The quality of liquor

It is always an amazing experience when you are out of Gujarat and can for-real and legally go to a shop and buy alcohol. This is fun when, say you go down to Mumbai; but most liquor stores are (were when I was there many moons ago) designed such that you stand at a counter and ask for what you want and its sold to you over the counter.

So after coming to America and the first time I visited a liquore store, the amazement level was a a couple of notches higher than what I felt in Mumbai! You actually walked down isles with liquor of all types on either side. I could actually reach out and touch the stuff without first having to buy it! If you haven't lived in Gujarat you don't know what that is like! Wow!

So I was basically like a mosquito in a blood bank! Of course, the novelty of that soon wore away once you realized how little you could afford on your starter code-monkey H1-slave salary. Eventually the pay check got fatter (and fatter, praise Goddess Laxmi!) and the ability to buy the finer stuff got better. And now, the gang only drinks the good stuff. Sometimes, the liquor stores run by Indians stocks Indian whiskeys and rums, brands we could not afford on the black bootleg market back in Gujaratt, brands we only got to try if we were over at some rich businessman's party.

And now I have come full circle. Though I can afford the good stuff, I am at the point where I can't (or shouldn't, but do anyway) have too much. What with the anti-depression mediciation, the acidity problem and the high blood pressure and high colestrol, I should really be abstaining. But I don't, not yet at least.