neither of the sets intersecting each other, though, of course, the lightheadedness associated with his drink did create an illusion of his beloved having more beauty than the Lord had bestowed on her. But the illusion helped and thus, every day, in every way, after his fourth peg, J.D. realized what he really needed was a woman in his house, in front of his favourite armchair, with limpid eyes to gaze into through the end of a glass and eager hands eagerly bringing in soda every half an hour. The future was not unthought of either. He already had plans to open a brewery with his eldest son while his youngest son would own a vineyard. In fact, everything was settled upon except for the asking of the woman's hand. Our brave protagonist did not cringe there either. Without the assistance of any additional alcohol to his regular amount, he went and braved it, the odds not withstanding.

However, the girl's acceptance had the predictable condition, she wanted her future husband to abstain from all alcoholic drinks. The reason behind this seemingly lay in an unhappy childhood consisting of a drunkard father, a long suffering mother and midnight brawls in front of their home with the renegades of the night. She refused to foresee a similar future for herself despite J.D. 's forceful recital of the midnight brawls being sources of general knowledge, usually regarding natural history. It pertained, she was not very fond of natural history, due to having a Ph.D. on it.

Such was the power of his love for the girl that J.D. actually contemplated taking up sobriety as as a natural form of existence. J.D. had never drunk to lessen pain, there had been no sorrow gnawing at his heart. He drank for pure pleasure. Intoxication came to him as inspiration comes to a writer. The artist in him took delight in discovering different forms of drunkenness, and, though not a well known fact, he had even composed and published essays on this. It was to explain this and beg for understanding and pity that he landed up, late one evening at his betrothed's.

It was his future mother-in-law who received him, informing him that her daughter was away. Seated in a very feminine living room, with more drink sloshing in him than he was used to, the motherly concern shown by his fiancee's mother regarding his pallid looking skin and a distraught expression made J.D. break down into fierce hiccups, an emotional outlet to his real feelings. Not being able to hold them any longer, he cried out all his troubles and worries and begged the woman in front of her to have mercy on his pitiful state and ask her daughter to reconsider her decision. It was the eerie silence of his audience which woke him up to the fact that this woman herself was a victim of a drunken husband and was not wont to sympathize with his case. It was while he was trying to find a tactful comment about the weather when she quietly spoke, "It wasn't her father. It was me." While J.D. blinked away his confusion, she explained her husband had always been a strict teetotaler and it was she who had been addicted to the glass. It had meant a painful childhood for her daughter who adored her father, who disliked his wife's little luxuries. An impressionable girl, she felt her mother to be in the wrong and sided with her father when it came to the question of the habit of drinking and found the act reprehensible. However, her father having died due to natural causes a few years ago (possibly because he did not drink, everyone knows alcohol kills germs), it was he his daughter attributed the drinking habit to, too ashamed to confess she had a drunk mother. She finished her story by offering a glass of whiskey to J.D. who rose to the occasion by asking for two.

It was while consuming his fourth glass while the lady was on her fifth that he realized he had met a kindred soul. Not only did she gulp down whiskeys with the fine artistry of a camel, she had a rare, shining, truthful spirit, who was not ashamed to own up that she drank, nay, was actually proud of it. He compared her to her daughter, who not only deceived him, but also disliked alcohol, classifying her as a lemon in the garden of paradise. It was on his seventh glass that a sudden realization shook him to the core and he saw what a fool he had been going to make of himself.

J.D. and his once-upon-a-time future-mother-in-law are happily married today with two adopted sons, both of whom, though young, show a healthy interest in the making of alcohol. Though their father does not allow them to consume it till they are of age, it is clear that his dreams for his sons will surely come true.

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Ode to my Mathematical Economics Professor's Class on a Thursday Afternoon

Thou might be teaching thine students a thousand words of thine expertise
But dost thou never realize how utterly futile the purpose of education is?
Whence comparing our existence to the cosmos beyond the boundaries of all imaginations
Dost not thou comprehend, how entirely insignificant set theory is to the universe?

