<p>Seventies and eighties were the days when foreign liquor was available only in duty-free shops inside the airport precincts. Senior scribes with smiles beaming used to say “Oh we had Heineken beer yesterday with Balasaheb Thackeray.”<br /><br /></p>.<p>The pipe-smoking Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray apart from being a connoisseur of tobacco, also had a refined taste buds for beer; the preferred brand was the ‘Dutch Heineken Beer’ over salted nuts.<br /><br />Senior journalists in eighties were sometimes invited by the cartoonist to sip beer with him; with his pipe puffing. Thackeray would discuss political permutations, combinations and possibilities in the state and the country and also the adverbs to be used to describe his speeches.<br /><br />The cartoonist was well aware of the power of word; and these beer-drinking sessions resulted in news reports lacing his utterances with verbs like ‘he roared,’ ‘he thundered’ etc., carving out an image of a ‘belligerent derring-do.’ He switched from beer to red wine after he underwent heart surgery but his love for beer remained even though his earlier sittings with journalists diminished. <br /><br />But his taste was not just confined to the palate, his sartorial preferences also underwent change from the sixties bush-shirt and pant to shawl draped kurta in eighties; mid-nineties onward he started wearing ochre-coloured toga with his neck and wrists wrapped with rudraksha garlands. <br /><br />Like his sartorial preferences, his gestures and gesticulations also changed as he rose up on the political ladder. While in his earlier days his abrupt gestures in street-corner meetings slowly became pronounced to exemplify speeches laced with street slangs and jokes. <br /><br />In later years, the arm-waving became slow and theatrical akin to slow gesticulations of messianic leaders.<br /><br /></p>
<p>Seventies and eighties were the days when foreign liquor was available only in duty-free shops inside the airport precincts. Senior scribes with smiles beaming used to say “Oh we had Heineken beer yesterday with Balasaheb Thackeray.”<br /><br /></p>.<p>The pipe-smoking Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray apart from being a connoisseur of tobacco, also had a refined taste buds for beer; the preferred brand was the ‘Dutch Heineken Beer’ over salted nuts.<br /><br />Senior journalists in eighties were sometimes invited by the cartoonist to sip beer with him; with his pipe puffing. Thackeray would discuss political permutations, combinations and possibilities in the state and the country and also the adverbs to be used to describe his speeches.<br /><br />The cartoonist was well aware of the power of word; and these beer-drinking sessions resulted in news reports lacing his utterances with verbs like ‘he roared,’ ‘he thundered’ etc., carving out an image of a ‘belligerent derring-do.’ He switched from beer to red wine after he underwent heart surgery but his love for beer remained even though his earlier sittings with journalists diminished. <br /><br />But his taste was not just confined to the palate, his sartorial preferences also underwent change from the sixties bush-shirt and pant to shawl draped kurta in eighties; mid-nineties onward he started wearing ochre-coloured toga with his neck and wrists wrapped with rudraksha garlands. <br /><br />Like his sartorial preferences, his gestures and gesticulations also changed as he rose up on the political ladder. While in his earlier days his abrupt gestures in street-corner meetings slowly became pronounced to exemplify speeches laced with street slangs and jokes. <br /><br />In later years, the arm-waving became slow and theatrical akin to slow gesticulations of messianic leaders.<br /><br /></p>
