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‘Sleeping without the pillow’

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The Issue: Passing out
The Soundtrack: Tubthumping

Sometime in the very early 90s, I first passed out in college. It would be only in the little later 90s that I passed out of college. To be quite specific, I had, after an evening of merrymaking that involved guitar-playing (a passable rendition of Nirvana’s ‘Rape me’ from the band’s final studio album, In Utero), cycling round and round, and destroying a mosquito net (the holes seemed way too small), I had felt incredibly tired and, with my head swimming, closed my eyes. Since I didn’t open them again till the next morning, this act was officially deemed as ‘passing out’.

In my heart of hearts, I still consider the act as sleeping while everyone was awake.

Last weekend, some 18 years and many ‘passing outs’ later, I once again closed my eyes with my head swimming. Once again I was officially termed ‘passed out’. And once again, in my heart of hearts, I felt I, with my inhibitions brought down to the level below my heels, had fallen asleep while everyone was awake. The next morning — a Sunday — my mouth may have felt like an ashtray, but the only physical evidence that I may have overdone things the previous night was a bruise on the chink of my nose and a small bump on my head. That, I recalled, happened much before I was one with the fumes, and after I had walked into a spotlessly clean heavy glass door.

Oh, the joys of getting pissed during the Revolution!

Oh, the joys of getting pissed during the Revolution!

The perils of drinking are known to me. Bad behaviour is one serious downside to overdrinking, something that the Delhi government, in its drive against ‘booze bums’, is now taking on head-on by introducing a Rs 10,000 fine with an additional three months in jail — something I thoroughly approve. But loud, aggressive alcohol-fuelled behaviour is one thing (that I, in all honesty, have been guilty of on countless avoidable occasions). Passing out, or as I call it, ’sleeping without the pillow’, however, is a quiet, gentle, sometimes invisible affair. Why is there such a ruckus about that?
Two explanations come to mind. One, it is the culmination of the body losing control. But this can hardly expain the social horror associated with the act. Booze-fuelled rowdiness is a more visible loss of control. And then there is the apogee of getting sloshed: being sick. Passing out is neither anti-social activity; at worst, it’s unsocial.  Then, there’s the explanation about drinking to oblivion wrecking your brain and body. Well, dearies, drinking anything more than the ’socially approved’ amount of the stuff when your tongue gets heavy and you’ve begun to slur zaps your brain cells more than the permissible body count and gets your liver on a faster treadmill.
Which is why the drinking-till-you-pass out philosophy is held socially embarrassing, even contemptible, only for reasons of good manners, which in my book doesn’t quite make the cut for badness. Thus my war cry (now strong, but the ‘morning after’ extremely weak) as coined by the English band Chumbawamba in the summer of 1997 in their rousing song, ‘Tubthumping’.The words should tell you much more about my belief system than if I sat down with you over a bottle of whiskey, held your hand, and explained my belief system: “I get knocked down/ But I get up again/

You’re never going to/ Keep me down.” Thank you. [Thud.]

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Posted by Indrajit Hazra on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 7:03 pm 
Filed under Music · Tagged , , , ,

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One Response to “‘Sleeping without the pillow’”

  1. vina Says:
    October 14th, 2009 at 7:54 pm

    great post! keep ‘em coming!

    [Reply]

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