Random Musings #8: The flaming sambuca!

Fire and Ice is also a name used for the ghiaccio e mosche. Pronounced “Ghi-acchhio e moss-kay”.

The ghiaccio e mosche is actually Italian for Ice and Flies. The ice refers to sambuca — an anise flavored liqueur, sipped after coffee, after a hearty meal. The flies refer to coffee beans.

The coffee beans have to be an odd number. One or three or seven. One bean is a fly. Three beans represent health, happiness and prosperity. Seven beans are for the seven hills of Rome.

You can have the sambuca as a flaming sambuca. You set the drink on fire to toast the coffee beans slightly, to release its flavors. Yes, it WILL hurt if you do not blow the fire out before you sip!

I think that the sambuca that I had, had three coffee beans. After coffee. The coffee after an all-you-can-eat-and-drink-for-a-fixed-price seafood dinner. A starter choice, among others, was raw oysters. All you can eat.

The occasion was Andrea’s 30th birthday. 1st of March. Munir’s too, not 30th though. Early 2000s.

Andrea is German. Munir is Jordanian. The dinner group included Lee and Phil from England, Nina and Kirsi from Finland, Andrea from Germany, Patrick from Holland, Pearl, Krishnan and I from India, Scott from Scotland and Robin from Wales. Clearly, it could have been an UN meeting!

Beer. Oysters. Wine. Seafood. Wine. Dessert. Whiskey. Coffee. Sambuca. A flaming sambuca with three coffee beans. A very potent 40% ABV.

I can hear a voice, an upset voice of a clearly unimpressed wife! The fog slowly lifts and clears. My head is throbbing. I am on my bed at home and bright daylight is streaming through the curtains she has just drawn open. What happened?

My mind rewinds to the previous evening. A celebratory birthday dinner at 7 for 7.30 — meaning that I had to reach between 7 and 7.30 pm. I am running late. On return from shopping for a card and gift, I park my Jeep Cherokee outside the apartment building. I put the keys in my pocket, not wanting to lose the few minutes it would take to go up and drop them off at home. I jump into a taxi and reach the dinner venue.

Friends. Banter. Laughter. Food. Drink. Joy. Then it was time to hand out gifts and cards. When my turn came, I hand Andrea the gift and card and say that there is more. I go on to read out loud a ditty that I had written for her. The ditty included a ‘dirty’ line, intended to be humorous, about her status then and, hence, something she didn’t have to worry about. (Andrea — you may recall, but if not and are wondering, pm me!). Andrea goes “Tshhhh”, hand over mouth, eyes twinkling though, the good sport that she is. Nina goes “Prabhaakarrrr!” in a reproachful way, looking at me disapprovingly over the rim of her spectacles!!

Dinner and coffee done, Nina says, “Prabhakar, you should have a sambuca. With coffee beans. A flaming one”. I say “Sure”.

“The evening is still young”, someone says, “Where next”? It was a Thursday evening, after all. We head to the Long’s Bar, at the Towers Rotana on SZR. The Long’s Bar was then the longest bar in town. Maybe still is.

A pint or two or more. The detail begins to blur. There is the usual loud music. We are shouting into each other’s ears to make ourselves heard. Patrick says something and I nod wisely and laugh though I have absolutely no clue about what he is saying. Lights are flashing to the beat of the music. At some point, one or more of us are on the Long’s Bar, yes on the bar counter top (!), dancing!

A receipt in my pocket, seen the next morning, shows that I took a taxi home, just after 2 am in the morning.

I walk through the apartment building doors and am greeted by Bahadur, the friendly Nepali at the lobby desk. I make my way to the lift. Here’s where things start getting messy! As the lift door opens and I enter, I am fumbling to fish out the keys from my jeans pocket. I manage to drop them and they fall in the gap left by the doors when they open. “Not easy Sir, but I will try to get them out tomorrow” says Bahadur.

The lift stops and I get out and walk to the apartment at the end of the corridor. I get to the door and ring the bell. I wait patiently and the door opens. I look up. It is a man, tall and well built. Our neighbor from the floor above. A devout believer and practitioner. We were startled at seeing each other, me clearly more, as maybe as a reaction, I throw up. At his doorstep, at his feet. Bahadur is behind me — he has noticed that the lift stopped at the 3rd floor rather than the 2nd. We live in apartment 207 but I am at the doorstep of 307. “Please help him and take him home”, Mr Abdul says to Bahadur. We go down a level and ring the bell of 207. The wife opens the door and I head straight to my bed and fall into it.

The fog lifts further. Understandably irate, “Be grateful that Mr Abdul didn’t call the police”, says the wife. “Did you know that you had your shirt off and in your hand when you came home?!”. “No way, did I really do that!”. Was that me then waving a shirt, dancing on top of the Long’s bar counter, I ask myself!

“The car keys cannot be taken out of the lift well, they are gone”. And the second set of car keys are, for whatever reason, are inside the car! I learn, a little later in the day, that there are experts who know a trick or two to open a locked car door, under 30 seconds.

I wonder if Nina was having a bit of revenge fun with me by suggesting that I should have a sambuca. No, no — surely not, I know. It was still the sambuca, of course. As the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

That led to me resolving something that I have stuck to, till now.

To never ever again have a drink. Of sambuca. With three coffee beans.

That reminds me of a night, several years later, when, between Vishal and I, we finished off the bottle of Don Julio, gifted by buen amigo Miguel Romero on a trip to Mexico.

No, never again. A sambuca. With three coffee beans. A flaming sambuca.