{"id":1489,"date":"2016-05-15T14:27:11","date_gmt":"2016-05-15T14:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=1489"},"modified":"2016-05-15T14:27:11","modified_gmt":"2016-05-15T14:27:11","slug":"indian-parents-drinking-family-children-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=1489","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ll See You at Happy Hours, Mum and Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span>n a happy post-Diwali haze, probably caused by my glass of white wine, I sat surveying my family with a sense of satisfaction. Bua poured herself one, and took her place next to father, also with a drink. The conversation was light and jovial. Father dear was cracking some top-quality not-dad jokes, and everybody was laughing their guts out.\n\nEveryone, that is, except visiting Chachaji. At that moment, everything had seemed right with the world, but Chachaji was judging me heavily for breezily sipping the contents of my glass. Because, as my mother berated me later that night, \u201cLadkiyaan sabke saaamne aise nahi peeti!\u201d\n\nNot again. I\u2019ve lost count of the number of times my family and I have been through this \u2013 and I\u2019m still stuck playing Sisyphus, rolling up the boulder of what my mum labels \u201cpublic drinking\u201d.\n\nMy father, the enabler, had conveniently slipped out of the conversation; a highly irresponsible move considering he\u2019d been the one to pour us the drink in the first place. Bua had also vamoosed. I was crafting a hard-hitting feminist reply in my head, but even I know better than to attempt offering logic to an Indian mother\u2019s absurdly virtuous brain. So, I told her I\u2019d be careful from now on and try to hide my \u201cmisdeeds\u201d (I don\u2019t think this was the reply she expected but I didn\u2019t want to lie).\n\nMy mother was upset, but I was confused. Here was a woman who\u2019d sat and watched <\/p>Vicky Donor<\/em> with me, laughing as the Punjabi grandmother and mother clinked glasses in an unforgettable scene. Yet, the sight of her own daughter turning unsanskaari made her sicker than unlimited J\u00e4germeister shots might. Never mind my younger, and far drunker, cousins slipping and sliding around the house. They get a free pass thanks to that age-old bucket of bullshit \u2013 \u201cboys will be boys\u201d. The elders who let these budding bewdas off the leash, tick off all the boxes on the \u201ccool relative\u201d checklist, except the one that mattered to me the most: equal-opportunity alcohol consumption. Gender no bar.\n\n

I have the privilege of drinking with my father, only because he is mellow enough to \u201callow\u201d me that enjoyment.<\/blockquote>\n\nGrowing up in a Punjabi household, I\u2019d spotted explicit alcohol imbibing more than I\u2019d eaten makki ki roti and sarson ka saag. I once picked up my father\u2019s glass to try a sip, only to shudder at the gruesome taste. At weddings, I\u2019d slither off the dance floor, where sweaty overweight uncles shimmied to the latest Mika Singh track, their gyrating bodies stinking of whisky. In short, I\u2019d pretty much grown to think that alcohol consumption was a vice reserved for \u2013 and performed by \u2013 men.\n\nBecause in all these years I was yet to witness a woman drink with the kind of abandon the men displayed. The era where age-appropriate brothers would sneak vodka into their sisters\u2019 coke glasses hadn\u2019t arrived. The only time I saw woman openly drinking was in Hollywood movies.\n\nAt the age of 17, however, I had my first momentous tryst with drinking, thanks to a \u201ccool\u201d uncle. Even though the vodka burned my throat and I loathed the taste, I stuck at it. I was committed to my vision. Eventually, through sheer grit, I turned into a drinker. Not chronic. But definitely a can\u2019t-dance-without-four-neat-vodka-shots drinker.\n\nSo from finding the taste repulsive, I\u2019d somehow become that<\/em> girl. The one who sits and drinks with the guys in the group. The one who can be seen asking unapologetically for daaru at any function, in front of the judgmental gaze of the aunties sitting next to their inebriated life partners. The one who then gets a nice angry lecture from her mother.\n\nIn an episode of Modern Family<\/em>, the patriarch, Jay, waxes poetic about the sheer joy of having his first drink with his son. He considers it a beautiful ritual, symbolising a mature bond between the grown-up son and the father. You might still find a desi papa-beta inhaling Jack Daniels, discussing dirty politics and even dirtier cricket. But where can you see a father and a daughter, kicking back together at the end of the day with a glass of bourbon?\n\nAt my house. On occasion and with many, many riders. I have the privilege of drinking with my father, only because he is mellow enough to \u201callow\u201d me that enjoyment. This happens only when he is present to supervise me \u2013 and the rest of the extended family is not around. Once he caught me snarfing beer at a family function and appointed my mother my chaperone for the rest of the evening. I\u2019ve forgiven him for it \u2013 but I\u2019ve never forgotten it.\n\nMy mother, however, is a different glass of wine.\n\nIn yet another episode of Modern Family<\/em>, Claire, the mother of three, gladly obliges when her eldest daughter Haley, having just suffered heartbreak, asks if they can drink wine in the middle of the day. The daughter is drowning her pain in alcohol. With her mother as her only companion.\n\nThat scene will be about as familiar to a \u201cgood\u201d Indian girl as the experience of alien abduction. My mother would be affronted beyond recovery, just knowing that I\u2019d fallen in love and had my heart broken in the first place. Drinking together wouldn\u2019t even be a possibility \u2013 we\u2019d probably be rolling chapatis together.\n\nStill, I look for silver linings. I cherish the moments when my father occasionally pours wine for me while discussing the latest Hollywood hit. Most of my friends are bewildered when I tell them about this. They can\u2019t even mention alcohol in front of their parents, let alone drink it.\n\nAs this year\u2019s Diwali puja winds down, I silently send up my wish list for the next year. I reflect on the only thing I genuinely anticipate about this festival of pollution. It is the evening daaru session that\u2019ll inevitably occur in our house among my male relatives. Mother will serve delicious khichdi and dahi. The racket of the firecrackers outside will drown the clinking of the glasses in the room.\n\nAnd me? I\u2019ll loiter around you-know-which room, hoping my father will nonchalantly pour a drink for me in front of all our relatives. It is an unlikely thing to hope for. But as a famous prison fugitive once said<\/a> \u201cHope is a good thing\u2026 and no good thing ever dies.\u201d\n\nSo I will hope. I will hope to escape this invisible prison \u2013 right into the sewage of Chardonnay.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our parents have come a long way: They can accept live-in relationships and unconventional career choices. 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