6 ways to beat the ban, chillax & have some fun

ARVIND SWAMINATHAN writes from Madras: Ernest Hemingway said early to bed and early to rise and somebody else has all the fun. John Ciardi said early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labour. James Thurber said early to bed and early to rise makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead.

So, what can the hard-working, god-fearing, fun-loving, foot-tapping, “skilled labour” of Bangalore do when the police start waving the dhanda, and the moral police the red-and-yellow jhanda before the midnight gong?

Necessity is the maa of invention. The trick is to see the pitcher as half-full not as half empty. As the line goes in Grey‘s Anatomy: “If you want something badly enough, if you’re determined enough and appreciate enough, eventually it will happen…”

Here’s what you could do if you want to prove that reality is an optical illusion caused by alcohol deficiency.

1) Make a good “local“ friend: Somebody who knows his way around, somebody who believes a thirsty friend in need is a friend indeed. There are plenty of huge, capacious bungalows in and around Bangalore where you could have hard rock, soft lights, and chill out and relax, without throwing up on your neighbour’s table and getting thrashed.

2) Hire a limousine, a driver and a DJ: Pick up your poison, hit the highways, pump up the volume, and head out along the Hyderabad, Madras, Poona or Mysore highways. You might be surprised to see that there is a bit more to Karnataka than Brigade Road and Church Street. Do not forget to carry your personal, autographed copy of L.K. Advani‘s My Country, My Life.

3) Start an SMS/ chainmail campaign: Set up a meeting with the HR chaps, tell those nerds that it is high time they changed the office working hours: from 4 am to 2 pm, or 5 am to 3 pm. That will still give you seven clean hours of drinking and partying after a “hard day’s work” to let your hair down before the shutters are pulled down at 11.30 pm.

4) Bring pressure on Nandan and Mohan: The duo have spent a fair bit of their earlier lives on the tiles. Get them to open up the discos on the campuses on weekdays for some real action. Or get ol’ Narayana to threaten the government that “we will have to shift to Hyderabad/ Gurgaon/ Bhubaneshwar” if such “unrealistic puritanism” (sic) continues. (Ha, ha, ha.)

5) Do some virtual partying: Go on the web at 2.35 am, open up a webcam installed at some bar or pub, and buy somebody a drink half way across the world as you listen to some banned music. Home minister V.S. Acharya thinks he “maintains” a blog—drop a comment to show how you bucked his “good intentions” and where you drank at those ungodly hours.

6) Join a pro-Kannada body: Stock up on the read-and-yellow stickers and banners and display them prominently at your party venue. Play classical (Carnatic) music outside. Have some Kannada newspapers lying around when the TV9 crew arrives. When you flip open your wallet, let a picture of Narayana Gowda or Praveen Shetty show up immediately.