Animal Entourage: Pick A Drinking Buddy

At our "Asylum Drinking Sessions", it's an age old debate - if you could have any animal as a friend and more importantly as a drinking buddy..which would it be?? It;s a race of imagination and there are few obvious rules also...like.. no imaginary animal like "unicorn" can be given alcohol.We stumble upon this discussion every time we have "intoxicated" ourselves with alcohol and here are some snappy summaries....


The Bear: The Wise old Git
(Bandeep Bhatia aka Bani..I love her when she drinks wearing white)
A wise ol bear is typically found sitting at the pub, Reading his paper from cover to cover and wishing he could still smoke his pipe indoors(I think Bani misses her grand dad). He cuts a foreboding figure with his half moon glasses and slightly thinning thatch on top, but he is full of reliable knowledge on honey making, fishing and current affairs-related makes him an indispensable conversational companion.

Drink Of Choice:..A Bottle Of Old Monk Rum


St Bernard: The Faithful Friend
(Rajat Talukdar...The Quality Freak ..Oops..Quality Guy!)
No second thought about it..Dog is the man's best friend...Loyal,dopey and always willing to chuckle at your jokes(even though 9 out of 10 times he don't understand them)...st Bernard is the dog to call for if you have got something to moan about ad infinitum or just want someone to listen u( Plz note: Rajat's fav movie :Hum aapke Hai kaun!!..that's where it's coming from)...He's also got a secret stash of rum around his neck, so that's always , ahem , useful...(what a thought...A miniature distilling rum stash around dog's neck..wow...."Race of Imagination")

Drink of Choice: A carton of Heinenken would be good! ( A carton!..geez)


Snake: Slippery,the one which gets away!!
(Rakesh Mahato aka Doctor)
Hard to please, even hard to get a hold on, Snake is not one which makes friend.He hunts alone and he dies alone.He's never noisy or deliberately outspoken and has excellent manners. Snakes have always been a seducers(like the one which seduced eve in to sin).... Snake is a nice oversexed normal human being(wow..this is my best line!)He's an intellectual and philosophically live..but you should take care..He has a delicate ego.

Drink Of Choice: Reyka Vodka Martini


Hyena: The crazy Comedian
(Srinivasan aka Sri)
Impossibly Hilarious, totally wild...hyena is the animal which feeds on other's hunt.He loves free or discounted items...so u can generally see him during happy hours. If you like going crazy, laughing your arse off and end up tied to a lamppost than this is your companion. You can hear him from streets away...thanks to his enormous drain like laugh- **** Disclaimer: He's an excessive gambler and will happily snort salt to get a free drink

Drink Of Choice: Godfather Beer( Oh Man!...Now i know why he laughs so much)


Parrot: The Chatterbox
(Simran Garg aka simi)
A Full-to Chattie..a total air headed..has nothing interesting as such but is good with stats..For parrot, every day is a bad hair day.

Drink Of Choice: Fruit beer( Fruit beer...wat???.is that a liqour??)







Elephant: The Bruiser
(Chandrakant Manohar Sharma aka The Pundit)
Despite his effeminate name, you dont mess with him. He is weightlifting champ and as far as liquor is concerned, unlike others, he doesnot talks in ml(s)..he talks in gallons..He's the fella you need by your side when some uppretty mongoose starts giving you some hard time. Not an animal of words, He talks with his fists( I mean Feets and ofcourse, Trunck) and speaks loudly with them at that( like .."Teri Maa ki...", "Teri Behen ko..."etc etc).

Drink Of Choice: A Gallon of Coruba (Good choice...the infamous jamaican rum)


Mallard: The WaterBuddy
(Neha Oberoi aka Abbe)
Self-assured, Confident, Curvy (I mean...Sleek), well dressed (always wearing a white collar) mallard is every man's dream. She is the beauty with brain combo. good at almost everything. Looks really graceful while swimming..walking
..talking..and ahem ofcourse while flying. She can and does charms birds out of the trees. Fortunately she is respectful of your own attempts with other ladies and more than willing to to take a waddle when you are making your moves. But one slip-up and she's there with a wise crack that will save you from ignominious social disaster. Top Buddy, No mistake!

Drink Of Choice: Vodka Green and Ro-afza( what!!.what kind of combination is this??.I don't believe this!!)

Book No Book..Delhi Book Fair

Today was the last day of Delhi international book fair and reached almost at time. I reached at around 2:30 pm. The fair was scheduled to be wrapped up within 5pm. I knew that it’s the last day and people will give atleast 1 hour extra. The book fair at pragati  maidan is quite smaller than what i expected. In kolkata ,book fair is celebrated with hyper enthusiasm and relatively large and better arrangements. Anyways the delhi book fair hardly looked and felt like an international fair. Apart from a big stall for germany i didn’t see any other “firangi’ stall. Kolkata book fair attracts huge amount of international attention. i was bit shocked to see that the people who are manning the stalls ,volunteers and customers  are mostly bengalis. Well, It’s a well known fact that bongs have inherited the love for books right from the british era- when ‘kolkata’ was ‘calcutta’ and was known as the literature and education capital of india.

I thought of getting good discounts but the publishers are offering a max of 20% discount. That was really ridiculous, I expected more. This wasthe first time i went to delhi book fair and by the time i was coming out i could make out one important thing – delhites are not at all book appreciators. Mostly people were from Eastern India or Southern India.I heard some conversations which are not likely in delhi. People talking about Genghis Khan and Napoleon Bonaparte.i think the situation will definately improve if delhites take more interest in meaningful things like books.

At the end - i got the books which i was looking for(didn’t get the expected discount though).One thing io really appreciated is that there was a huge crowd in hindi pavillion. These days parents want their kids to read Tolkien,Ruskin bond but not prem chand. That’s really a pity! As someone cruel once said “India is a country of Copycats”.Overall, the fair is average, definately not up to the mark for a city like delhi. But there lot of room for improvement and participation.