sunday bloody sunday

It was tradition. 


On Sundays, I would always find them, my parents, under a fluttering green and white striped sun umbrella, laid out on their deck chairs, with books that have slipped from heavy hands scattered around the grass, hats pulled over their faces, deep into their pre-lunch snooze. They would lie there in their cottons - baking in the afternoon sun, their skin taking on a ruddiness - oblivious to the paper-thin buzzing wings of the dragonflies that rested awhile on their noses and hair, and of course, the rest of the world. I would quietly skip over their feet and help myself to whatever was left of that gorgeous red drink that set my lips on fire and turned my cheeks hot, and lie beside them in one of the chairs and play pretend adult. Life was smug and good.

My parents officially handed me one with sheepish smiles when I passed my boards, unawares (again) that I had secretly tippled while they slept in Edenic bliss every Sunday alongside them. I was thrilled because I was done with the virgins. I jest not. And so I drank with relish ‘my’ Bloody Mary.

I am what you would slot as a ‘loyalist’. After all these years, I haven’t wavered, haven’t cheated, and haven’t been any less committed to it (my liver function test will confirm that). It’s my drink of choice because it’s hearty, it’s got zest, and it’s a marvellous balance of flavours. Because it’s the perfect aperitif and also the most reliable and delicious drink that cures my hangovers. Because it’s a drink I can almost eat. And because it has a seat by a window at a dark-wood panelled bar that looks out at a patch of cobblestone in rue Daunou, Paris.

But the point of this writing began in Chennai at a bar when my Bloody Mary swiveled across to me fizzing and looking suspiciously orange. Gingerly I sipped it and then shrank back in utter revulsion to discover, horror of all horrors, that the masterful bartender had added ‘some’ Fanta to it. I wanted to tell him that he did not have the right to throw in any liquid that could be classified as a shade of red, but I knew it was as hopeless as setting out for down under on a skiff with a can of drinking water across the murderous and toothy waters of the Indian Ocean. I pushed it away and the dullard grinned at me from behind the bar.

I take a minute here for the shudders to ease out.

No lemon wedges please

And if it’s not fizzy, it’s lying cold and dull, watery and tepid like a dead fish, a forgotten tea bag, clothes limp from the rain. I could go on. Why, why, is this most classic of drinks so damned hard to chance upon in its original form? Is its simplicity its undoing? It’s so devilishly straightforward that fancy tutu-wearing restaurants in town feel the need to doll it up with lemon wedges, toss in wasabi, prawn, olives, and all else that tickles their fancy. At the end of their tiresome ‘pimping’ we don’t get a Bloody Mary, but a send-off of Bridget Jones in a playboy bunny costume to a tea party. There is a fine line between invention and plain hokey. I mean look at what happened to Chinese food here.

To top it off there’s the NY Times (lost all respect for it) hailing the Bloody Mary as the next ‘big drink’, the new ‘lunch salad’ where you can have anything from a beef jerky, French beans, anchovies, swimming in your drink. They’re packing it up like a U-boat filled with the nation’s sick, mad, and unwanted. Or to tone it down, maybe making Coco Chanel wear a leather jacket with the words ‘punk’ splayed in neon green across it.

Invention is one thing but when there’s a rule set in stone, and in this case it’s Harry’s book of rules -Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails, why not follow it. The thing just tastes so much better the way it’s meant to be. So then the vital question - who is Harry?

Harry MacElhone was the owner of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. An enterprising Scot with a head for business and a palette for alcohol, Harry MacElhone bought the place from an American jockey in the 1920s and turned it around to make it one of the most roaring bars in the world in just a few years. This Paris institution was frequented by literary guns such as Hemingway (mentioned inThe Sun also Rises), Fitzgerald, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. First ever cocktail bar in Europe, Harry’s Bar is the birthplace of the Bloody Mary and Fernand Petiot, an American bartender, its maker.

The original recipe of the Bloody Mary had equal parts of vodka and tomato juice for only the French and homesick Americans have a stomach (and liver) for such portions of alcohol. In the 1950s, however, when Tabasco began being exported to France, it substituted Petiot’s original recipe of black and cayenne pepper, and became the drink as we know it now.

*

Although there are very few places that serve a decent version of the drink in Delhi, it’s always what I order. Till I get to Paris, I’ll take the good, bad, and fizzy with a pinch of salt. But, I maintain, no lemon wedges please.

*

Here’s the original recipe from Harry’s ABC of Mixing Cocktails:

“In shaker or directly in large tumbler: ice, 6 dashes of Worcestershire Sauce, 3 dashes of Tabasco, pinch of salt, pinch of pepper, juice of ½ lemon, 2 ounces of vodka, fill remainder of glass with top-quality tomato juice, and above all no celery salt.”