Thanks Dad!

I’ve hardly been so depressed before. Tackling parents never was so painful earlier, but now slowly but surely, it had started getting on my nerves. I’ve been such a well behaved and non demanding kid since childhood, why now all of a sudden was it so difficult for them to accept it? I wasn’t doing this deliberately. With age had come a natural sense of choices, which I thought would be best for me, anyone else was secondary!
I decided to move out. I felt it was if not impossible, then improbable to shine if I kept lingering on to my father’s and mother’s preferences over my intuitions. I wanted to open a wine shop in Lokhandwala. It was very unlike the rest of my siblings who managed to prosper with highly academic choices, but my love for booze was not restricted to just drinking at home and pubs. During the last half decade I had made friends with all local wine shop owners near my residence and college, and I derived from them that once one’s shop was well established for all habitants around it, it was highly unlikely for the shop to not run well, and conclusively result in huge profits! My parents were of the sorts who would take offense if I were to study hotel management, believing that I would end up being a waiter initially and at best a manager of a restaurant with zero social respect. So opening a wine shop of my own for them to accept was like asking Ajit Agarkar to give consistent performances!
After a series of investments and loans to set up the shop and business, I was under way. My shop made its place right at the heart of the Lokhandwala market. I not only sold all brands of international and national booze available in our country, I also began a new offer. Through my years of highly passionate and tasteful drinking, I had gained some expertise on creating new and un-invented cocktails. I offered every customer purchasing over 500 rupees alcohol a glass of cocktail made exclusively by me for free. These were spontaneously made and invented by me, with a unique blend of amounts of different sorts of alcohol. It would need high assumption of taste to decipher whether 15 ml of vodka would taste nice with 30 ml of white rum and drops of tequila. But even after this, what made it special was my sense of the additives. For example, a sprinkle of a few coffee beans on the above mentioned mixture would make it an orgasm drink, something you would purchase 500 rupees alcohol for. I made a huge name for myself not just in Lokhandwala, but in whole of mumbai in a couple of years. I maintained the ritual of the free glass of cocktail even with my business flourishing like Sania Mirza’s fan following. It didn’t take me time to get an offer from the Sahara star hotel near the international airport to offer me a highly paid “in charge of cocktails” guy. I accepted the offer with warm ‘rum’ hands and ran my wine shop simultaneously with well equipped assistants. I made profits in lakhs from just my shop, and let us not get into how much I made from the five star hotel’s salary including the high profile tips! It was only a matter of time before I would get a call from my family. I was still unmarried so calling me back home was always an option. The call in fact came the morning I was convinced they would call me, one of my best telepathic successes.
“What drink can you make me right now?”
My father seemed breathless, panting heavily and sounding extremely fragile.
“What does that mean?”
“It is going to be my last drink; I want to have it from you!”
“Last drink? Dad, what is the matter?”
“I’m going son, my heart is almost not pumping blood anymore. Your mother has lost hope. I need you for the last few minutes!”
I didn’t even reply to that, threw my phone and ran out of my place. I drove carelessly and reached my parent’s in quarter to an hour, the fastest I could. My mother sat crying with her head in her hand, and dad palpitating lying in the drawing room on the single bed. He saw me and pointed his index finger towards the kitchen. I understood. I rushed to the kitchen, and ran my eyes through all kind of edible products arranged in a highly civilized way. It took me more than a couple of minutes to identify and reach out to a small 180 ml bottle of blender’s pride whiskey kept on one of the congested slabs. The fridge offered me some cold water, but the cocktail needed some more alcohol. Looking at dad’s condition, it looked highly unlikely for him to be able to wait till I go and bring back some more alcohol from the nearest wine shop. I had never felt so challenged in my whole life. I knew dad was going to die. I had not been with him for the last 12 years. Never has there been any correspondence from either side in all these years. I could not have failed this time. I wanted to make the best cocktail for him I ever had, but with zilch resources it was almost improbable, but not impossible. I looked at everything around me once again. There was no clue for me to unlock this mega mystery. That whiskey bottle was not even half empty, so I took a wild swig from it and made not just my throat but also my intelligence wet.
I got it. I was certain my blood contained more alcohol than a bottle of beer did. I slit my wrist and poured a few drops of blood in the 60ml whiskey in a glass, and mixed it with soda. I rushed back to my dad, made him drink the contents of the glass as he noticed my slit wrist. His last word before he expired was “Genius!”