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My father was a strict teetotaller, and I too have always followed his path and still follow it. Besides, I am a great admirer of Gandhi and dislike smoking and drinking. My first encounter with drunkards was when I was a pre-degree student.
When I discovered every one of my best friends was very fond of Toddy, I disapproved, fought with them, and demanded they stop drinking. None of them was ready to heed my advice and quit drinking, so I unfriended them all. My best friend was the one who vehemently argued in favour of liquor consumption and repeatedly asked me what was wrong with toddy/liquor consumption.
“It is intoxicating, and it is bad to have intoxicating drinks and drugs,” I said, as I always did.
“I like intoxication, and how can you say intoxication is bad?” he asked
nonchalantly.
For me, such arguments are ridiculous, but my best friend told me that
it was my argument that was ridiculous. I snapped all connections with him, and it was the beginning of my reclusive path.
I used to attend all social gatherings in our neighbourhood until liquor started making an appearance on almost all such occasions—housewarmings, weddings, anniversaries, deaths and death anniversaries, etc. And I started withdrawing from all social gatherings until I was a complete recluse. I retreated into the world of books. Writers such as Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly, Arnold, Browning, and Tennyson opened a new world too beautiful to shun.
Then came along Hamlet. Of all the plays of Shakespeare, Hamlet is the one I read again and again, and his dialogue, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” reminded me of my friend, who questioned me about how I could argue intoxication is bad. Hamlet shattered the walls of my reclusiveness. I realised that if I didn’t like the ways of the others, shunning them altogether was not the best way to prove my point.
When Hamlet shattered the walls within me, my wife, who is socially gifted, shattered them from the outside too. She loves many of my qualities; being a teetotaller is one of them. When I tell her that I don’t like to attend this or that function because alcohol is a part of the party, she invariably says, “My dear, it is a function; you should attend it because we are invited. That is the right thing to do. If we don’t like what others do, we must ignore it; the remedy is not to avoid society itself. We are humans, and humans are social beings; hence, you can’t continue to be a recluse.”