I am.

A Spark that keeps the old heart beating. 
Which in turn runs the body. 

An electric shock though small; 
is enough to keep blood pumping. 

A mind sharpened on words of wisdom 
and directs all the functions. 

The bones, the tissue and parts thereof; 
the package that I am, I am.

Organ donation

I am not taking anything, take what is useful, burn the rest, plant a tree and sprinkle the ashes.
 Remember my jokes, laugh at my mistakes, rip up and fling my advises in the air. 
Go live a life as full as I did, keep an open mind and a heart full of kindness. 
Fight with friends, throw an arm around enemies; kick some butt and raise some hell. 
Never be sorry for the past, look forward with shiny eyes to the future, 
but always remember to live. For that is the meaning of life. 
Sign up, coz you can't take anything; tell them to take what is useful and burn the rest.

Heavenly proposal

Rings of Saturn,
Seven in all
For when Sun proposed to his favorite girl. 

Plight of the lungi clad

So it is all over the news, the sorrowful plight of the Alcoholics in Kerala. Media and social media is taking that drum and beating the shit out of it. Everyone is having a good laugh – right from the acne faced kid who is laughing his arse off at the news with his friends in a pub, to the latest trend - sadistic friends from the Garden city who send snickering selfies taken in front of neatly kept rows of bottles in a supermarket to their wallowing mates or the retired military chap who has suddenly become the most popular man in his community to the vociferous voices of the righteous leaders who have taken it their next big stance to rid the evil off the state.

Everyone is tut-tutting the hideous habits of the Malayali which has painted this bull’s eye right on his favorite glass. Its curtains for the days of alcoholism for the nefarious lungi clad ruffians – they had it coming didn’t they? With their drunken days of debauchery, the wife beating cretins had it coming. With their massive drinking habits – HIGHEST in the country you know! Bloody drunkards!!! Born to be scorned.

There is another side to this statistics. World leaders in alcohol consumption according to 2013 OECD Health Data are from Luxembourg who in a year polish off 15.3 liters of the spirited stuff per capita. Kerala stands way below in this count with a per capita consumption of roughly 6.7 liters (http://www.deccanherald.com/content/319390/kerala-tops-per-capita-liquor.html). The national average for India is not far below with 4.6 litres of liquor per head (2010 data from the World Health Organization report published in 2014). In a land of 1.2 billion people, this converts to a huge number of 750 ml bottles of the funny stuff – avoiding decimals here to show how big the number is – its roughly 7,360,000,000.  The average Malayali’s share in the overall gulping in the country is a measly 4.85 %. The average Malayali drinks almost 6 ml more alcohol per day than the average Indian. That much alcohol is present in the daily dosage of a child’s cough medicine. Guilty as charged !

And while we are on statistics, another interesting piece of percentage – “Kerala, with its huge migration stream to the Middle Eastern region accounted for nearly 40% of household remittance flows to the nation” says Chinmay Thumbe in his 2011 working paper for IIMB. In simpler terms, the Malayali NRI sends home more money. Wonder how many Keralites are aware of this?

Rank	Country	Litres consumed per capita[1]	Year
1	Luxembourg	15.3	2009
2	France	12.6	2011
3	Austria	12.2	2009
4	Estonia	12.0	2011
5	Germany	11.7	2009
6	Ireland	11.6	2011
7	Czech Republic	11.5	2011
8	Portugal	11.4	2007
8	Spain	11.4	2009
10	Belgium	10.8	2008
10	Hungary	10.8	2010
12	Denmark	10.6	2011
12	Slovenia	10.6	2011
14	Poland	10.4	2011
15	Australia	10.0	2010
15	Switzerland	10.0	2011
15	United Kingdom	10.0	2011
18	Slovakia	9.9	2011
19	Finland	9.8	2011
20	Netherlands	9.4	2009
21	New Zealand	9.3	2012
22	South Korea	8.9	2011
23	Chile	8.6	2009
23	United States	8.6	2010
25	Greece	8.2	2009
26	Canada	8.0	2011
27	Sweden	7.4	2011
28	Iceland	7.3	2008
28	Japan	7.3	2011
30	Italy	6.9	2009

One more look at Kerala and the land it is. Apart from a few crooks and a fair number of politicians, most of the inhabitants are friendly souls who walk within the fine lines of the judiciary. The fact that they are more educated than most also contributes to the fact that right from the top layer to the bottom, a majority of the tipplers gather their ambrosia from the Government run outlets or from bars where the supply is again from the government (as a result, there hasn’t been any major hooch tragedies in the state in the past few years, a good initiative indeed). There are no private licenses to make any kind of alcoholic substance – other than the clergy. Ahem ahem ! Let’s not go there now, but what this means is that most of the alcohol in the state is accounted for and that is the exact number which is reflecting in the statistics as mentioned above.

There are states in India where spurious liquor flows to pave destruction on the health of the poor who turn to these cheaper but far more dangerous forms of a high. In the one state which implemented prohibition as it was wallowing in the sorrow of the demise of Mahatma Gandhi, It is open knowledge that the prohibition has resulted in raising a crop of enterprising bootleggers who have been attending to the needs of thirst. There was a hooch tragedy in the state as recent as 2009 which claimed 126 lives. How many more were incapacitated due to it? There are no statistics available for the survivors. There is no agency or office to capture the copious millions of liters of bootlegged alcohol in the country – these numbers never make it to a WHO report and that is why the straight forward Malayali with a healthy outlook at drinking has an incriminating number and the dubious honor of being the state which consumes the most amount of (accounted) liquor.

Yes, there is a portion of people in the land who are slaves to the bottle and waste their considerable income (Kerala has one of the highest average labor wages in the country) on liquor. They need help they need help right now, because they are addicted to liquor. But to think that everyone in Kerala drinks like a fish and are on their way to an early and unproductive grave, That is a mistake and a gross generalization. It up to the governance to decide who to help and how to educate them and make them understand the dangerous effects of excessive drinking.

While the government is bent upon redeeming the population of the southern state, there are more than a few people who like their drinks for what they are and romance a drink for different emotions a glass evokes. For the many, a peg of Old monk, that slightly sweetish dark rum topped with bubbling soda symbolizes friendship forged over years, a glass of brandy shared with the family denotes a festive occasion, a frothy cheers and tinkling of beer mugs at the end of a Friday means fun for the ones who toil away five days a week and is just about to let their hair down and unwind..  And a sip of Single malt at the end of a long day brings the taste of a languid sunset right to the tongue of a connoisseur. They form the majority of a peace loving populace who are hardworking and honest. They would rather contribute their hard earned cash over to the state coffers than fill the filthy wallet of a rakish bootlegger.