Musings on the Bangalore Bar

For years, I’ve ruminated on a profound question. 

What does it mean to be a Bangalorean? I mean, does there even exist a “bangalorean personality”, a character trait or stereotype that defines us or makes us the butt of jokes? Of course, there are unintelligent repartees directed at how much time we spend in traffic or our food preferences, but those are comic jests at best. There are Mumbaikars, and Delhi-ites and Chenniaites, who can be molded into simple, easily digestible stereotypes, and sometimes into sub-categories within their cities ala SoBo, SawthDaly and even Mylapore TamBrams. Are we really such a lackluster breed that we don’t inspire even the hint of a static and all-encompassing personality? Or are we just uninteresting people? I shuddered at the exceptionally cringeworthy ads with Rahul Dravid screaming in Hindi! Paapah, he is Joseph’s maga ra rey! How much hindi that fellow knows? Also, one silly hindi RCB song also was there before full trolling happened? What a disaster! This is not us by a mile!!

Over this past November and December, I’ve given this much thought, over many many larges of Blender’s Pride and several hundreds of King Lights, in many of my favourite bars in the city, some of which have transformed in line with the diaspora. (I’ll use the word gentrification with much sensitivity. Chin Lung is a good example. Can’t remember sending at Chin Lung and being in a group that didn’t end up in a fight on the second floor. It was a rough place, boss! Now it’s fancy, and swalpa soulless! But I know I’m being difficult, so I’ll leave it here). It was a collective rumination with many returning NRI Bangaloreans who have participated in many drunken binges that started at 7 PM for the simple reason that for the greater part of a decade of our prime drinking lives, last orders were at 10:15 PM. In 2011, for the two years I lived in Bombay with Shanks, I couldn’t understand how to pace my drinking! While the rest of the city was getting decked up at 10:30 PM, Shanks and I were stammering and stuttering out of Woodcon in 7 Bungalows and tottering our way around Versova Fishing Village for a nasty plate of green masala pomfret and quarters of Royal Stag. And it used to get worse when friends from Bangalore showed up. With the Looru boys around, nights were intense with increasing likelihood that someone would die by midnight. But no one ever did. Because the boys can send and that’s that.

Anyways, I’m digressing, but yes, alcohol was a large part of ‘being bangalorean’ at least within the sphere of cultural influence I existed in. By no means am I implying that that extends to everyone’s experiences of ‘being bangalorean’, but for me, it was the collective experience of rock music, alcohol and chicken kebabs. There were side worlds that collided through friends and friends of friends from quizzing, theater, music, art, for brief fleeting moments in a common dive bar, almost always at Temptations, but sometimes at Dewar’s, Oasis, Ujjwal and maybe even Dolphins.

Surely, the Bangalore Bar is synecdoche for this city. A miniature representation of everything fantastic and frustrating about Bangalore, sometimes in a 10 x 10 room with an over-flowing toilet. A cacophony of noises, smells and personalities sometimes served with a side of rasam, well, depending on the bar. If this city was a Wong Kar Wai film, the Bangalore Bar would be its protagonist, shot in matte-textured tinged colors and overtly romanticized dramatic intention. Some of us have memorialized our favorite city bars to larger-than-life status, infusing them with a sometimes-misplaced idolatry nostalgia, but mostly justified. This is why a Bangalorean’s perspective of a dive bar in any other city is highly opinionated. It’s because we hold our bars to a higher level of accountability than some nasty, run-down curtain shop in any other city. It needs to have character, a soul, a vibe. So difficult to explain if you've not frequented one in the city. I mean, think about this, Bob’s Bar, which is one of the most popular hangs in Indiranagar right now, is themed after paying homage to the quintessential Bangalore Bar, right from the food, pricing etc.! Its amazing that something that is presently available in the city if you just want to look for it, is being packaged and presented to make it so much more accessible to the gentry without the looming threat of contracting hepatitis, and peeps are lapping it up. I love Bob’s Bar for it! More of the same please!

Having said this, the residual loorean in me still craves for the edgy send of a quick quart and chilli chicken at Sandra’s in Thippasandra. I wonder how many of us are still out there. I wonder how many of our favorite bars are still out there. I’m intrigued. With the apocalypse ending, we owe it to these places.

Although, I’m pretty sure they don’t need us, they have enough patrons and don’t have time to deal with some emotional, liberal-minded, clutching-at-nostalgic-straws, boozehead. They just need you to send quarter quickly and get lost. Don't create ruckus!

Damn, is that what being bangalorean is all about?

Coming to the realization that you love this city… but the city doesn’t love you back?

That’s some cold-ass shit!

 

P.S.: Am thinking of hitting up some of my old-time fav bars in the city. Hit me up with some reccos. Even better, land up and we’ll make a quart of it!