If the prime minister has been having difficulty sleeping at night, he might just want to see if increased noise decibels have anything to do with it. For while he has been busy sorting through crises that are social, political or economic in nature, there’s been increased traffic in his neighbourhood including not a few of the galaxy of Bollywood’s movie stars as well as the capital’s rich and wannabe famous, thanks to a nightclub that has opened a short trot away from his bedroom.
Who would have thought that the liberalisation that he set in motion would end up in the form of a bar at his doorstep? And yet, there it is, a place that’s dead by day and pretty much half the night, with guests pouring in past the witching hour, which might make him wonder what they do till they get to the nightclub. Do they have dinner, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep — only to wake up, get dressed and sneak past his front door to party till it’s breakfast time? Do these people then go to work? Or sleep through the day?
If he’s having a restless night, he might want to check the lounge out for himself. Even though it’s open only to members, I’m sure no one would think to turn the prime minister away, especially not when it’s operating right at his gate — though I wonder what he’d make of the place and the people. Is this the ‘Shining India’ he helped create, this fantasy world of plush carpets and Swarovski chandeliers and royal portraits and sofas so deep you could sink into them and disappear? This weird world of abstract mime artistes and foot tapping music and long Cosmopolitans and classic Martinis?
As a frequent flyer to international summits and given his easy camaraderie with Obama and Sarkozy and Berlusconi, you’d think he would be likely to make small talk, but what might he make of the hostesses at the lounge in their cocktail dresses whose job description, it appears, is to smile prettily and introduce themselves? What might he say to these women from East Europe or the CIS countries who seem to have signed up en masse for employment here? Maybe he’d ask them about the growth in exports to Azerbaijan, or the problems that plague civic society in Uzbekistan, or whether they’d read the updated history of human migration and globalisation. It might not make scintillating conversation for what is a nightclub, but it would raise the tone to at least the same level as the India International Centre.
The charmed hosts could give him a tour of the lounge — this seating here designed by Shah Rukh Khan’s wife Gauri, that corner there by the enfant terrible of fashion Rohit Bal, this here by actor Arjun Rampal, all of them occupied by groups of noisy people — not unlike the rambunctiousness of the Lok Sabha where, just as here, new groups form or break or drift apart accompanied by a good deal of sound but resulting in nothing of significance.
He might even find it handy when entertaining guests from overseas and wanting to escape the tediously formal dinners as served at Hyderabad House. How much nicer to walk your guest across to this rocking symbol of new India, to discover in its mayhem the youth who could be tomorrow’s leaders but probably won’t because it isn’t lucrative enough, to show them an India that isn’t just about IT and call centres and talking in faux American, to engage in conversation simply for the pleasure of ‘timepass’. Besides, how many prime ministers do you know whose residences come with a nightclub (almost) attached?