Is it pricing or pop-culture that the powder, once the drug of choice for rich or famous, is now just the most regular thing at house parties
A serious mainstreaming of dope I could sense only in posh drawing rooms, where the same collegiate types would gladly pass on the blunt at their homes, along with beer or rum. Representation pic
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My favourite scene from Asif Kapadia’s Amy (2015), the documentary on the death and times of rock-star Amy Winehouse, is when the drug-addict Winehouse, who’s been forced to go clean, is crying backstage while her name’s been announced as the winner of a Grammy award. The tears rolling down her eyes aren’t because of happiness, but complete despair as she mentions: What’s the point of being sober at a moment like this, you can’t even enjoy it.
It is one of those rare public admissions of the wonderful rush and absolute joy that drugs offer (even if momentarily) to make them worth the side effect, life-long addiction.
My own dim view on the subject, which was quite in line with the popular one, got formed as a kid in the late ‘80s, watching a frightening, anti-drugs college-campus show on Doordarshan called Subah, with the shot of the actor Salim Ghouse (who until a Google search, I thought, was Naveen Andrews), fighting imaginary demons with knives in his hand, staggering into the sea from the beach, grim expression on his face, pupils of the eyes dilated. It was a scary and depressing sight. He was high on drugs (with all sorts of substances clubbed into one generic term), and you knew you just had to just stay away from it all your life.
That is, until, like everyone else, I got to college, and stepped into my neighbours’ rooms, floating in a purple haze, slight psychedelic lighting, alternate rock on the speakers, and marijuana being swiftly stuffed into Rizlas, by “roll scholars” diligently at work, sitting in mattresses on the floor. They did it while concealing and advertising that fact.
Dope was stuff of urbane cool—something we saw in movies as well, representing both sloth and rebellion, and often, pure existentialist humour (Friday, Trainspotting, Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels etc.). No Bollywood movie, post 2000, could aim at being dark and alternative without a shot of someone rolling a joint—almost as the anti-dote to happy Yashraj heroes, heroines in designer wear, knocking back tequila shots with salt and lemon, on ‘amavas ki raat ka Valentine’s Day’ in Dil Toh Paagal Hai (1997).
A serious mainstreaming of dope—whether hash (charas), or marijuana (ganja)—I could sense only in posh drawing rooms, where the same collegiate types, many of them several years my senior, in corporate jobs, with wives, school-going kids, would gladly pass on the blunt at their homes, along with beer or rum. Merely the quality of dope was perhaps significantly better—for some reason, always Malana Cream.
This is when I’d left college and moved to Mumbai, roughly around 2001-02, when the first tourist attraction for me was the Bandra ATM where actor Fardeen Khan had been caught buying coke. It was a huge scandal. We also revelled in exchanging judgmental stories about Bollywood and cricket stars, who somebody or the other had watched (or so they said), snorting cocaine in bathrooms of exclusive night-clubs. It seemed like such a big deal.
Cut to 2017. What was the price of coke when I’d moved to Mumbai? Around Rs 5,000 per gram. What is it now? The same. By purchasing power parity, that’s a drop in the rate to half—if not far more. I recently saw someone order a gram for Rs 2,000. Must be dandruff, not that anybody knows better. But I’m sure the consumers were feeling something to insist on ordering another round.
Is this Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel ‘cocainenomics’ at work, where the market is flushed with an unlimited supply of coke, with retailers being allowed to fix prices as per demand? Or is this plain investment in the future of a party-drug that, by virtue of becoming almost as expensive as booze at a posh bar (because the price of the latter has gone up exponentially), offers much better value for money? As a drug, coke is anyway a lot closer to alcohol, and unlike dope, goes well with it, if you only raised the attained confidence levels, and Dutch courage to the power of 2.
Either way, I’ve hardly walked into a house party over the past couple of years without being offered coke on the platter. And you see this at the movies, inevitably. Anurag Kashyap’s hero in Raman Raghav 2.0 pulls lines, rather than rolling gareeb joints. This isn’t cock in the snook at a Yashraj hero, even as the latest one, Ranveer in Befikre, would rather polish six-packs of beer with his love-interest.
The ‘normalizing’ of the chemical substance is just as applicable to Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, with Ranbir, Anushka. Look closely. Nobody gets a drink in that film. Everyone holds a bottle of water, mixed with MDMA, moving to EDM. One certainly noticed a spike in consumers of meth after Breaking Bad.
Most moved on from that drug soon, thankfully. But I’m just randomly observing and am sure cocaine is slowing turning into the new beer, and it’s not a temporary Narcos effect. It’s just always there, at the side or centre table, with plates being warmed in the microwave—no more hidden stuff for few addicts who pooled in.
Once these guys grow old, I’m sure one of these mothers will tell their adult children’s friends to make sure they don’t leave before having some, “Beta tumhare liye plate garam karke rakha hai!”
Okay. Maybe not!
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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