Saudi Diary: The SPIRIT of Jeddah

“I bet he won’t serve you that” I asserted. But in keeping with tradition of those men who believe what they want to believe, Khemka insisted there was a possibility of our host offering us liquor (I still maintain he was assuring himself). The setting was Jeddah and we were invited for dinner. Our man has been deprived of the fermented liquid for sometime now. And now he has reached a stage where mere mention of ethanol (sometimes even methanol) brings an unprecedented hysteria in him. But let me take you to what happened after that dinner that night.
It was 10:30 pm and being the nice, courteous people we are, we realized that it was time for taking leave from our nice Indian guest. As I said “Let’s go” I could feel a shadow cross Khemka’s face. The party was over and he was clearly not getting any liquor. Now, let’s be fair to him. He is a social drinker but due to the society he moves in back home, rarely does a day passes without his visit to one of those hip & hep Bandra / South Bombay pubs. So it wasn’t without reason he was expecting the host to entertain him. It had been almost a month now without the divine drink.
“If you wait for some more time, I will give you something to drink”.
This statement from our host had an electrifying effect on all four of us. Something had to be, well, alcohol. I rushed to Khemka’s side to support him as I could see his knees had given way. Once he regained his senses, and we exchanged glances among ourselves (three of us did not know whether a drunk Khemka was worth taking the risk of checking the hospitality extended to the foreign prisoners), Khemka then settled down into an ear-to-ear smile.
“Won’t it be risky? We have to take a cab back to our hotel, you know” ventured Mr. Khemka.
“Risky? What do you mean? Ah…I see. Oye, I meant Falooda”
Next few moments are kind of hazy…But what I vaguely remember amidst the blasts of laughter from the three of us is that Khemka clearly could not appreciate what was funny in the situation. In the moments that followed, he tried in vain to melt into the surroundings, to turn transparent and disappear. His lean frame does allow him to appear one dimensional but disappearing altogether was asking a little too much from the Mother Nature. In the end, we had to leave with a blushing, red Khemka who kept insisting that he was deliberately led into the trap.
And we are more than happy to believe that. It’s much more fun this way.