Locating a trendy nightclub in rural Karnataka is rather like conducting an online search for disco options in Kandahar: a prospect fraught with far more risk than reward. The intrepid few who take the plunge should be given a statutory warning on the dress code.
Something along the lines of: Body armour beats Armani, or Ambani, for those who prefer synthetics. This is not to say that a Talibanic mindset exists in Tumkur - even humble farmers and fumble harmers, as one wag described a former PM, enjoy their fun and games - it's more a case of different strokes for different folks. Frivolous amusements such as clubbing, with or without EDM, are best left to city slickers.
Dudes looking to jitterbug in Mysore find their way to a 'jam session' in a 3 star hotel on Saturday afternoons where the windows are darkened with newspaper. Here, amid the fluted columns and Grecian frescoes made famous by Kollywood, rum and coke swilling couples and a few stray singles boogie in sweaty embrace to Boney M, played by a DJ in a tuxedo.
Mangalore has a bona fide disco archly named 'Mischief ', complete with smoke machines and flashing lights, but with a desperately skewed male-female ratio. The spectacle of twenty hairy sons of the soil, exuding sweat and coconut oil in roughly equal proportions, as they grind their hips to "Fever" on a miniscule dance floor epitomises the ambience of a gay bar to the uninitiated.
Rural entertainment runs the gamut from movies, cock fights and processions to weddings and political rallies. Action, partying and sundry nocturnal pursuits of the chronic party animal are pretty much restricted to Bangaloreans who have the well-deserved reputation of being committed to working out on the social treadmill. They are not the sort who will lose any sleep over Herb Caen's observation that, "Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything."
An aunt of mine, who would prefer to remain anonymous, (I'll kill you if you use my name), sniffed disparagingly when her conservative neighbor grumbled darkly about all-night rave sessions in farmhouses. "Aiyyo, devare, what is the youth coming to these days?" wailed Gangamma, "Baree majja maadthare ee party nalli. In our days there was only one party: Congress", was the burden of her song.
"Please spare me that crap, Ganga, we were much wilder in our time during the sixties," snapped Aunty. "Take for instance, Tanya Jacoby, with her long cigarette holder, and that boa constrictor round her neck… what style! She was a Russian émigré who organised art exhibitions with opposites: you know Gandhi's body and Marilyn Monroe's head… or it may have been the other way around.
If you had been at one of Tanya's fabulous corn-on-the-cob parties, you wouldn't be talking rubbish about these silly farmhouse raves. Back then, Jacoby used to grow corn on his farm for his popcorn machines and there was a big pit in which they stored all the husked ears of corn.
The booze would flow, the ambience was magical with candlelight and paper lanterns and after midnight one of the wilder ones would jump into the corn pit with his partner. Mind you there was plenty of kissing and cuddling, but it was all in good fun", said Aunty, as Gangamma gaped in frozen horror.
"And what dances we had in those days, none of this modern rubbish", continued my garrulous aunt, "Tanya was a fantastic dancer - she used to do the tango with Duncan Potts and Ray Raitt and Trevor Snow used to compete with her. Now we didn't know what gay was in those days, and Trevor…well, Trevor was a lovely dancer, but I think he was a little gay.
You know we used to have a dance on the last Saturday of every month at the Bangalore Club. Then Blue Fox, Stay Longer (Harsha), Topkapi and the Social Services Volunteers ball at the West End. My God, from Christmas to the New Year, we'd party every single day," she trailed off.
The wonders of hi- tech were supposed to free us from the tyranny of routine and open pathways to fresh vistas in which we could reflect and meditate. Poor Gangamma: one look at our pallid millenials, defined by religious icon screensavers, mall pilgrimages and a mind-numbing familiarity with arcane aspects of technology ranging from Cloud to Cray and she would urge them to follow in Tanya's dance steps. Instead of porn, groping and raves, perhaps they could learn how to actually have a good time…
