THE PUB/CLUB CULTURE AND CONSUMERISM

More than two decades back `the pub’/`night club' culture has started in an otherwise traditional Karnataka capital of Bangalore, which was attributable to the IT boom and the city turning into a cosmopolitan city.   It has shaken and stirred the otherwise laid back city of retired people to the much discomfort of the traditional kannadigas.   Apart from the local youngsters, whosoever visited Bangalore made it a point to enjoy the experience of new found liberation.

Other cities, including Delhi could not catch up this trend because of restrictions on granting night club licenses for hotels/restaurants other than 5 star hotels which were not affordable to everyone specially youngsters. In Delhi, for the overhype youngsters the dancing bars like LEDO and KAMAL were the only resort.   Then came the explosion of Gurgon as the IT/Consultancy/corporate office hub as alternate to the overcrowded and highly expensive CBDC of CP.  Gurgaon has witness the double yummy of young and well paid IT/consultancy executives on one hand and neo rich youngsters who were blessed by unexpected and unmanageable windfall of crores made by selling farm land by their parents to the Builders to turn Gurgaon into a concrete jungle.  

One such cluster of IT/Corporate Hub in Gurgaon is Cyber city.  To encash the opportunity having so much high earning and spending youngsters, a huge cluster of open space in the cyber city has been turned in to CYBER HUB, the most happening place of over 2 million sq feet given to various eating joints/pubs/clubs.     Every night specially at weekend it comes to life which goes much beyond mid night.   

My experience in the night club : Thanks to the disciplinary way I was brought by parents, specially Father I was never attracted to these night clubs and stayed away because a non-smoker, teetotaller, vegetarian and man with two left feet has no business to be in a night club.    During my more than 3 years stint with `The Lalit’ I had a great opportunity to go to night clubs in their hotels in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi free of cost but I never went there after the Sun was done (which is the time when Fun comes up).    For work related issues I went there during the day.  I listened from colleagues many scary stories of over the board behaviour of youngsters specially on special days like V-day, friendship day, Christmas and New Year.    Few people know that few of the night clubs in star hotels doctors and ambulances were to be kept on stand by and in most of the cases parents were to be summoned with identity cards to carry off their kids who were on flight to another imaginary world under influence of heavy dose of alcohol.  

This week end I accepted the invitation for an office dinner party and made to the most famous joint, which is my first visit to Cyber Hub as well as this joint.    After entering into the place, I realised it is a pub cum night club type (though I do not know what they are licensed as.    First it is a small place very badly designed.   One enters into the place through the dancing floor, once you are in they are more open places.   For small parties (from 10 to 20 people) a small place with sofas put on three sides and very simple and large wooden teepoys in between.    There was hardly any space to move around for the guests or the bearers because there was hardly any space between two sofas and every the bearer moves around from inside stamping your foot all the time.   At the center of the table a stand is put with canopy and a cooler.   So much of saving on AC and maintenance.    These sofas areas are surrendering by highly cramped two seaters and four seaters.    One should consider onself lucky to get these places by booking well in advances.     Others who walk in late have to stand at the bar place and/or at the dancing floor.

The Crowd : I really cannot say where I should start and where I should end about it.   It has been much worse than what I thought it to be.    Within few minutes of my reaching the venue at 8 pm it started swelling.   After looking around I was wondering as if the young girls were out there for entering into a competition of worst and sparingly dressed.   Many times male are accused of ogling, teasing and molesting females but I must admit that after few minutes I was feeling so discomfortable to even looking around with the fear of spotting an embarrassingly dressed young girl.   There was hardly any youngster who was not smoking and boozing and the entire place is turned into a smoking chimney.      The less said the better about the food, ambiance or hospitality as no one, except few exceptions like me, were in their senses to bother about them, though a bomb was charged.    I am sure the premium is for providing a place for all like-minded people to come to so called `chill out’.  

While coming out of the place, we had to make our way out through the dancing floor, which was more crowded than a `metro coach’ at Rajiv Chowk during office hours.    Forget about dancing people have no place to step back a bit, again that may be the whole idea that the couple are supposed cling to each other all the time.    The amount of smoke exhaled can put any badly maintained chimney in a factory to shame and someone like me would be fainted had I stayed for few minutes.     The music was so loud and deafening, I do not know what all the other ill affects but it has pumped up my heart beat in half a minute I was there making out my way out.

When I was waiting outside the venue on the main road for my car well past mid night, I found young boys and girls in a highly intoxicated condition standing on a very poor lighted road for fetching way side taxi/auto.   Anyone who sees such scenes will be scarily reminded of Nirbhaya incident and fear that many such incidents are being invited.    Why to blame police when youngsters indulge in such risky behaviour.    When they who spend thousands of rupees in the restaurants do not engage a metered cab for their own safety, why do they expect the police to be present everywhere to protest them.     I wonder what is the role and responsibility of parents.   Most of the boys/girls must be staying independent in rented accommodation without any restrictions on entry and exit.  If they are staying with their parents, it baffles me that their parents do not check their young children partying till wee hours and moving around dangerously - may be they are the modern `we are friends to our kids' variety of parents.   Even Prime Minister Modi has stressed this issue in his independence day speech, how parents do not ask their sons where they are going and what they are doing.    But anyone says anything about their horrendous sense of dressing, the over the top obnoxious behaviour one is branded as being making `sexiest’ remarks and trying to be `morale police’.  

Height of consumerism: I do not know how far it is useful for the economic development of the country but there is an explosion of consumerism.    Whatever may be method of earning (in case of few IT and other professionals it is definitely hard earned) money is spent with gay abundance without bothering whether they are getting value for the money.  It is treated to be the only way of de-stress after gruelling work schedule during week days.   But the pity is that during the course of my investigation into cases of embezzlements in my previous employment, in many cases it has come out that young boys have indulged in such activities to make quick buck to spend on their girlfriends in night clubs.

But nothing is going to change, if at all something changes, it could be only for the worse.  For me it was a chance visit and people like me better stay away from such places rather than getting cultural shock.  

S. Prabhakar

24^th August, 2014