Dost thou have no inkling that man was created to enjoy His gifts
Not question, ponder and contemplate on them
Why are not thee satisfied that we are able enough to drag our sorry selves to college every day
That thou have to complicate all matters by adding derivable functions to them?

For what does it really matter in our inconsequential lives
That linear functions are odd or even,
When no one will remove the dust from our graves
A hundred years hence?

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The Pitch Called Life

The sun rose with all its majestic beauty, overpowering the evanescent moon and the few remaining ephemeral stars, alighting the dark hills in a golden frame. However, this was completely inconsequential to Ganga Kishore Bandhopadhyay and I, who were seated in my club, in one of the most urban localities in Kolkata, nine hours after the sun had so risen, two hundred kilometers away. Sunrises here are visualized on television screens. Ditto for sunsets and all the other natural phenomena the Romantics seemed to be so fond of eulogizing about. Modern poets are much more inclined towards the global unification, doubtlessly to gain access to a cheaper Macdonald’s.

“So, how has your ‘Midnight Murders’ fared,” I questioned my lunchmate, a beatific smile playing on my lips, as it usually does after I partake of heavy, oil laden or chocolate coated victuals, a smile profitable to all waiters and beggars in the vicinity. Food does to me what Rome did to Caesar. I come, I see, I conquer. My vision of Utopia is one where desserts can be consumed without facing any qualms in fear of gaining calories. My demeanor at this point of time was convincing enough for all atheists to believe that God was in heaven and everything was all right with the world. However, my companion did not seem so assured. He raised morose eyes towards me, sighed and went into a brown study.

“Hullo, Ganga, are you feeling all right,” I asked him with incredulous amazement, astonished at the fact that one could not feel all right after consuming five thousand, seven hundred and forty six calories in the guise of cordon bleu continental cooking.

“Scrapped”, a cry came from the bottom of his heart. “ Not good enough! The murderer is apparently obvious even before the murder is committed and anyway, the cause of the murder was unconvincing rendering it needless! Unrequired! Hah! Oh, the unfairness! Where is the equality which made our country famous? Where is the freedom of expression?”

Ganga Kishore Bandhopadhyay, a friend ever since I had discovered what teeth are actually intended for, was born to be a clerk. Clerkdom beckoned to him as a flame beckons to a moth. However, while passing through the phase of vulnerable teenage, a reckless astrologer had predicted great success for him in the field of creativity and my friend turned into an aspiring Agatha Christie, avoiding any allusions to gender confusion. Yet, the gods of murder mystery writers had apparently missed him during the blessing ceremony and success eluded him the way I elude cholestrol-free diets.

“Umm… That is such a tragedy. Talent is seldom appreciated nowadays. People never realize it when brilliance knocks their door.” I tried to fake some sympathy on my round and satiated face, which effused contentment. “So what are your plans for the future?”

“The critics have predicted that I will be a hopeless failure in this field. Why do I live?” I avoided saying that I had been asking this to myself ever since I had known him and persisted with the sympathetic look envisioning chocolate-coated wafers.

“Now I have no other option left,” he continued.” I think I will have to turn into a poet.”

“A what,” I reeled. “Where in the world did you acquire such an idea?”
I was completely taken back by Ganga’s statement. Ganga as a writer was overwhelming enough for my senses, but Ganga as a poet shook me to the core. My profound astonishment almost led me to miss his next words.

“…extremely impressed by the works of Arnold. My palm lines apparently are very similar to his. In fact I have even planned out my first poem.”

“ Indeed! That is marvellous!” Amazing would have stood more true. “What is it going to be about?”

“I am going to call it ‘The Pitch called Life’. It will reflect all the disappointments I have suffered in this lifetime. The starting goes something like this,
‘Oh how true it is my life can be called a pitch…’”
he sang out to the utter surprise of all people unfortunate enough to be seated within half a mile of him. Then he stopped abruptly looking uncomfortable.
“Well? What about the rest of the lines?” I queried, refraining from providing an opinion.

