Opinion Shaken and stirred: Can bygones be bygones?
The dark history of Indri was related to me by a friend who was nearly choking with rage that at some dinner party the host served him the malt before casually revealing its origins. How can you spend a rupee on that guy and make him richer, he argued, rejigging old memories of how Sharma almost got away with murder.
Eventually, he didn’t. The valid point, that 26 years later, Sharma has earned the right of re-entry into the workforce and is legally entitled to pursue any career was met with a contemptuous snort. 
-
Share -
-
-
Aficionados describe India’s first internationally successful single malt whiskey, Indri, as a richly textured blend of caramel and honey, with hints of almond butter. It won the gold at the Tokyo Whiskey & Spirits Competition 2025 and in another fair in New York, reviewers praised Indri’s unique flavour, solidifying its reputation on the global stage. The logo practically leaps off the bottle — written in Hindi with a dramatic flourish, Indri packs a stylish punch indeed. In an industry dominated by Europe for centuries, a product from India is at the forefront of things (for once). However, the most interesting aspect of this whiskey isn’t a rare ode to excellence but that Indri, produced by Piccadily Distilleries, is the brainchild of the (infamous) Manu Sharma. For the few who don’t know, despite initial acquittals, Sharma served a full term of 16 years in jail for killing model Jessica Lall in an unlicensed Delhi bar in 1999.
Kasyanov served as prime minister for the first four years of President Vladimir Putin’s rule and was sacked in February 2004, weeks before Putin was elected to a second term. The episodes don’t have a fixed format or a set of activities that the audience would come to expect. This is the end.
At the very least, we expect perpetrators of grave injustice to be forever tormented, akin to the mental anguish of Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky’s unforgettable character in Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov murders a hideous person, convinced he’s doing mankind a favour. Right after the fateful event, his theoretical rationalisations fall flat, leaving him wracked with paranoid guilt. While it’s a grand treatise on morality, all this injured hand wringing about terrible blunders plays out differently in real life. When someone’s done the crime and done the time, there’s wisdom in moving on because in any case the worst human beings can be and do, reverberates across generations. There is no statute of limitations for certain crimes that never die down: no pun intended. Old-time Delhiites still talk about the Billa-Ranga case, the kidnapper-murderers of two teenagers in 1978 that kick-started Delhi’s reputation as a brutally unsafe city. There too, justice, if one can call it that, was achieved. In the Lall case, it’s a precarious kind of freedom for the accused because the crime has become the punishment.
The truth is none of us can fully comprehend what life after a long incarceration is like, other than it’s not unlike a different type of prison. Like a ghost, the past continues to haunt the present, the lingering effects impossible to shake off. For the ex-convict, living within a whirlpool of condemnation is an inescapable reality. Yet, there are still many decades left to negotiate ahead. In that spirit, it’s worth acknowledging that we all aspire to carve out our own tiny space in this vast universe and making it in any sphere, professionally, is hard. Dare I add, that I tried Indri and it was superb. Isn’t it just a wee bit creditable when anybody manages to break through, especially after such a controversial youth? Because those who err terribly, are human too.
The writer is director, Hutkay Films
-
Share
-
-
-
Share
