It was a beautiful early winter day when my car left Shimla for Kalka. I had decided against the toy train because I didn't want to waste another perfect afternoon listening to the endless whining of punjabi children. It was a happy day and the scenery was out of this world. Two hours into the journey, I was hungry and was looking for a place to stop and eat. I saw this HP tourist place tucked off the road in some small town by the side of the road. On a whim, I stopped the car and went in hoping for a quick meal.
Once inside, I just came face to face with my perfect moment. It was better than the three days I had spent in Shimla. In a courtyard, they had chairs laid out casually surrounded by flowers. The staff was lazy in a pleasant way and there were nobody there except an NRI Hyderabadi group. I ordered food and decided to taste the HP plum wine that was on sale there. The wine was delectable, the scenery incredible, I had to be nowhere in particular, cell phones and blackberries didn't work, nobody in the world knew where I was and to top it all, the bushes around the little lawn were marijuana(not hemp, Cannabis Sativa Sub sp. Indica*). After two bottles of plum wine I was in heaven. So far so good.
That is when the great idea hit me. Why not take a case of the plum wine back to America and casually serve it at a soiree and delight them with the story of how I found it. So, in my inifinite wisdom I bought a case, loaded it in the car and continued the journey down to Kalka.
I got to Kalka around 6 PM, open the trunk and discover that at least one, may be more, bottles have broken inside the case during the journey. Kalka, a dusty little Indian town with none of the charm of Shimla had dispensed with electricity that evening. So I decided not to open the , instead opting to drain the fluid through the seams of the box. The case was wet and anyone who has done 12th grade organic chemistry will tell you that this highly sugary solution seeping into the cardboard as it oxidizes, produces the most obnoxious smell.
I carried this wet, stinky case and dragged it to what seems like the only decent place in town to have dinner and because there is no ventillation, the place reeked of the wine by the time I am finished. Not a great way to make friends. I took the night train to Delhi with the wet, soggy, smelly case and the A/C made the cold wetness even more unbearable. By the time I arrived in Delhi, I could hear things jiggling in the case.
I opened the case, look at the bottles. Two lost. Glass shards are discarded. One bottle is drunk without pleasure that evening. I also realized that since the manufacturer has used plastic caps instead of cork, 3 bottles are completely useless since air has gone in and the wine has the general flavor of urine.
6 Bottles left.
I fly to Bombay with 6 bottles after washing and drying and of course repackaging. In spite of all my best efforts, I get to Bombay with 3 more bottles in bad condition. They get flushed down the toilet. The remaining 3 are OK, but sticky and wet. They are bathed again, dried with the love one lavishes on one's firstborn and repackaged.
Now I am really determined. I flew back to the US with the remaining 3 bottles. This time I took all the precautions. The caps wont come off unless there is a bomb in the plane. I landed in the US with three precious bottles. Unfortunately nobody had told me that the HP plum wine was BEST enjoyed soon after production and kept chilled unlike the regular wines.
The bottles looked great, but the wine looked sickly. It was opaque and tasted like vinegar. Not sweet and nauseant.
Lovely ending to the perfect moment.
Total number of bottles purchased: 12
Actually consumed: ONE-UN--UNO-EK
T-shirts damaged in the process: 1.5
Before you laugh at me, remember what Jack Handey said, "It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man."
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For more discussion on the difference, see Small E. and Cronquist A., A Practical and Natural Taxonomy for Cannabis Taxon, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Aug., 1976), pp. 405-435
