On a dangerous path

Back in 1998, I spotted boys and girls in their school uniforms, probably from Classes 8-9, frolicking with beer in a Bengaluru pub around lunchtime. It was a regular school day and, obviously, the students had bunked school to be in the pub. More important, they were not of the permissible legal age to consume alcohol and the pub owner was blatantly violating the law. My friend, who lived in the US, began narrating stories of alcohol and substance abuse among American students. At the end of the discussion, we both dismissed this as an urban phenomenon and blamed the parents as well as the pub authorities for the profligacy of the students.