(The Glimmer Twins with the Simpsons)

You know there's a point in everyone's life when they feel old. Every morning is a hangover, the days endlessly longer and you spend the evening getting stronger. Now a long time back, when I entered this place, I was young and impressionable. My work seemed simpler, I was paid to write about music shows, whisky to wine launches, author interviews, travelling to Bangkok and Macau for fuck all, fashion shows and other fancy stuff you don't mind getting paid for. Now you must understand that this term was short-lived -- nope, there were no fuck-ups on my part. Its just that there's a time and place for everything (what a fucked up cliche), and thus we must always carry on and on. We musn't get carried away into thinking that life's all about the limp-wristed (woe) men, 40 old ma'ams who claim '32 pleez', seriously weird DJs, men blow jobbing cigars, slurring Martinis and painted models and of course the feminist/NGO-type (shy lesbians, I think) Fab India clad blowing corrugated smoke and sharing dirty SMSs -- in believing that their nice, they don't give a shit about you.
The real test for a Page 3 reporter is to do the job: not get sucked into that life. It's quite cool while it lasts: important people from hotel owner to the guy who gives you a towel in the loo -- all sound sweetly pretentious. But before you smirk-grin and give that Madhur Bhandakar film Page 3 flashing on your TV-mind screen, I ask you to pause. Of course its true, as it strings many real episodes -- but damn, not everything happens in one party.
It's largely the same circuit that does round, no matter where you go. The same smiles, the same drills of air-kissing, the same one-liners, the same 'sweetheart, don't call me a socialite. I'm an entrepreneur', photo options, designations and writing a stupid 150 words.
Over the years, I think I've managed to enter every fucking whisky bar in the city. Interviewing their owners about how close they keep to the law and what people they let in to hang in and about. None of what they say is true, of course. But there's coolness in asking a question to hear a fucking lie.
There's also a clear-stupid law that exists in all drinking holes of our sweet fucked up city -- if you're 18 you can step in to one. If you're hanging around for a considerable time -- say 25 years old in there -- you get a permit to drink. It doesn't make sense, but who follows it? I get drunk, and in my unapologetic drunken stupor make faces at the admittance board that's framed in every place. Guess what everybody respects that.
Boy you should be there. Hookers, pimps, peddlers, wannabes, sluts -- there's a designation for everyone. But you have to keep level-minded, then there's trust. You have to build that with the guy who lets you in. You can't fuck around -- trust me: you don't want to fuck around.
'Clubbing' is as mixed up as the darn thing sounds. You need company to go with you, the company you will get will be a buch rich-spoilt idiots who will like to blow their folks money and despite the stubborn world they'll put forth, will chime 'mumma & puppa' on the breakfast table next morning. You have to willingly part with some Rs 5,000 grands to not even get drunk and keep a few hundred spare for the cop who sits right outside, on the bend of the road, to charge you for drunken driving.
Few places exist -- the trauma-drama life of a watering hole lasts for only 9 months. If it manages to outlive that then, then the village mafia of the neighbouring states make sure it comes crashing. Women hunting -- I mean, of course, harmless-teasing-hunting, means you're waiting to be hung like a cut up goat. Whoa, no chances.