1997: Summers in Mumbai

Mumbai summers are a test of endurance, a sticky tangle of heat, noise, and endless movement. For someone like me, freshly unmoored from the comfort of home and thrust into the city’s relentless rhythm, it felt like being dropped into a storm you hadn’t quite prepared for.

Industrial training had brought me here—to one of the country’s most prestigious research institutions. Days were predictable, filled with calculations, experiments, and the sterile hum of laboratories. But evenings? Evenings were ours to claim, to mold into something memorable.

Manto once wrote of drinkers as fragile dealers of fleeting sadness, trading life’s unbearable truths for moments of hollow relief. My first drink, a beer shared on a humid summer evening in 1997, wasn’t sadness—not immediately. It was something else: an experiment, an achievement, and a bridge to a world I had only observed from the sidelines. In hindsight, though, maybe it was the beginning of the same illusion Manto so masterfully described: a temporary escape that feels like freedom, but never really is.

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The Beach and the Seed of a Plan

That Sunday, my batchmate and I decided to escape the monotony. We went to Juhu Chaupati, the heart of Mumbai’s chaos, where the sand was littered with dreams and discarded paper plates. The air smelled of fried pav bhaji and salt, and the waves crashed against a background of hawkers shouting and children laughing.

We walked barefoot, our conversations meandering as aimlessly as our path. Somewhere in those sandy steps, the idea took root. “Let’s have a beer tonight,” one of us suggested. I don’t remember who said it first, but I do remember the way it lingered—like a secret, waiting to be told.

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Beer in a Bucket: The Engineering Mindset

When we reached the hostel, the plan crystallized. We had no fridge, but necessity breeds creativity. A bucket, running tap water, and time became our makeshift cooler.

As the beer chilled, we rummaged through the hostel kitchen and found a half-forgotten watermelon. It was overripe, its rind slightly soft, but it would do. We sliced it with the blunt hostel knife, eating the pink flesh straight from the rind, laughing at the absurdity of pairing beer with watermelon. It was innocent, foolish, and perfect.

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The First Sip: A Taste of Adulthood

When the beer was finally ready, my batchmate popped the cap with the confidence of someone who’d done it a thousand times before, though I doubted he had. He handed me the bottle, his grin a mixture of encouragement and curiosity.

I took a sip.

The taste startled me—bitter, sharp, and unlike anything I’d imagined. It wasn’t pleasant, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant either. It was the taste of something forbidden, something grown-up. The sweetness of the watermelon followed, clashing with the beer in a way that felt comical yet oddly profound.

In that moment, the beer wasn’t just a drink. It was a ticket—a small, insignificant step into a world I’d only seen from afar. I had watched uncles drink at family gatherings, seen older friends laugh over shared bottles. Now, for the first time, I was part of that world, even if only briefly.

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Shaam Ko Baithte Hain

We sat by the window, passing the bottle back and forth, the city’s lights flickering like faraway stars. Our conversation drifted into dreams and doubts, into the paths we imagined our lives would take.

That night wasn’t just about the beer or the watermelon. It was about the connection—the invisible thread tying two young men together in a moment of shared freedom and discovery.

Even now, decades later, we still meet occasionally, though not as often as we should. Not in recent years, since I left drinking. But when we do, his pet phrase never fails to resurface: “Shaam ko baithte hain,” he says with a grin, the quintessential Indian slang for “Let’s drink this evening.”

It’s endearing, a throwback to simpler times. I haven’t asked him if he remembers that night in 1997—the bucket cooler, the watermelon, the beer. Maybe he doesn’t. But for me, it’s a memory that lingers, not because of the drink itself, but because of what it symbolized: a fleeting moment of triumph, innocence, and the bittersweet joy of stepping into adulthood.

Moments like these remind us that life’s seemingly insignificant firsts often carry a quiet weight, shaping us in ways we don’t realize at the time. Perhaps it’s not about the drink, the setting, or even the people—it’s about the stories we gather, the ones that stay with us, whispering their lessons long after the moment has passed. What’s your story? What’s your first?

This article may be modified in the future as I revisit the feelings of that night—achievement, wonder, and the humor of pairing beer with watermelon. My understanding of moments like this continues to evolve, much like my reflections on Manto’s “Sharabi.”