The guys have been drinking all evening, and are just as excited as I am. I encourage them to act as riotously as they please; for a change, we have the law on our side. We haven't been on MG Road five minutes when predictably, a couple of cops wave us down. I slow down, pull over to the side, and watch one of them approach my car in the mirror. He clocks the number plate, and visibly brightens up. I can't wait to wipe the grin off his face. I've been waiting for this moment for so long.
I roll down my window and smile. The cop looks right through me, and inside the car: the usual suspects. By now, one of us would usually have stepped out of the car, muttering apologies and dropping names, pressing a five hundred rupee note into his palm. I can see he's a little shaken by our apparent stoicism. "Have you been drinking?" he asks. I want to answer calmly, gracefully, but my hand goes up like a first-bencher in school with all the answers. "I haven't been drinking, " I announce. "Suck-up," says one of the guys in the back and I admit to myself that he's probably right. A night without drink, and my inner nerd is in full swing.
"You won't mind a breathalyzer test then," he says and gestures to the cop behind us. "Not at all," I say and struggle to keep the class-monitor out of my voice. I watch the other cop in the mirror; I haven't dealt with him before. He has a slow, meaningful gait, an almost-strut, and somehow inspires flashes of that old terror of the law in my mind as he plants heavy feet wide apart and comes to a standstill outside my window. He has some kind of apparatus strapped to his crotch, with a tube-like contraption sticking out of it like a surprised penis. "Blow it," he orders, and the guys cheer, despite themselves, like hypnotized Heartlanders at a Salman Khan movie.
"I don't think you understand," I say, "I haven't been drinking. You can put that thing away now." The guys are really getting into the flow of things. "Blow it! Blow it!", they chant. "If you haven't been drinking, you won't have a problem," says the cop, "blow." Now sexual innuendos aside, I have a genuine problem with intimacy hygiene. Drunk driving is policed so comprehensively in Cochin that even by the most conservative of estimates, that apparatus must have kissed at least fifty mouths tonight. I can't even shake hands with strangers. There's no way that thing is going anywhere near my mouth.
"You know what," I say, "I have been drinking. I'm really sorry, and I'll just pay whatever-"
But the guys have other plans. This is their moment too. "BLOW IT! BLOW IT!" they chant. "What are you waiting for?" yells one, "show them!" The old Us versus Them. I've been a man long enough to know that you can't back down in an Us versus Them situation. It's just not an option. I reach in the general direction of the apparatus and wipe its head clean.
"Do it already!" mutters the first cop. So headlights in my eyes, the guys chanting pornographic war cries in my ears, I lower my face onto the cop's crotch and blow. Passing, less anarchic cars honk in approval. I think I can taste vomit, smell cigarettes and alcohol. I pull back and come up for air just as I realize the cop's hand is actually stroking my head in approval. The guys cheer and applaud. I don't wait for the policeman to check the meter. I roll up my window and drive straight home to wash my mouth clean of the sweet taste of victory.
Icy Highs's Music Recco: The Drunken Whaler- Copilot
