VIKASH NALYN DUSSOYE
Waking up these days of the year, I cannot help feeling that I am blessed. It is commonly known that one should always count one’s blessings and I am indeed counting them for 2 years, because it’s not only the devil which is in every detail, blessing often in disguise is also within our boundaries and it is lurking around us and each time it appears in its own peculiar manifestation and one should recognise it, embrace it, cherish it, and hang on to it preciously, and by valuing it, the chances that it will slip through our fingers will be faint. Keeping our wit about us definitely helps.
It’s been 30 years since alcohol has had a mesmerising presence in my life, so much that during usual cacophonic drunken banter, I would boast aloud that I will rather stop water but never beer. I thought I was original and funny. Beer, within its conception was an alcoholic beverage that has the properties to quench thirst, supposedly. If it really did, we would not have a second one and several more afterwards. Alcohol has a suffocating presence in everyday life. It is glamorised instead of being demonised. When I had my first wine tasting experience in Châteauneuf-du-pape, France, back in 1993, I turned it into a pilgrim’s tale. Name any whisky, there is a high probability I have had it once in my lifetime, and same applies for beer. I was among those who perpetuated the glamorisation, how was I to know what nonsense I was spluttering out for I was most of the time intoxicated?
Obviously any occasion was a great excuse to sip, swig or chugg. When I was happy, I had to celebrate and what is a celebration without champagne we are constantly coaxed. When I was sad, why cheer up by one of our beautiful lagoons when any bottle can drown all our sorrows. I am stressed, why meditate when it is so easy to relax with a chilled chardonnay. I have a cold, why keep the doctor away with an apple a day when one can have a couple of whiskies and neat, please, as prescribed by peers.
Strangely enough though, throughout these couple of sober years I have been fairly happy. There was no reason not to be. The days glided by, coolly, calmly like the long steady flow of a river. I was surfing on bliss instead of being engulfed in an inferno of cravings and withdrawal symptoms. My life was not on hold until the next drink and was free from any “Nissa”. I woke up sober, serene and embraced the new year with clear vision. No lingering hangover from 2023 and 2024. A Neat New year. As Jimmy Cliff Song Goes “I can see clearly now the wine is gone… It’s gonna be a bright and sunshiny Year ”.
