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SONDEEP SHANKAR
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Are We Having Fun Yet? At Rick's, being in is enough
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Hate to be excluded?
In New Delhi's trendiest canteens, you can spend an evening getting cozy with the upper crust
By Anthony Spaeth
MAP: New Delhi
New delhi's dusty pleasures—the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid—have been touristic main courses that have lacked a lagniappe. Traditionally, India's capital didn't offer the ancillary, nocturnal pleasures we've come to expect from Asia's super-cities. With the opening of a few new nightspots, however, we may mourn that simpler past. Now, for the price of a Kingfisher beer or a shot of Old Monk's rum, you can join New Delhi's rich and beautiful, bullies and brats, for a weekend night of frenetic hobnobbing in either of two current in-spots. Both are in five-star hotels (a term beloved, and somewhat devalued, in India). Both are jammed to the rafters on weekends. If you're not having a good time, that's normal. What matters is the spectacle. So don't hesitate to stare, for that's what the crowd is there for: to be seen.
The Taj Mahal Hotel's Rick's is the newest of the two clubs, and there's nothing to distinguish it from any hotel bar Sunday through Thursday nights. The trick is to go early on Friday or Saturday, get a seat at the bar and then wait. At about 10 p.m., people start trickling in. Frantically craning their necks, they talk in quick bursts, the conversation for most of the night stuck on the topic of who's there and who isn't.
"Where's Anil?"
"He said he was coming."
"When was that?"
"He called me on my cell phone."
"Then where's Sunil?"
"He's not here?"
"Call him, yaar."
The men are smart-casual, with generous amounts of hair gel favored by the under-25s. You can also gauge their age by the size of their ghee guts. Sartorially, the women prefer any color as long as it's black. Their long, lustrous, parted hair, frames strong, sharp-toothed profiles.
If you are obviously a foreigner, no one will talk to you or make eye contact. The only exceptions are if you happen to be in the way of someone who wants to imperiously command an already harassed bartender to deliver drinks; or if you are perceived as having shown interest in one of the women, in which case you might be in big trouble with some lunky lads. If you're Caucasian, someone who recently returned from school or work in California, Vancouver or Sydney might strike up a conversation—to tell you just that. If there's any sexual excitement in the crowd, it's shared in some secret way. It doesn't leak out and isn't discernible to outsiders.
Rick's is small and overly popular. The people who can't squeeze in are blocked at the lobby by two banquet tables guarded by hotel staff. This is a crowd that finds nothing more infuriating than being denied what they want by people from a lower social stratum. For at least an hour, they subject the hotel employees to a never-ending wave of threats, pleas, abuse and demands to see the manager. Favorite line: "Don't you know who I am?" People try climbing over or under the barricade, and quite a few succeed. It's the ultimate clash of supply and petulant demand, and the oddball who actually wants to leave Rick's before closing has to clamber over a table to get away.
Djinns in the Hyatt Regency is bigger and has a band, but is otherwise the same scene. Djinns' velvet rope is outside, and every Friday and Saturday night you can see throngs of frustrated partyers out by the parking lot, stamping their heels and flipping their hair in indignation, or cell-phoning friends who have managed to get inside. If you have the patience, both Rick's and Djinns have one final amusement. The bars close at midnight and that's when the crowd starts mauling the bartenders to keep serving. Clearly, there's nothing cool about New Delhi's in-spots. But for high-handed aggressiveness, it's the tops.
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