Pub Culture: Thoughts on a Tangent
Some of my European friends visited India last year and we met. I was eager and waiting to hear every detail about their brief stay in India. As we ran through photo slides of Rajasthan, Delhi and Bombay, I heard everyone say “India is magnificent”. A little later, small irritations surfaced: from why “people stare” to the “so persistent beggars” and the “unbearable traffic” and the “lack of pubs”. It was New Year’s time when my friends were in Delhi and it had not been easy for them to find a pub. They could not imagine spending their time in any other place if not in a pub, over a drink. “Why are there no pubs?” they asked me. “We take everyone home”, I said. They didn’t believe me. “India is a warm country, people don’t drink” I said. They still couldn’t see how. A scholar on Asia once told me, “India is cut off from the rest of the world”. The reason he said that was because there were no pubs in Bangalore, unless one went up north. For all that talk of respecting cultures, very we