Ho ho ho....and a (half) bottle of vodka

I got up this morning feeling somewhat different. Whether it was good different or bad different, I did not know. But something that I did or did not do yesterday night, affected me. I slept a lot better and I woke up a bit early. Actually, yesterday was the first night since a long time that I hadnt had alcohol. And no, it was not because I have suddenly decided to go sober or something. Its just that I was dead tired yesterday and just couldnt muster the energy to walk the 100 yards to my current favorite place in the whole world and buy a bottle of vodka.

Although I like the place, it just is not suitably located. It is barely a 100 m from my office and is in front of a bus stop which my office staff use during the evenings to board a bus back home. I scan around the entire perimeter, while going to buy a bottle, and if I find someone from my office who might recognize me, I move forward to the next shop to purchase maggi and curd. I hope that their curiosity turns to sympathy seeing their Project Manager purchase Maggi as his dinner and curd as his night dessert. If nobody is there, I go to the thekka and ask for a bottle of vodka. I keep glancing left and right and curse at the person behind the counter to hurry it up. But it always seems as if he is a person who has all the time in the world. I always give him 2 hundred notes, so that it becomes easier for him to subtract 180 bucks and return me the twenty rupees. But the damn idiot always uses a calculator to do this seemingly complicated subtraction. Then he counts the 2 hundred notes I have handed him, not once but twice. He looks at the calculator again to make sure. All this while my heart beats at 180 bpm, and I am sure I am going to have a stroke any second now. I just hope that nobody from my office comes and sees me standing at a wine shop and all their sympathy turns to disgust. The thekka walla, by this time has solved the complex algebra and has taken out two 10 rupee notes. He counts it twice too.....and finally hands over a half a bottle of vodka. "Am I supposed to carry this bottle in my hand, like a street bum, you asshole?", is what I want to shout at him, but out loud I say, "Okka plastic bag eeyandi" (give me a plastic bag). The handover of a plastic bag is again a 30 second procedure during which I again have to look over my shoulder twice hoping that I am not recognized by any of the people standing there. After all, I am Project Manager of ITDA Srisailam, who is purchasing vodka at a small thekka like a common drunkard.

But once I reach home and have taken the first gulp of the burning stuff, I attain nirvana and forget all my worries. It makes the whole ordeal, which I go through every night, worthwhile. hic