Middle-No fiddling with drugs

(published in The Tribune on June 30)

No fiddling with drugs
by Jupinderjit Singh

THE intoxication caused by bhang (cannabis) is probably the worst, especially for an unassuming victim. Years ago, I became one such hapless victim consuming it by mistake.

For three days, I floated in a vicious endless circle, gripped in fear and reliving the events that took place immediately after I was tricked by my two colleagues in Patiala into taking a strong dose of bhang as prasad on Shivratri day.

It was all fun for others though. I just remember putting a paper into the typewriter until a colleague shook me.

He saw me staring fixedly at the plain paper with my hands in the air and fingers pointing towards the keypad, “Bhang has gripped your head,” he said.

I felt fear.

He took me to our boss who laughed as I repeated many times, “Sir, I have taken Bhang prasad. I am intoxicated.” He ordered the colleague to take me home and directed me that I should take some rum or whisky that was a good antidote.

Riding pillion on the colleague’s black Vespa, I kept repeating, “I have got bhang nasha(intoxication). Bhaji (Sir) said go home and take rum. I will recover.”

The colleague recalls much more. I pulled his hair and ears at the sight of vehicles, especially trucks coming from the opposite direction. I shrieked in fear and gripped him so tight that he was almost strangled. At the same time, I kept repeating, “I have got bhang nasha…..”

My mom had a fit of laughter as I kept saying the same sentence again and again. She gave me three glasses of buttermilk and later a huge quantity of mango pickles on the advice of concerned neighbours.

In my mind, events repeated themselves. I was at the office, sitting, telling the boss, on the road, coming home, seeking rum, made to lie down, getting up out of fear and people laughing and lying down again. My boss called me a couple of times only to be flabbergasted when I said, “Bhaji, I got bhang nasha…” and repeated everything.

Eventually, on the third day, my father returned from some outstation work and gave me rum. I came back to reality within a few hours. By that time I had consumed buckets of buttermilk and over a kg of pickles as well.

The two tricksters had their own harrowing time. One of them belonged to a hill station and was for the last few days crossing a narrow trench dug for laying telephone wires, on the way of our office. That day he couldn't dare ply his scooter on a small plank over the trench, “It is a deep khud (gorge).” It took 8 or 10 people to lift him across while he resisted his best.

The second one got stuck at traffic lights.

He kept accelerating his Chetak scooter without putting it in gears as the lights turned red to green to red to again green and so on. Eventually, a friendly cop helped him by pushing his vehicle with the help of others as my colleague sat on the vehicle shouting ‘vroooommm’.

He used gears later but got stuck at the next intersection and the next as well before somehow reaching home. We all laugh at it it now but we tell all not to play such tricks.

link :http://www.tribuneindia.com/2011/20110630/edit.htm#5