A Ban On Dry Days

After a manic Monday and a tiring Tuesday you get a break on a Wednesday. It’s a midweek off. You just want to kick back and relax at home. Or maybe you want to head out and grab a peaceful drink on a sunny autumn afternoon. You deliberately don’t want to drink at night because you have work on Thursday, you’re a responsible employee.

You wake up at 12 and get ready to head out. Be it your local ‘theka’ aka ‘Wine and Beer Shop’ or your neighbourhood pub; you find both the establishments shut. Why? It’s Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s birthday. You Bapu allows you to drink beer but this time ‘round some other Bapu is forcing you not to. It’s not because of the Mahatma’s philosophy or beliefs; it’s just a petty way through which the Indian Government can feel strong and in control.

On exactly those days when people get some extra relief in the form of a midweek holiday, the government decides to spoil it for them. It’s not like drinking is illegal on a dry day per se, only buying is. One can buy and stock alcohol a day before a dry day and then drink later when all the shops and pubs are shut. It’s idiotic. Drinking is not illegal, buying is. They’re not trying to put a stop to drinking but only making people’s lives more difficult by causing this inconvenience. This also forces people to spend more by buying liquor from the borders and bootleggers. Don’t forget the risk of procuring illicit liquor and putting the body in harm’s way.

• Guru Ravidas Birthday
• Swami Dayanand Saraswati Jayanti
• Maha Shivratri
• Good Friday
• Ram Navami
• Mahavir Jayanti
• Buddha Purnima
• Janamashtmi
• Maharishi Valmiki’s Birthday
• Muharram
• Guru Nanak’s Birthday
• Guru Teg Bahadur’s Martyrdom Day

These are just some of the official dry days in Delhi. There are the usual Eid, Dussehra, Diwali and other national holidays, which I had mentioned earlier. On all these days and more, like voting days, etc., all booze shops are shut. On the three big national holidays, even pubs are not allowed to serve liquor. How is this fair to someone who does not celebrate any of these days? And what if one ‘celebrates’ by drinking?

It’s only in Delhi that the government is so strict. Of course, I am not counting Gujarat, which is a completely dry state. My personal experiences in Maharashtra and Karnataka have been quite different. It’s not as absurd there as it is here in Delhi. Here it’s like they’ll keep a dry day on the day some great personality ended his dry run and had sex with an actual girl some 80 years back.

I don’t understand the purpose of dry days. They don’t stop anyone from drinking liquor, only a little difficult. They’re not on those people’s birth anniversaries who condoned the act of drinking. If the government actually thinks that drinking is immoral or such; how will dry days help? Just for the record, in my humble opinion, drinking is not immoral. It’s a lifestyle choice. Just like smoking. Just like eating non-vegetarian food.

I call for a ban on dry days. Do you?