Another match watched on telly, I’m afraid, but what a match and what a funny night. First of all, I hooked up with some of the Test Match Special team for dinner in a very swanky restaurant. I spent the last England tour of India with them as a cameraman, so it was nice to hook up again.
I then met up with Paul, a friend who shares the misfortune of supporting the same football team as me. I’d only met Paul a couple of times previously, (hey, that’s plenty to be Facebook friends), but had seen that he’d moved to Bangalore as part of Tescos’ latest attempt at global domination. I also noticed from his Facebook photos that he had somewhat of a partying lifestyle out here. And so it proved.
Bangalore is a funny city. It has a large, young, and definitely upwardly mobile middle-class. It also has a huge and hard drinking culture. The bars are swanky, full of extremely beautiful and glamorous people, pissing god knows how many lakh and crore of rupees up the wall on expensive drinks. Paul told me he once bought a round of five vodka and tonics and didn’t ask for locally brewed vodka. The bill came to £105. The average monthly Indian salary (skewed upwards by some incredibly rich people, earning billions) is £40.
So I met Paul and his harem of foxy friends in a bar in the centre of town. They drinks had clearly been flowing and they continued to flow at a rate. Here’s why: All bars, pubs, clubs, private drinking holes…everything has to stop serving at 11pm. There’s no lock-ins, no late licences, no clubs open to the small hours. Everything finishes at 11.30. This is a fairly recent law introduced to stop fights and crime (this from the same local government who until recently had banned dancing) – what it appeared to encourage was fast and furious drinking.
It was a fun night, and the backdrop to the evening was a fabulous game of cricket between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, that was in the balance until the penultimate ball. The restaurant and the bar both showed the game as the drama unfolded, with cheers every time Sri Lanka hit a four, and groans whenever Pakistan took a wicket. The first really exciting game of the World Cup ended with Pakistan winning by 12 runs and me being invited back for a house party.
So, six of us (plus driver) squeezed into Paul’s car and drove off to this house, stopping in a part of town where apparently alcohol could be bought. Lo and behold, we pulled over, a man ran out of the shadows, took an order, and two minutes later 12 large Kingfisher, a bottle of vodka and four tonic waters appeared in the boot of the car, in exchange for a fistful of rupees.
We drove off to the house, which was an enormous villa on the outskirts of town (I have no idea really where it was, but it seemed a long way away), with a guard on the door, and found a fairly civilised scene with pop music blaring, but all the guests eating quiche and apple pie in the kitchen, and of course drinking heavily.
The hosts, a middle-aged couple, were leading the way and were quite the social animals. The father runs some sort of company that makes some sort of electrical something, the English mother baked exceedingly good food and had the only dishwasher I’ve ever seen in India.
The guests were a collection of Bangalore’s well-to-do, who despite being in various degrees of leathered-ness, were all most welcoming to the English visitor and determined to offer future hospitality should I ever visit again. One even arranged for me to stay free in his hotel in Kerala on Monday and Tuesday. I imagine it’s going to be a lot nicer than Sri Laksmi Comforts (or Sri Lacking Comfort), my £7.50 a night cell in Bangalore.
Another guest told me he was the presenter for cricket on one of the subcontinent’s leading Sports TV channels. He told me this at around 2.15am the night before potentially the biggest game of the group stages of the World Cup. It could make interesting viewing – in every sense.
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