Dancing With a Stranger Costs Less Than a Bucket of Beer in Delhi's Sketchier Bars

It was our third night inside one of the many bars behind Select Citywalk in New Delhi’s Saket area, and goings ons were going on. Rocking a black pantsuit with wedges taller than all my shoes stacked atop each other, Roxanne shifted between tables, making sure her girls went home with clients who they spent the last hour with. After all, they’d paid 500 bucks as a “Starter” to dance with the girls.

In the shadows of one the country’s largest and most swanky malls looms a series of smaller complexes each replete with a dimly lit bar and several thekas around them. There is little in the way of security or even a cover as one enters them.

The head waiter, known to us only as Vinod, who takes a Rs. 200 cut from the 500, filled us in on the details. When the crowd in the dimly lit pub thins down to only men, he calls Roxanne, who brings in the girls who bide their time in the nearby malls. The women are all mid-to-late 20s, with some already wearing tight dresses, and some changing into them in the bar’s restroom. They then come out, get a free drink at the bar and sit at tables where one or two men are sitting.

The two adjacent bars were a similar story. Loud music, garish lighting, men grinding on women. The only thing that differed was the music, Bollywood, pop and hip-hop. This not-so-subtle technique even escaped the attention of the police, with PCR a van merely 15 metres away. They told us there would be no “gadbad” on their watch.

On our first night we saw a woman in her 20s, of average height, sporting a magenta, polka-dotted dress that recalled 80s Bollywood vamp fashion. She walked up to greet a stocky, man in his late 40s in a grey sweater-vest, quickly sitting opposite him at his table. After a brief discussion with this man, she was sitting by his side, his hand on her shoulder.

The man called Vinod over, ordered a cocktail and gave him a Rs. 500 note. He then stood up to old-man jive to “Tere Rashke Qamar”, a cinematically bizarre image, the two on the dance floor bathed in red flowers projected onto them by the in-house DJ system.

This played out several times. After dancing for a couple of songs, the men order drinks for the girls, racking up a bill in the process. The house serves adulterated alcohol—the Jack Daniels tastes suspiciously like Blender's Pride; the Smirnoff is reminiscent of Blue Moon. The drinks cost more as the night progresses.

But it all works out, as many customers end up going home with their new-found friends.

32-year-old Nitin is a regular, and was kind enough to share his bucket of beer with us, though not his last name. “Getting a dance or two is relaxing after a hard day's work,” he said. Nitin runs a prominent sports store inside Select Citywalk, so is clued in the night scene of the area. “EMB (Excuse Me Boss) Bar in MGF has better girls,” he told us. “Only 2-2.5K for a dance but the space for dancing and normal lounge is different.” He said the astronomical price difference was worth it, especially for the “special area”.

Despite being in a two-year relationship, Nitin finds a girl to grind on to a Punjabi song calming, especially with his day-job of selling sports equipment. Most men though, seem older than him, and clearly coming out of corporate offices. The youngest that evening was in his early 20s He rushed to an ATM, then took his date and her friend home with him at around 12:30.

As it got late, the bartender of C Bar, Niket, offered to help. He called Vinod, who then came over, looked at me with apologetic eyes, and said that all deals were done, and there were no girls left. We’d wanted to speak to Roxanne for her thoughts, but perhaps we seemed to eager.

I went up to settle my tab as the bodies moved to Despacito. I contemplated the posters of Bajrang Bali and the Rama behind the counter, next to a poster of that said “Partying Wild”. As the dancing behind me got wilder, I left to get a coffee at the nearby Starbucks.

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