In 2020, due to the lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses shut shop, either temporarily or permanently. Among them were liquor shops. After two months of lockdown, as the government relaxed the strict ban on liquor shops, people thronged the shops, disregarding all protocol and spending money like water. One person spent a whopping ₹52,000 on alcohol.
India is the ninth-largest consumer of alcohol. Why are Indians so fond of getting drunk?
Indians were not unfamiliar with alcohol. But it was the British who made whiskey popular. There were stories related to alcohol in the Jataka Tales. In one story, a forester named Sura went to the Himalayas to sell merchandise. There, he found a tree that had a hollow. When it rained, the hollow would be filled with water. Myrobalan plants and pepper shrubs were neighbouring the tree, and their fruits fell into the water. Birds brought rice and husk from not so far away to eat in this tree, and both ingredients fell into the water. Birds and other animals would come and drink from this water, fall and lay for a while, get up perfectly fine, and go back to wherever they came from.
Sura thought, “They would have died if it were poison, but they woke up after a short sleep and were just fine; It is not poison.” Out of curiosity, he drank the water and got drunk, just like the animals had. In his drunkenness, he felt like roasting meat. Sura had a good time with the meat and drink. An ascetic named Varuna passed by while he enjoyed himself. Sura was familiar with this ascetic and invited him to have a drink. Thus it was the two of them who discovered alcohol. The alcohol they discovered was named after them.
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