Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Of wineries, villages and us

Have you ever been to a winery? for those who haven’t let me tell you it is an amazing experience of the sensory kind. Scintillating aromas, grape vines, huge barrels, people passionate about wines, some sommeliers and others wishing to be them….it is an extraordinary world.
However wine tasting involves not getting drunk but allowing the taste to win you over, swirling wine in the right kind of glasses, smelling the divine and finally rolling it across your taste buds and then…………spitting it. Palette cleared, another sip and flavor and experience taken in and the wine spat out. They have large spittoons for the purpose. Though sometimes i wonder what they do with that much wine in the spittoon, but well that’s another flight of imagination, another story, fit for another time.
On the other hand, let us picture this, an old village in sadda own India..Paheli (i am besotted by SRK) movie like setting. A commanding patriarch with perfectly oiled and twirled mooch and a mile long turban, chewing tobacco reclining on the couch with a battery of servants around him pampering him and chatting the maibaap up, and one dutiful servant holding a spittoon. Yes, a spittoon for the bade sarkar to spit out the red liquid that fills up the mouth after chewing that perfect paan.
Yet another place, another scenario, picture this. A sleek world class city of high rise buildings, meteorically rising property prices,hi-tech gizmo toting public, the bling of solitaires, the swoosh of designer pallus, the metrosexual man with gelled hair, original Armani jeans from last phoren vacation zipping past in the swank car and then wait---here comes the red light. And on that red light the car screeched stopped, you are admiring its bumpers and the air is filled with blaring music and then the door opens. Just when you are starting to fantasize about the prince charming’s P3P like life, ptchak squirts the red liquid straight on the road. That is one thing that cuts across the barrier of caste, religion, age, and profession though not that much of the sex (thankfully not many women do it). Look around you, observe the peopl;e on bicycles, on scooters, people with designer glares and people glaring at you, all have this one thing in common and the world is their spittoon--sure they don’t do it in the Fine city of Singapore for the fear of caning ;)—thay claim their right on it. Majority of them are spitting old or young, boys or men, educated or no.Next time when you “Relax” on the red light just observe this phenomenon.
Come on guys, red light is to manage the traffic flow not a pit stop for spitting, please take a cue from the ultra-chic wineries or your native village, use the spittoon. Think about all those Civic lessons.

1 comment:

  1. LOl, really nice... and yes, for someone from the south, this was interesting in the beginning, as we dont see much of this there, but now it just sucks....

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