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Call me Mr. Rum.

I come to relieve the man off. He is a teacher, a traveler, a writer.  Let him bask in the sunlight.

Here I will be, dark in tone, deep by the roots, down under. Rum, I am.

You may want to cut me down by calling me the dirty underbelly, the libido, or the Mr. Hyde side of the goody goody Dr. Jekyll.

Listen. I don’t care a damn. Because I am Rum. Born in the sun, punished by the storms, rocked by the oceans.

I remember the teacher’s statement, long long ago, his opening gambit, when he launched this site. RRR is not a site to promote drinking. It is a humble joint where like-minded people would gather every weekend by the fireside to listen to the fantastic stories about their favourite spirits.

It’s never failed in that promise, has it?

But they say alcohol kills.

So do wars, accidents, marriages, climates…But still alcohol kills.

A friend once told us that there is a certain amount of pegs written against the name of a man in his lifetime. The moment you finish up the stock a ship will reach the dock with your name written on the mast to take you away to distant shores.

A few I know, finished their quota so early in life and found themselves one morning dead. Too cold to kick-start their numb heart into pulse beats again. A blasted liver. A blasted brain. A blasted family who survived them.

My best friend died when red blood so fresh that it was orange spurted out of every orifice he had. The teacher never thought blood would come out of eyes until he saw with his own eyes.

Then why Rum at RRR?

RRR doesn’t sell any drink or promote any. But the writer (shakes my head)!

He will go to any extant on anything he feels passionate about. The man just can’t help it. Tomorrow it may be about sex. But today he is deeply enmeshed in the legends behind drinks. The devil doesn’t keep morals higher than his passions.

One more secret, I’ll tell you: He is is also a hopeless narcissist who likes to see himself reflected on the eyes of his listeners as he regales them with stories.

Hence the Rum.

It was not any craving for the amber liquid which started the blaze. But one night as the writer was blind-browsing on the net he stumbled upon the story of Yuhuan, one of the greatest beauties of the world who used to bathe in a pool of nectar squeezed out of litchi and rose petals. Such beauties had to be killed because Emperors err enamoured by their appeal. When Yuhuan was cut down rose plants and litchi trees sprouted from the ground. The Chinese began to distil a liquor from litchi and rose petals in homage to her. Ly Shan was thus born. Take a sip of Ly Shan half-submerged in a pond, Yuhuan with her livery lips parted may emerge on the opposite side of the pool.

How can the writer let go of such stories, tell me?

Strega, another liquor was first distilled by witches in their homeland Benevanto, Italy. It was their gift to the lovers among mankind. You take one swig, your marriage is solemnized in heaven.

Do you want us to let those stories go?

For the last one year we have been scouring the virtual world for a beep. We are yet to find another site which is so passionate like us about the stories behind drinks.

So we are an exclusive zone. But we can never be irresponsible.

Rum is happy only when you drink moderately. Like Shevardnadze, I have stories for a thousand and one nights to regale you with at RRR. Don’t finish your quota before I finish my story. Don’t die on this poor storyteller. We must count on each other before we go, the storyteller and the listener.

Here’s the RRR commandments:

Drink only on special occasions. If you are already a tippler limit yourself to 2.5 pegs once every weekend. It’s fine for a guy who is 30 and running.

Convince yourself that you are Alexander the Great; you deserve only the best, the rarest, the hottest. You accept invitations only to the best bars in town. You can thus form yawning gaps between any two consecutive  ‘sittings.’

I like fussy people, sticklers of etiquette who make life difficult for their co-drinkers with their get-me-the-moon demands. The teacher has formed a few even from his 20s. He needs ice. He needs soda. He needs a particular meat, cooked to a particular temperature as snacks. He needs to get strangers out before he begins.

So fussy, the guy became a pain in the ass for all his friends. They began to drink behind him whenever they could help. He won his war.

So here we are. You’ve caught us changing horses in midstream.

RRR will continue to rage, entertain you with more and more stories every weekend. But this part of the site will be handled by me – the underbelly, the libido, the dark matter. The Rum.

Stay prepared. On a sunny day I’ll want you at the Caribbean, my homeland, where I grew on sugarcane, yeast cells, and plenty of sunlight. Come rain, we will be cooped up in a log house teetering towards a forest with a glass of brandy warming our soul and hands. But under a dark brooding sky I may ask you out to sit beside me by the brook with a glass of Scotch in our hands and meditate on the meaning of life.

Drink a few. Drink slowly. Drink long.

Remember one thing whenever you get bored in life or depressed or want to commit suicide. I am here at RRR about to entertain you with the tale of yet another fantastic drink you might never have heard of at the weekend. Wait until then. You’d want more. You’d then wait for more.

Here’s my card. Remember:

My name is Rum.

(If you are a facebook user you can catch me at the profile – “Rum Road”. You’ll get plenty of stuff there).

About Rum

Rum has written 4 stories in Rum, Road & Ravings. You can read all posts by Rum here.