During Onam, Bacchus is king

No one, perhaps, had Bacchus in mind when they named this God8217;s Own Country. But too many Malayalees might lift their glasses to this one: Kerala gulped down well over Rs 100 crore worth of liquor in five days from August 23 to 28 in the run-up to the Onam festival.

No one, perhaps, had Bacchus in mind when they named this God8217;s Own Country. But too many Malayalees might lift their glasses to this one: Kerala gulped down well over Rs 100 crore worth of liquor in five days from August 23 to 28 in the run-up to the Onam festival.

The figure, an increase of about 28 per cent over last year8217;s, includes only the Government-sold Indian Made Foreign Liquor IMFL sold by the state-owned Kerala Beverages Corporation Limited KBCL. It doesn8217;t account for the heady toddy from coconut palms and a lot of hooch, both locally brewed and imported from neighbouring states.

As usual, booze flowed this Onam too, Kerala8217;s festival to celebrate the annual return of its legendary king Mahabali from the netherworld. But too many of the king8217;s subjects too were induced to go into their own netherworlds last week. Many bars and toddy shops even ran special promotions. Some sponsored free booze tours out of town, away from nagging wives, in hired buses packed with gallons of brew on the house, for all regular patrons. Some chose to hold their own local Bacchnalia8212;drums or bucketsfull of booze or toddy poured free to regulars, as much as they thought they could hold.

The last kind of promotion, however, killed three in Punalur on Tuesday, and has 12 now in hospital8212;three in the ICU, one on the ventilator. This was after a woman running the village toddy shop set up a free vend for patrons, who didn8217;t let go the offer. After the men lurched away with one too many under the dhoti knots, many were picked up from the roadsides and rushed to doctors after news spread of the three deaths. Scotching initial suspicions that the free toddy was spiked with methylated spirit, doctors at the Government Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram said on Wednesday that no such stuff was found in their urine samples, only alcohol.

Opposition leader Oommen Chandy blamed it on the Left Government deluging the state with toddy, re-opening some 2,000 toddy shops the UDF Government that he headed had closed down.

Only the Government sells IMFL in Kerala, and the local brew arrack is no longer legally around, after it was banned by A K Antony while he was Chief Minister in the late 90s. But that hasn8217;t really mattered much. The last available statistics say Keralites outdrink everyone else in the country8212;the Malayalees8217; per capita consumption has been 8.3 litres, ahead of the Punjabis with 7.9 litres.

With so much booze on the flow, the state already has an All Kerala Drinkers8217; Welfare Association functioning, vowing to protect boozer8217;s rights, and demanding an end to 8220;the Government and toddy contractors looting the poor man going for a drink8221;. Its promoters had claimed a membership enrollment of more than 6,000 in just the first couple of weeks.