“That is where the tragedy lies,” he ejaculated. “ I cannot find a rhyme for pitch!”

“Oh, umm…..disappointing! How about ‘rich’?” was my brilliant rejoinder.

Ganga rolled his eyes and replied in the strained voice teachers employ for their mentally retarded students, “ What do you want me to write?
‘Oh how true it is that my life can be called a pitch,
Because I am tired, bored and rich!’
Where is the poetic beauty? Where is the lucidity of words?”

“Even I have to admit the lines sound ridiculous! How about ‘witch’?” But my help went unappreciated as he muttered something about his wife.

“Then why do not you use free verse,” was my next advice.
He tut-tutted. “Free verse is a form employed by amateurs”, implying he had been an expert since he was conceived.

Looking at his desperation, I was compelled to try and free him from all his worries.

“ Why can not you write another poem?”

“You do not understand! My senses have been completely overcome by this inspiration. I can not rest in peace until I have completed the poem,” he declared and went into throes of despondency.

“Oh, then, how about stitch?”

He shook his head. “Forget it, old friend! I will have to bear this burden myself, burn alone in the fire of my own creation! There is no escape for me now. Either I will complete this poem or embrace death. That is, after all, the only end for dreamers and believers. Today I might be laughed at. Tomorrow, when I am dead and decaying, I will be receiving accolades. This is the future I will face as will others after me who will make the mistake of believing in themselves,” and after making this highly dramatic speech he got up and went away leaving the entire burden of the unpaid bill on yours truly.

Another meeting between my friend and I was not in store for us. Two years later, while waiting for my poached eggs (sunny side up) one cold morning, I chanced across an article in a newspaper which reported the death of an obscure, aspiring poet, 'Gouri' Kishore Bandhopadhyay. He had died due to a massive stroke in a famous bookstore, with a dictionary in his hands. His last words apparently were “Pitch, rich, what?” I turned over to a culinary article in the next page.



Ritika Palit

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ONION SOUP FOR THE PESSIMIST’S SOUL

Onion Soup for the Pessimist's Soul establishes an individual's right to be bitter, caustic and if required, seek for professional or spiritual help to keep his cynicism in good form. We are planning a sequel soon for the Homicidal Maniac's Soul.

Daring To Dream

John was a prolific writer, churning out dozens of original stories and novels every day. His stories were harmonized blends of romance, comedy, tragedy and the inevitable happy ending - to cut a long story short- an ideal book for a railway journey of two hours and thirty-three minutes. There was just one obstacle in his perfect world- editors refused to accept his stories. No editor understood his selfish love for words, his profound desire to let his name be written beside Shakespeare’s or his thoughts to be mulled over centuries after his death.

Life ceased to have meaning for him. His latent genius and unexplored talent seemed doomed to be unrecognized by the hypocritical judges of aestheticism. A disillusioned and dejected John decided to end his life rather than live in anonymity and among rejection slips. He collected the entire works of his life and went to a cliff, deciding against a high-rise building (it is impossible to look like a romantic martyr if you are crushed under a hundred cars). He envisioned a dramatic death with the papers flying around his deceased mortal body, paying a final tribute to the man who had dared to dream, daring all odds.

However, fates were against him. The moment he convinced himself the cliff was not too high, a man came and stopped him. John, furious at having even death thwart him, shouted at him and in his desperation sang out the entire story like a gangster under the gentle influence of NYPD (for the want of a better simile). The man quietly listened to his ballad and took the papers from his hand and looked over them. After contemplating them for a long time, he told John that he liked his style of writing and that he would like to publish his works. It turned out he was a publisher of not a small repute who liked to give new talents a chance. The gratified and overwhelmed John fell down on his knees with joyous gratification, sobbing like a child. The man started to come near him but tripped over a pebble and fell down the cliff, his scream reverberating off the walls of the abyss.

(The author would have preferred to remain unnamed in fear of being lynched by the masses, but, then, even notoriety is fame)

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