Kanika Datta: One peg of samosa, please

News that the Kerala government is about to introduce prohibition revived affectionately comic memories of the High Range Club in Munnar. Not for reasons the state government and its righteous Chief Minister Oommen Chandy are likely to appreciate but as a salutary example of why liquor consumption curbs in India can be ineffective.

In the 1970s, techniques to get round a ban on restaurants and hotels from selling liquor to Indian nationals demonstrated the admirable ingenuity of the average Indian. Thus, we had the solicitous maître d' at the Supper Club, located in the government-owned Ashoka Hotel, no less, offering to serve us whisky in teapots and cups.

Since we declined, we regretfully didn't get to learn how the staff would have manipulated the bill to account for the alcohol. But a good example of creative invoice management could be had from the High Range Club.

Today, the club has become a tourist resort of the sort that peddles nostalgia for the sumptuous lifestyle of the tea estates. But in the days before Tata Tea sold its estates to a workers' cooperative the High Range Club was the principal watering hole for the executives who ran the plantations for the storied British company called James Finlay, which subsequently became Tata Finlay and then Tata Tea.

Perched on the border between Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Munnar in those days was a haven of isolation and unsurpassed natural beauty. Getting there from Calcutta (now Kolkata) required an overnight stop in sleepy Madras, another train ride to Coimbatore (then a charming hick town, not today's unsightly urban sprawl) and, finally, a nauseating drive, littered with hairpin bends to the rambling red-tiled bungalows.

No tourist resorts dotted the area as they do today. There was a tiny town, a primary school, a hospital, the processing factories and a general store. High excitement was provided when herds of wild elephants paid Munnar a visit on their annual migrations. Naturally, steady supplies of liquor were critical for the High Range Club to activate the social scene, especially one that involved a sizeable population of expats. No doubt they contributed handsomely to Kerala's long-held record for the state with the highest liquor consumption per capita.

Like the plantation culture in Assam and Dooars in north Bengal, Munnar was a world away from the radical political reforms in land distribution and education that were taking place in the rest of this Left-leaning state. One point at which the dour realities of politics intruded on the somewhat fin de siecle lifestyle in Munnar was when the state government suddenly imposed prohibitive prices on liquor licences for clubs and other establishments - running into lakhs, which in the late 1960s/early 1970s was the equivalent of crores - and the company management understandably declined to pay.

Was this rentiering by the state government, or an attempt at deterrent pricing? Who knew, who cared! It dismayed the management of the High Range Club only briefly. Thanks to the touching consideration of a Coimbatore-based supplier with nudge-and-wink links to the state government, the club continued to be equipped with the awesome quantities of liquor it required without the bother of licence fees.

The question, of course, was how to invoice members convincingly enough to pass the audits. That, too, was easily solved. Whisky, gin, vodka, brandy, beer and the like were designated samosas, sandwiches, vadas and the range of other delicious snacks that were, quite legitimately, part of the High Range Club's culinary repertoire and the barman was accordingly briefed.

Most establishments that serve liquor outside the bounds of law tend to have something of the speakeasy about them. Not so in Munnar, where the parties went on hilariously and raucously late into the night. Encased within its hilly green fastness, it was too remote to attract the attentions of the state authorities, even the most conscientious government inspectors.

Admittedly, there are serious social issues linked to the liquor industry in India - and ones that impact women in particular - that are hard to ignore. But it's worth wondering whether an extreme policy like prohibition really helps promote the objective of general sobriety that social workers advocate.

If Munnar is a cautionary tale in this respect, consider Tamil Nadu in the same era. The state was under prohibition, but anyone who lived there at the time can confirm that the determined drinker had no problem accessing alcohol in any form. So much so that chemists in the city started demanding doctor's prescriptions for something as innocuous as Lakme's facial toner because, it turned out, desperados were happy to swig the bilious green liquid for its alcohol content. Finally, the accounts of Gujarat and its (in)famous liquor permits demanding to know "sharaabi ka naam" are now part of urban lore. And, as we all know, the amount of liquor that is consumed in the state could easily fill the rapidly shrinking Sabarmati.

Addendum
A former President of the High Range Club has written in with some interesting additional information, which I reproduce below:
The origin of the problem lay in a decision by the state government to require ALL clubs in the state to pay Rs 5 lakh as a bar permit – apparently out of pique at the criticisms of state policy (or lack thereof) that emanated from the journalists’ watering hole in Trivandrum. Whilst our company was prepared, at a push to pay this, the club would be deemed to be a public bar, which meant anyone from Munnar town could have access to it. This was totally unacceptable to us and we declined. We petitioned the government with letters stating that we exported teas to Russia, Japan, USA and UK and foreign buyers were visiting our factories to make bulk purchases and were accommodated in the High Range Club as our visitors' book would validate. But the government told us they could not make an exception to the rule, as the journalists would mutilate them as being partial to foreign companies! Heigh ho, as the Bard of Avon's clowns would prefix their ribald songs, we came up with the solution of samosas, vadais et al, with the connivance of a helpful supplier with the proviso that ALL our liqour would be supplied by them and they guaranteed that the excise department would be kept at bay.