Cheers Monk, a very old monk
What's your favourite Old Monk tale? About that one time you had had one too many and passed out? Or the time you let slip your "feelings" for the boy/girl, woman/man you were drinking it with? Perhaps it's the session - yes, Old Monks are to be had in drinking sessions; like binge is for beer, bout for vodka, and we sit for a few drinks of whisky; the rest don't count, if you ask my opinionated self - when you and your friends finished the whole bottle and then. Well, what can happen then?
I don't have any favourite Old Monk tale. Don't get me wrong. I didn't start drinking the other day. I am weeks shy of 40, and I have sipped - gulped, rather, oftener than not - the Monk for nearly 18 years now. For the record, I began drinking only past 22, after I joined newspapering. But that's a story for another day. Oh, did I say I don't have a favourite Old Monk tale? Correction: that tale is going on, unfolding before our own and borrowed eyes, even as we write and read this. In fact, this will add another page to that story. I am talking about the sudden flurry of nostalgia, emotional outpourings - like a good 90-ml pour disguised as a 45-ml drink - and ostensible attempts to Scotch-tape such emotions.
No human I know has ever felt the need to Google Old Monk. I did today. Google News had two full pages, including a piece that has nothing whatsoever to do with rum, either dark or white or any shades of grey, goose or no goose. Murli Vijay is the old monk of India's batting, said a headline. At which point I stopped searching. When was the last time you read so much news about the Monk? Correction: when did you ever read any news about the Monk?There's even news from the manufacturers, Mohan Meakin, assuring that Old Monk is here to stay. At least for now. (Oh lovely, who's getting the chips tonight?)
There have been three very interesting pieces on this site as well over the last few days. All this because of a report over the weekend about Old Monk sales figures taking a dip of late, fuelling speculation, apprehension, fulmination and good-riddance-whatever-it-is-emotion. Funny, for whoever cares to check, the sales must have already started heading north as our emotional atyachar goes on. So before I get ahead of myself for the ninth time, here's why I like dark rum (when did I have Old Monk last? This Saturday): The taste, the taste, the taste, to borrow the sentiments from The Dirty Picture. For me, nothing beats dark rum + Thums Up + water + ice. I hate wine, I have no taste for Scotch, and I will much rather have chai than white rum, etc. Now let's talk.
Actually there's nothing to talk about. As anyone who has had Old Monk knows - and everyone who have not tasted it will vouch - you either like or you don't like Old Monk. Like, you either like or you don't like football. Or, you either like or don't like the cheergirls cheering yet another six in an IPL game that gives you either suicidal or homicidal feelings. You get the drift - you just grow a taste for Old Monk, and then grow old with it. And there's no bar, barring the bar with the bartender, for liking it. It's foolish to say it's a man's drink, vain to say it's the drink of the underclass, and it's inane to call Old Monk a drink of the past generation, or a generation passing, such as mine. The generalisations would simply not hold.
It's also lazy to say you graduate to "better" alcohol once you can afford it. Heck, I can, I believe (you can check the office HR and accounts person for evidence). And I have not "graduated". I mean dark rum may not be the only alcohol I drink, but it's the one that I - and I believe hundreds and thousands like me - return to most frequently. Like trapping and receiving a football, looking up at the middle of the field, making a dash towards it, and halfway in running back towards the flanks. Ball or without the ball at the end of the boot. You need the flanks to speed up, but you need the middle ground, too.
For anyone who has cared to check, Old Monk was not available in most liquor shops (at least in Delhi-NCR) for a long time over the last many months. Many of the staff at the shops might have told you there have been complaints against the beverage, so they stopped stocking it. You graduated, with single inverted commas this time, to another dark rum. Say, Jolly Rogers. And then got hooked to it. Does that mean some manufacturing locha? Who knows. Is there a conspiracy theory there? Who cares. Does that mean Old Monk would eventually, gradually bow out? Yes, I am afraid. For, if I can get hooked to another brand (the half-bottle came with me from a weekend trip outside. Here's the scare: I didn't, rather couldn't, finish it), then it surely will die out, with due respect to all admirers of the Monk, sooner or later.
Most of us today are a different race, a different face, and profess a different taste. The feeling's mutual. The Old Monk does not deserve us any longer. We do not deserve it any longer. But before that, this is a well-deserved spell under the spotlight. Let the debate, and the sessions, flow on nevertheless. Now, seriously, who's getting the chips tonight?