SHE DON'T LIE, SHE DON'T LIE, SHE DON'T LIE; COCAINE

If you wanna hang out you've got to take her out; cocaine. If you
wanna get down, down on the ground; cocaine. She don't lie, she don't
lie, she don't lie; cocaine...

One score and five years ago, we would smoke ourselves silly on stuff
slyly procured from Peter's joint off Park Street as Eric Clapton
belted out his smash hit in the hostel common room. To suck on a
reefer was as fashionable as wearing bellbottoms and dog collar,
floral print shirts, a version of which is a rage this summer.

But nobody would venture beyond Buddha sticks. Anything harsher than
hemp was as much looked down upon as a cad who would kiss and tell.
It's not that 20-somethings were not doing hard drugs a quarter of a
century ago. Just that they flew around in an orbit of their own, a
charmed circle to which entry was barred unless your wealth was in
direct proportion to your lack of scruples.

It's much the same today, too. The happening crowd that parties at
the happening spots chills out on lifestyle drugs like cocaine,
Ecstasy, LSD and heroin. The rich and the famous spend a fortune
while chasing the big orgiastic and orgasmic high.

Some months ago, I had written about a Delhi lad who told me that he
gets off with his girlfriend after downing a cocktail of viagra and
cocaine. "It's heady and the night never ends," the girl chipped in
her tupenny bit. Saturday nights cost a packet, but that's ok since
daddy foots the bill.

The rich and the famous who are the toast of the Page 3 circuit, like
fashion designer Prasad Bidappa who was picked up by cops in Dubai
for possessing drugs and then rescued by the Government of India or
actor Fardeen Khan who was arrested on a cocaine charge but has for
all practical purposes escaped punishment, are flush with cash earned
any which way.

Recreational sniffing and snorting is as much a part of their daily
routine as brushing your teeth. They sustain the underworld economy
of hard drugs in India whose turnover runs into hundreds of crores of
rupees. Lured by the emerging market, a police official says, "South
American and Chinese drug cartels have increased their cocaine
trafficking in both Mumbai and Delhi."

A recent UN Office on Drugs and Crime report paints a grim picture of
increasing drug abuse and addiction in India. With Afghanistan
producing heroin worth more than a billion dollars a year and Myanmar
determined not to lag behind, this assessment is not surprising.

While the spurt in the demand for cocaine, heroin and other
derivatives in our cities may be of recent vintage, archival records
show that apart from widespread consumption of opium and ganja, there
have been cocaine addicts in India since the 19th century.

A 1951 study in the archives of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime
provides an interesting detail: "Habitual use of cocaine started
quite accidentally three-quarters of a century ago in Bihar State. In
spite of severe restrictions imposed on the importation, possession
and sale of this drug by the Government of India, the habit spread
from Calcutta along two main railway routes to Uttar Pradesh, Delhi,
the Punjab, and to the north-western frontier (now in Pakistan). From
Bombay, it spread to other large towns in that state, such as Surat
and Ahmadabad."

We know that Arab traders brought opium to India in the early middle
ages. But how did cocaine, a derivative of the coca leaf, arrive at
our shores? A chronicler of the history of cocaine says, "Royal Kew
Gardens... began a crash programme of coca research and colonial
botanical experiments in India, Ceylon and elsewhere." Was this the
source of the first vial in India?

Never mind the truth. We can always blame the British for our cocaine
problem, too. And pretend all's fine with our society, especially its
creamy layer.