I and three seniors from HPCL went to have dinner at a nearby hotel. Two of them aged around 35 and third one around 50. Nice place, great ambience & decent food. We ordered food and started having conversation about life at HPCL and how things have been changing. One of the seniors started talking about the student life and how they used to enjoy the liquor & ‘masala’ [a kind of drug which students from NIT Trichy will be better able to explain :)] at Trichy. He mentioned about students screwing their academic career due to using the drug for getting better concentration. It later became an addiction and a topper turned mediocre. My senior, himself, was also a drinker but with great self control, as he mentioned. The other senior narrated his own story. He was a drug addict and big type alcoholic. During his college days at NIT Trichy he used to have the drug three times a day. After finishing his sixth term he went to do internship. He woke up one night, during the internship, sweating and with the realization that he didn’t have any memory of what all subjects he read in the sixth term! He still doesn’t have it. He left the drug at the same instant though later he came to know that he was the second highest ranker in the whole college during 6th term. I shared some instances of IIT Kharagpur students. One brilliant student, papers published more than an assistant professor & went to Michigan University, screwed up his reputation & that of college at US due to drugs. He got deported to India also for continuously harassing a girl as well, of course under the effect of drug. My own experience at Cergy Le Haut. Last Friday of my exchange program at Cergy I drank so much that I don’t have memory of 2-3 hours of my life at the party given by some of Lebanese friends. I slept for almost two days and my room used to smell horribly. Even after seeing my pictures of the party, put on facebook, I couldn’t recollect what had happened. Thanks to two of my friends that I could reach to my room and survive. Anything would have happened to me on that day. I wanted to experience it myself. How stupid as many might think but I don’t have exact explanation for this event.
During the conversation I started contemplating about the liquor and its effect on students’ life. I had an affair with various types of alcohols at quite an early age. During school days I had ‘tasted’ whisky, brandy, rum etc. as my dad used to get it from different friends. He wanted us to taste it so that we don’t become inclined towards it. I never liked the taste of any alcohol except, due to my recent experience, wines esp. rose. Even my younger brothers don’t drink as they have tasted it quite early in their lives as well. They have also seen what it does to people. I thank my father for letting me experience it at quite an early age. If he wouldn’t have done it at that time and told us about the effects we could have been big drinkers during college time with peer pressure, who knows. We do lot of things just because of peer pressure even if we know that the thing is the most stupid thing to do in life. There is need of more and more self control today in young generation. I remember few things from my conversation with Jon, during my visit to Spain, that how smoking and liquor is making younger generation weaker. He mentioned that many from the older generation are healthier than many young people. Utility of smoking or liquor has to be assessed by the people using themselves. Young people/ students need to ‘see’. We can learn from others mistakes rather than making mistakes ourselves or ‘experiencing first hand like me’ as one of my friends from ESSEC would have said. I appreciate her viewpoint now. Thanks to my numerous acquaintances, during colleges as well as my journeys, and friends from whom I have learned a lot. Let us be change agents in our lives first!
Amen!
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