SHEKHAR'S STORY
I live in a village in Northern India in the foothills of the Himalayas. I am a Bengali (my grandparents came over as refugees from East Pakistan, (now Bangladesh), and thus more Briti-fied (stiff upper lip, understatement etc). I was born in Delhi on December 5, 1950 but my father moved to Bombay in the early '50s to join the newly-set-up Shell oil refinery. In 1962, he was posted to a refinery in South Sumatra and I was sent off to a boarding school in the hills near Bombay (rather similar to where I am staying now).
There was Prohibition in Bombay during the '50s and ' 60s, so my first drink came at age 16, right after my 'O' Level exams, when I went for the holidays to my parents' home – now in The Hague, Holland. It was while doing my 'A' Levels in The Hague, that I learnt to drink with my larger European classmates (I am 160 cm/5ft4in tall and then weighed 50 kg/110 lb). So while my capacity grew, it brought along serious physical problems including frequent blackouts.
Bombay still had prohibition in 1968, so when I returned to college there, I discovered hashish. With the hippies, George Harrison et al. in full flow at the time I fitted right in. By the time I joined London University the next year, I was strung out most of the time, taking handfuls of speed just before the exams to scrape through. Of course, I flunked out in my final year, but 3 years at a top London college had given me "a university bearing" and saying my degree was "lost" I managed to get a few jobs, showing "great promise" until the time came for a getaway.
I returned to Delhi (where my father was now posted) when my younger sister committed suicide. She had been with my parents all the time and seemed unable to handle the shock of recurrent changes of country.
I had been to quite a few AA meetings in London (but was still a periodic drinker) when the impact of a dysfunctional family in full cry sent me to the AA people in Delhi, where one of the older members was a top journalist. He ran journalism classes in the evenings and told me to come there "to stay out of trouble". Unfortunately he died before I completed the course and the meagre AA meetings also dried up. I managed to get a job with a big newspaper and keep my drinking "under control". At age 27, I could still manage it.
By February 1980 my father had retired and shifted back to Bombay and I married a wonderful woman. But that is when the drinking got out of hand :-) After all, I now had a job, wife, vehicle, apartment – what’s unmanageable?
By December 15, 1981 I had lost the job, my wife did not spend much time at home, the landlord had given notice and my scooter was more pushed than running. On December 28, one of the AA loners (living in a far-flung area of Delhi) got to me. I had no office and no phone, but he [miraculously] managed to call at a neighbour’s at a time when I was at home and compos mentis. He told me about a special AA meeting they were having on December 31st.
I attended the evening meeting (after a couple of drinks at lunchtime) and was amazed at the attendance. There were all kinds of westerners – airline pilots and cabin crew, a US diplomat from Islamabad, tourists, people attending an Indian Government seminar. We did not have so many people at an AA meeting for the next 15 years. I did not drink at a family New Year’s eve party I went to that night but held forth to all who would listen about the glories of AA. It was the start of my present sober spell, but as a bout (or binge) drinker, I did not realize this for many months.
Even when the 40 deg.C summer came, there were a few sober AA members from the US and UK living and working in Delhi and they carried me through until August 1983. So I learnt both drinking and sobriety from a bunch of expats I hung around with. And my spiritual adviser too is a Jesuit priest from Sydney, Australia (though he has been in India since 1954).
In September 1983 everyone had gone away, but by then I had a solid grounding in AA and could go on to carry the message to the still suffering alcoholic. I have now come full circle, since I am now learning to stay sober in isolation (there being no AA meetings up here where I live).
Shekhar
India.
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