Clubbing in Mumbai
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2007
1
8
16
Trip End
Jan 22, 2008
Mumbai (Bombay),
India
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
From the Rough Guide: 'Mumbai never sleeps. No matter what time of night you venture out, there are bound to be others going about some business or other. The city has always led the nightlife scene in India and there are bars and clubs to suit every taste: jazz dens compete with salsa, table-dance fusions and funk.'
Sounds enticing doesn't it? It's just a shame it's all complete bollocks.
Now admittedly our schedule meant that we showed up in Mumbai on a Monday night, which was going to limit our choices a bit but then we were staying in Colaba, the 'trendy hang-out for the city's rich young things' and where 'the majority of foreign visitors head first' so we felt confident that we would be partying until the early hours with a mixture of natives and fellow travellers.
Now, in a culture where you get some choice as to who you marry, nightlife is a fairly important part of the process of procreation (and to that end I propose subsidies on Bailey's and Amaretto to counter Western Europe's problem of declining population). However, in a country where your parents get to choose your wife for you, bars and clubs are very much optional to the continuation of the species. And it shows.
It's not that there aren't places to go, there are plenty. It's just that they're all set up for couples. Indeed many of them only allow couples in. So they have all the dynamism of a stoned tortoise. And there's such a gulf between rich and poor that only the wealthy can afford to be out boozing on a Monday night (or indeed any night).
Also, a few years ago the Mumbai authorities were somewhat concerned at the rise of nightlife in the city - i.e. that people appeared to be actually enjoying this life rather than just hoping that the next one might be a bit nicer - and decided to curb this very unIndian behaviour. So they decided that all bars and clubs should close by 1:30. Now, as I saw in Delhi, India isn't a place where people tend to listen to rules very much. Except in this instance.
So it's about ten pm. Stephan and I have eaten (twice) and had a couple of beers and are ready to find the famed nightlife of Mumbai. We ended up at one of Mumbai's trendiest nightspots where the doorman (a smartly dressed guy, about fifty years old) acknowledged that his establishment may be lacking a little energy this evening and directed us to a place called '(Not Just) Jazz On The Bay'...
...which turned out to be having a karaoke night. Undeterred (OK, we couldn't think of any alternatives), we paid the entry fee and went in.
Well, if you've ever wondered what Mumbai's wealthiest young things do on a Monday night (and I know it's a burning question that's kept me awake until the early hours) then look no further. After wandering around some poorer neighbourhoods in Delhi, this is a massive contrast. The clientele is entirely made up of Indian couples and Stephan and I initially feel slightly out of place. However, this isn't a great problem once you realise the following: From the average Indian's point of view, if you're lucky enough to have a comfortable lifestyle in one of the world's richest countries, why would you choose to spend a lot of money to go and rough it in a place rife with poverty and disease (and no available women)? So they think we're a bit nuts anyway.
Anyway, the people here are what everybody else in India aspires to be - they're young, wealthy, very well dressed and pale (Indian television has adverts for skin creams to make you paler). All conversation and karaoke is conducted in English. I get the impression that any use of Hindi would be quickly followed by a sharp exit courtesy of the doorman. And the girls are drinking wine. This may not sound unusual but India doesn't do wine. Their own is (allegedly) fit only for cleaning your oven and the imported stuff is fearsomely expensive by any standards (except Iceland's of course). The average annual wine consumption of wine in India is about half a teaspoon a head so drinking imported wine in India is a statement - it basically says 'I am considerably richer than yaow'.
Unfortunately, I don't have any footage of this particular evening. None at all. No siree. And certainly none of a pair of 'slightly' drunken Europeans attempting to sing Afroman's 'Because I Got High'.
