[That height at which everything becomes clear as mud]

Beginnings

We can say with reasonable certainty that some form of beer, or a fermented concoction loosely resembling it, was one of the earliest culinary creations of mankind.  The ability to get in touch with the universe, your inner self, or in general, ponder life’s big questions with uncanny confidence gets an assistive boost with this potion, and others like it. This inherent quality of the drink may have helped it work its way into becoming man’s 2nd best friend over the centuries.  Regardless of whether it was invented by man’s conscious application of alchemy, or discovered by being at the right place at the right time to witness the magical fermentation of grain sugars ⎼⎼ there is no doubt that it gave meaning to the words ‘elixir of life’.  

And so it was during the Presidency of Obama, the first Beer Summit at the White House was coming into public view with the hope that the ever elusive political middle ground may yet be within reach.  This led some of us like minded friends who were being introduced to various forms of midlife crises, to think outside the box and ask out aloud ⎼⎼ why shouldn’t we have a beer summit of our own?  

The quick decision makers that we were, this went from idea-to-beer-in-hand, at a supernatural speed never experienced by this group for any previous endeavors.  Soon the monthly beer summit was welcomed into our lives with the enthusiasm and giddy excitement of a family welcoming a baby into its midst.  After all, the idea of debating and solving some of humanity’s most intractable problems while imbibing your favorite potion was not going to be something we would pass up very easily.

Get going with nothing

Now that the idea was starting to become a reality ⎼⎼like any new venture⎼⎼ the first challenge in front of the group was getting the endorsement and blessings of the powers that be.  The main order of business was to determine how best to extricate ourselves from our family obligations for a few hours every month, without also appearing delinquent in those duties. Not to worry though ⎼⎼this is a brave bunch⎼⎼ and everyone was armed with talking points to deal with their individual predicaments and convince their other halves that the summit would actually be a good thing for them, even though the details as to exactly how, was left hazy.  

In the end, not sure how everyone pulled it off, but suffice to say, begging, pleading, and other techniques from the ‘Art of the Deal’ were liberally used to eventually get the green light and move forward.   With the fear of wifely retribution out of the way, we could now move on to the more exciting part of planning and actually get the sessions going.   

Top of mind questions were: how frequently would the summit happen, where would we actually meet and how long would the meeting last. While these seem trivial to the outsider, it was far from that, these were vexing questions that the team had to consider and agree on early. Luckily though, this is where some of our natural strengths, honed and polished through several years of plodding the corporate treadmill came to some real practical use.  We landed on administrative functions such as the calendar scheduler, the location scout, and the menu planner. The assignees were picked for their (stable) genius level abilities in performing these duties with the meticulousness that puts to shame, even the most sophisticated eCommerce logistics teams anywhere. 

Soon the monthly beer summit about nothing (to borrow something from the iconic Seinfeld) was operational, and the beer and wine of choice started to work its magic as expected.  No problem was too difficult to debate, analyze and find solutions for.  Even though the venerable scotch whiskey may well be the ‘water of life’,  this group didn’t stray too far from the self professed affinity towards beer or wine.  

Armchair Analytics

Over the years, the conversations have tended to follow the generally predictable path of talking about work, political issues of the day, movie reviews and a perennial favorite which is around when to stop working and head into retirement.  Everyone is encouraged to bring out their juvenile self to the summit sessions and believe it or not, this is not particularly difficult for this group, and I dare say that some of us are exceptionally gifted at this. 

The concept of retirement and all the planning that goes along with it seems like a recent phenomenon in human history.  It’s hard to imagine our hunter gatherer forbears would have ever worried about this at all ⎼⎼ much less plan for retirement.  I suspect the King of the Jungle or any number of carnivores in the food chain would have made any planning for retirement overkill & moot. Given the potentially long interval between saying bye to work and saying bye to the world, this topic occupies quite a bit of our mindshare in modern times. 

Once a big chunk of any summit evening is consumed by our own retirement plans⎼⎼which by the way is predicated on how many beers helped us think through the problem, it naturally follows that we would talk about other people’s retirements. Given Bollywood and various other native woods (Tollywood, Kollywood, Malluwood etc.)  occupy a big chunk of our screen time, there tends to be passionate discussions about the acting caliber of many of the stars who occupy the Indian film firmament.  If we had our way, many of the blockbusting stars would be sent packing into retirement by now. As the evening meanders on, other agenda items such as global warming, social inequity and cheap healthcare, are quickly reviewed and dealt with. As we sit back and proudly take a moment to reflect on the achievements of the evening, someone is rudely awakened by a summons from home that becomes the cue to get back to dealing with the realities of a working life, with retirement still a distant pipe dream.

Pandemic and Zoom Summits

Like everything in the past year, the beer summit also needed to adapt to the changing realities inflicted by 2020 and was forced to go online, but it also highlighted how crucial physical interactions are to human well being.  As the American political conscience continues its free fall into a cesspool of delusion, it seems like we could all benefit by more intoxicants becoming legal in order to maintain our sanity.  We can all raise a glass to that ⎼⎼ Cheers indeed!