Randy and the Great Dubai Drinkathon Debacle

Denzil Jayasinghe

6 min read

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1 day ago

Randy – my then partner’s elder brother and friend was twenty-one, brimming with bravado and a mop of curly hair, strutting like he owned the sandy streets of Dubai. Back then, we were young, reckless, navigating life with wide-eyed hope, sun-reddened faces, and not the faintest clue what sunscreen was.

Randy worked in a hotel – one of those five-star joints where the guests were rich and the lobby always smelled of Arabic coffee-scented ambition. The workforce was a finely curated zoo of Asian lads: Sri Lankans, Indians, Filipinos, the occasional Nepali with a mysterious past, and not a woman in sight. Unless, of course, you counted the housekeeping department, where Asian aunties ruled with an iron fist – and a can of air freshener.

I used to tag along with Randy partly because he was a good laugh – and partly because his hotel friends were like a live-action sitcom: chatty, chaotic, and always wearing someone else’s deodorant. They toiled through eight-hour shifts – thankless and grinding – with the enthusiasm of hyperactive meerkats on Red Bull, serving guests who treated them like wallpaper and changing bedsheets for couples who… well, let’s say the laundry department had seen things.

Randy was in room service, which meant he had access to every corridor, every scandal, and every slightly eccentric guest who ordered a club sandwich at 2 a.m. He’d come home, collapse dramatically like a comic Bollywood hero, and start narrating tales with the flair of a Shakespearean actor and the accuracy of a cricket commentator with no stats. His stories were wild: lifts that trapped staff like zoo enclosures, guests who wandered the corridors in bath towels and confusion, and a colleague who, for reasons still unknown, went through a phase of hiding bananas in pillowcases.

We’d sit around and laugh till we couldn’t breathe. The humour was classic Sri Lankan – equal parts dry wit, mischief, and a healthy disregard for dignity.

Now, while the hotel ran on sweat and sarcasm, the real action happened after hours. The lads – early twenties, slightly homesick, and completely broke – had turned their quarters into a speakeasy. They worked hard during the day and smuggled in liquor like bootleggers would in a black-and-white gangster film. Bottles went for 50 Dirhams on the underground market, where you didn’t ask questions and always checked the cap for authenticity… or poison.

Technically, drinking was illegal – especially if you weren’t making enough to afford the dignity of an alcohol licence. Corporate types with ties and four-wheel drives could drink. These boys, however, hovered well below that sacred salary ceiling. Not close at all.

Every now and then, a police car would drive past casually. Sometimes, a CID agent in a flowing dishdasha would mysteriously appear in the hotel compound, pretending to look for a friend but taking note of who was getting suspiciously jolly after dark.

The staff quarters were a pair of two-storey cement shoeboxes right behind the hotel – each room had two tiny beds, a washbasin the size of a dinner plate, and a cupboard that doubled as a panic room during inspections. There was a ladies’ wing, but that was more a concept than a reality. Entering it was as mythical as unearthing a fridge full of beer in a Dubai bachelor flat.

Then came Thursday night. The Party. The one they all awaited like pilgrims approaching a shrine in search of redemption.

Bottles were secured. The venue was the top floor – Room 207, unofficially known as The Booze Shop. Someone lugged in a woofer system that could rattle window panes. Dixi Cola and Canada Dry bottles and glass tumblers were lined up like soldiers. And in the corner, like an altar, stood the liquor: Black & White, VAT 69, Dimple, and Johnnie Walker Red.

Brave lads stood watch like Secret Service agents at a desert rave – minus the black suits. They locked the door and ran the place like a Mossad safe house in a Dubai summer.

Everyone finished work early that day. Room service was never faster. Dishes were washed with military precision. Tables were laid and cutlery polished so perfectly that hotel service captains wept tears of pride.

By 7 p.m., Operation Drinkathon was underway.

Guests were allowed in only after being scrutinised through the peephole – known that night as the “glass eye of truth.” The guy on peephole duty had two roles: bouncer and lookout. He scanned for intruders, gatecrashers, and any sign of CID in a suspiciously white dishdasha.

And thus, the night roared on – cheap whisky, sweaty dancing, Bee Gees and Duran Duran on repeat, and a brotherhood of lads who’d made something out of nothing: a room, some whisky (mostly bootleg), and enough laughter to shake the walls of a very sober, very strict city.

But the plot thickened.

One of the lads – a friend of the gang with a flair for theatre and a surplus of mischief – had a different idea of fun. He somehow got hold of a cheap dishdasha from the Deira souk, the kind that looks convincing in dim light but frays at the seams by morning. He wrapped a red-and-white ghutrah, the local headgear, around his head, slipped on sandals, and practised a stern local accent he’d mimicked from overhearing guests at the hotel. With a clipboard swiped from housekeeping and a fake badge pinned to his chest, he looked just official enough to terrify. The stunt was reckless – impersonating a CID officer could land him in serious trouble, maybe even a one-way ticket to a cell – but he was too deep in the prank to care. He crept up the sandy passageway like an actor in a low-budget spy film, climbed the stairs, and knocked.

A Bollywood scene was emerging.

Knock knock.

The guy on peephole duty peered through and froze.

“A local CID cop is at the door,” he mouthed, eyes wide.

Panic. Real, sweaty, heart-stopping panic.

The music stopped. The lights dimmed. A room steeped in bravado and cheap whisky turned into a disaster drill. Visions of deportation danced in their heads, along with images of that terrifying green-uniformed police station down the road.

Boys sprayed themselves with cheap cologne – Brut, Musk, whatever was within reach – desperately trying to reek of innocence. Some emptied liquor bottles into the washbasin, watching their hard-earned treasure swirl away in shame. Twenty lads were crammed in that tiny room. Three or four – the bravest or simply the most panicked – climbed out the window, dropping to the sandy patch below – a fifteen-foot fall that left one with a twisted ankle and another cursing as he limped. Two bottles were tossed out in the chaos – one shattering on impact with a tragic clink, the other caught by a quick-handed lad who landed like a cat, only to trip over cement blocks.

Then, after a short but eternal minute of silence, the peephole guy cracked open the door.

In walked the ‘CID officer.’

He removed his ghutrah, burst out laughing, and held his stomach like it was going to burst.

Chaos turned to disbelief. Disbelief to fury. Fury to laughter – the kind that comes only after the worst has almost happened.

Some bottles had been lost to the sand below – one broken, one saved by a hero with a limp.

And Randy? He would describe each jump in slow motion, as though it were a war movie. He’d imitate their faces – wide-eyed, limbs scrambling, landing in dust with a thud and a groan. I did nothing but listen. And laugh. And laugh some more.

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