Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
That Saturday night fever...
|
What were the weekends like in the days gone by? R.V. SMITH recalls the evenings spent mingling and dining
|
It is late in the evening in 1960. A car stops at a restaurant in Regal Building and from it emerges a couple. The young man and woman are probably newly married, out for a Saturday night. They enter the hall and take their places. He is a Garhwali, with a khukri at his waist and quite big built for his race. Has the khukri tasted blood? Perhaps at some ritual or in tribal warfare. It is strange how the old and the new mix.
Inside the hall is a different world. Sophistication breeds here. There are stately stewards hurrying to accommodate each new entrant. A lanky tourist rolls his eyes around to picture the scene. Close by sits a portly foreign businessman with a typical trader's paunch. You seem to get a whiff of Turkey and Africa as you walk past them.
Time was when people from West Europe went to Istanbul to see the veiled faces of women - Oriental beauty that is. Pashas abounded then and the Turks prided themselves of them. Now they too are westernised and it's European beauty that one sees there.
The African's tale is different. His was a continent that was considered dark. People went there to hunt or to make money by trading in ivory. The natives took everything in the lanky strides of a race that was supposedly burnt black by the impulsive sons of Apollo, who drove their father's Steeds of the Sun low over Africa. It was funny to spin such a tale about a people who had been civilised long before the white man came and imposed his burden on them.
Club culture
To India also the white man came and, besides the foreign yoke, brought some benefits too - like modernisation and new social mores, which included club culture that was alien to the land. Slowly things began to change and after Independence the Capital became more cosmopolitan. In the 1960s Indian couples dancing in hotels and restaurants became quite common.
And the hippie culture made one see the new generation of westerners as shabby in comparison with the well-dressed Indian youth. Gaylords was one such local jaunt.
Such thoughts are natural as your mind wanders in the air-conditioned room, while outside it's beastly hot, nay torrid, for lack of rain, as though somebody had tied up the clouds.
An Englishman sits with accustomed ease. They still dress up for the evening, unlike the huge American in casual wear. The Indians in the crowd are the best groomed and their women have the air of ladies dyed in perfume, quite a contrast to the skirted girls from the West. Many of the latter carry travel guides and some are busy reading, preparing for an early trip the next day - to Jaipur, Agra and back.
They are more engrossed in the Rajputs and Moghuls than in the present, and the waiters know as much for they tend not to pester them too much.
Suddenly a girl looks up and sighs. Is it for the Taj?
Just then the band strikes. Some couples are on their feet, others watch with an amused look. The bandsmen catch the hint and go about it with greater gusto, nodding their heads at each other for encouragement. Remember, it is the applause that counts afterwards.
The dancing stops and so does the music until a solitary man in a loose shirt, with a receding hairline, sends a slip to the bandleader.
He reads it and smiles as his team plays "Roses are red my love, violets are blue/Sugar is sweet my love and so are you". It's quite an ancient song by today's standards, and few seem to enjoy it, but there is a pair of moist eyes - the balding man's.
Does it strike a chord? Maybe, says the inner voice as you depart with a lump in your throat, leaving the solitary man amid the roses of yesterday.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
