This is a post, which can be used against me the day I run for Mayor`s office in Chennai. Or after I become the Indian President. Remember US President George Bush faced trouble over his drug revelations. Or was it Arnold ‘Terminator` Schwarzenegger?
When I was young…I said No to drugs. But nobody listened. I shouted at the faces of some people but to no avail. Nobody took notice of me. I think it was around this time that I took to drugs. Needless to say, after my first snort…everybody started noticing me. I was popular.
For convenience sake let us refer to people who take drugs as drugsters (don`t we refer to people who protest as protesters?).
Back then, the World was too normal and we were forced to take drugs to make it exciting (loud, noisy, funky, colorful)…but now the World is too exciting and we take drugs like Anacin, Saridon, etc to make it appear normal.
During my flirtation with drugs, I was pretty close to my supplier. Unlike in the movies, this supplier…never sniffed…and never had girls around him…and never smoked like a chimney. Here is a conversation I once had with him –
“Why don`t you use drugs yourself?”
“I once had half an ounce of my 2 Kg brown sugar consignment, which had just then landed.”
“Did you like it?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, I did. But I lost the whole consignment to the police. Not to mention the two years in jail when they found me unconscious near my consignment.”
“That`s sad. But if you guys don`t take that much drug…who are your biggest takers?”
“The customs officers, of course.”
I didn`t argue with the man. Just picked up my ounce and went my way. I wouldn`t have remembered this conversation had it not been for this friend of mine whom I saw on the way out…he was stoned.
“How did it happen?” I asked him.
He was relatively quick for somebody who had been stoned. He said: “By mistake, I drank wet cement.”
I tried to bring some sense to him. Having decided to quit myself…I thought I had the right to advice a fellow drugster.
“Mate, you need to give up drugs.” I said.
“How can I do that? You know it…it is quite addictive.”
I precisely knew what he meant. It is quite an addictive hobby…but then…I had to explain it to him that there was more to life that just drugs.
I gave him that fatherly look and said: “You know, you need to make little things count and make your life exciting.”
My friend was moved by my concern and asked an innocent question.
“When you ask me to make little things count…are you asking me to teach arithmetic to dwarfs?”
I gave up advising right then, and got back to romancing with drugs. I never said No for a long time…until that day when I tried to sniff Coke. I tried hard but the straw kept coming in the way. When I removed the straw, I almost drowned…coz the Coke flooded my nose. I am glad I didn`t have ice cubes in the coke…I would have probably died due to suffocation.
I think that was the day when I said ‘I know` to drugs!