Oothometer - An indigenous breath analyser

Mundakayam is a plantation countryside opened by the British and Irish planters during the early part of 1900 and is literally a place where milk flows; the only difference being that it is of the latex verity or rubber paal as called locally. Mundakayam has the largest single plot under rubber plantation in India and is situated at the midpoint between Kottayam and Kumily on the famous 110 kms K.K. road now known as Kollam – Theni NH220. I am fortunate to have been born and brought up there, with both my parents belonging to the same place.

I was driving down the NH220 from Mundakayam to Kottayam during Christmas. It is during this period that the tipplers in their inebriated condition cause maximum havoc on the roads. And since Kerala holds the dubious record for the highest alcohol consumption in the country the highway police were very vigilant.

As I negotiated a serpentine curve, which the road is well-known for, there was a highway patrol car waiting as if to pounce on unsuspecting drivers. When my car approached the cop waved me down. Since all the papers were in order, I stopped confidently and waited for the officer. After the routine queries he asked me to blow. I was perplexed; blow where and what for? Suddenly it dawned on me that he was trying to find out whether I was intoxicated. But there was no breath analyzer, a device for estimating blood alcohol content which measures the level of alcohol in an appropriate sample of breath expired, with him. So I asked him, “Blow where”? The inspector held out his hand and asked me to blow into his palm that was his breath analyser or ‘Oothometer’! (In Malayalam ‘oothuka’ means – to blow). Trust our cops to be inventive.

On New year’s day when I regaled this incident to friends, one of them, a confirmed bar hopper with “good capacity”- a common terminology used by tipplers, revealed how he hoodwinked the cops once while returning from the club. He had had one too many when the arriving members warned him about the cops checking with breath analyzer down the road. Before finishing his ‘one for the road’ he asked his wife to lace her mouth with a peg of brandy and spit it out if she didn’t like the taste. She was confused to say the least and refused bluntly. After much cajoling she relented when he told her, “Otherwise I’ll have to spend the night in a police lockup and you will have to go home alone”. Section 203 of the motor vehicle act empowers the police to require any person driving a motor vehicle in a public place to submit to a breath test, and if the presence of alcohol is found to be above the permissible limit in his blood or urine, the individual may be arrested without a warrant

As expected the cops stopped him on the way. He was asked to blow into the breath analyzer and it showed that the alcohol content was way above the permissible 30mg/100ml limits. He wouldn’t agree with the cop and argued that he was not drunk but the apparatus was faulty. The cops too wouldn’t yield. Then he took out his ultimate weapon. He said, “I’ll prove that your machine is faulty, try it on my teetotaller wife and see for yourself?” The inspector wasn’t amused but nevertheless agreed after some persuasion. You can imagine the inspector’s bewilderment when the breath analyzer showed that she too was pissed drunk but without any of the attendant indications. Shocked he tried it out on her once more with the same effect. Probably he was too embarrassed to try it on himself not sure of the result. Convinced that the apparatus was indeed faulty he let them go!