Youth drawn to new profession

Christian Cotroneo, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: May 19. 2008 10:04PM UAE / May 19. 2008 6:04PM GMT

NEW DELHI // The age-old embroidery shops and tailors of Kishan Garh, with hunched old women creaking along the narrow corridors of this New Delhi neighbourhood, would seem the perfect postcard of old school India. If not for the new school.

On any given afternoon, the Institute of Bar Operations and Management drowns the dusty neighbourhood in heavy dance beats. And in a cavernous room upstairs, Sandeep Verma cajoles his sweat-drenched students to spin, twirl and do it again.

“Get faster!” Mr Verma shouted to his charges during a recent demonstration. “Show me what you got! Come on, people!”

The half-dozen young men obliged with unerring accuracy – balancing glasses on their forearms, juggling one, two and three bottles and building impossible pyramids on the bar.

This is the bartending flair course at the decade-old school, run by one of India’s most famous – and well-paid – bartenders. His students, which usually number between 50 and 100 a year, hope to follow in his lucrative footsteps. And, thanks to India’s burgeoning demand for bartenders in booming metropolises such as New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, the future, for better or worse, is frothy.

“We are always short of supply,” Mr Verma said. “I just got a call. They need six bartenders. We don’t have them.”

Demand for Mr Verma’s graduates would likely have been much greater had all the provisions of the Delhi Excise Bill 2007 been approved this month. While the state government approved the main part of the bill, lawmakers were split on two of its most controversial points – reducing the legal drinking age from 25 to 21 and allowing female bartenders.

Although women will be allowed to tend bar in New Delhi, the drinking age was not moved.

A reduced drinking age would have likely allowed Mr Verma’s graduates to switch from the private party circuit, where many under-aged bartenders currently work, to mainstream hotels and clubs throughout the city. Or else, of course, bartending graduates can move to other Indian states where the drinking age is a more relaxed 21.

“The cabinet felt youngsters should not be encouraged to drink,” A K Walia, the state finance minister, told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

The bill, however, will allow for women to become bartenders – once they reach the age of 25.

Regardless, New Delhi’s drinking age, stemming from a 1914 Act, has had little effect on the youthful clientele of hotel bars and clubs throughout the city. Nor has it changed attitudes among youth.

“Everyone has their own life,” said Clayton Gracias, 23, a trainer at the institute.

It is, according to the bartender from Goa, a classic confrontation between old and new India.

“It’s a cultural clash,” he said. “The younger generations … like us – we go abroad, we see a different lifestyle, we love living that lifestyle and we bring it back.”

Nonetheless, when Mr Gracias leaves home for a nightclub, he still fields the same time-honoured questions from his grandparents: “What happens at a nightclub? People are smoking and drinking?”

Indeed, India may be embracing the lifestyle a little too zealously for some.

India is already one of the world’s biggest producers of alcohol, and is now fast becoming a major consumer. The average age of alcohol consumption has dropped by about nine years over the past decade – with most Indians trying alcohol for the first time at 19.

Factor in a battery of studies linking alcohol consumption and domestic violence and it is little wonder conservative politicians are calling for a war on alcohol.

Last month, S Ramadoss, president of the Pattali Makkal Katchi party, urged prohibition across India, suggesting it would be in line with Gandhian values.

Mr Ramadoss may have constitutional backing. According to Article 47 of the Indian constitution: “The state shall regard the raising of the level of nutrition and standard of living of its people as among its primary duties and, in particular, the state shall endeavour to bring about prohibition of the use except for medicinal purposes of intoxicating drinks and of drugs which are injurious to health.”

In practice, the country maintains an uneasy relationship with alcohol. For instance, save for a handful of states, such as Goa, liquor cannot be advertised. Instead, big companies will sell bottles of water bearing its brand name, or, in the case of Kingfisher beer, have their own commercial airlines.

The message, Mr Verma said, still manages to get out.

“Around 10 years back, when I started, India was just a whiskey-drinking country. It was a social taboo. People are accepting it now. With globalisation happening, business happening, expats coming in … awareness is spreading.”

And so, of course, is his business.

With students hailing from London, Bangladesh and Nepal, Mr Verma is opening a second institute this year in Hyderabad. Next year, he is aiming for Bangalore. And perhaps, he will add a school to the office already established in London.

Students at the New Delhi institute, however, still have a long way to go before they reach their mentor’s heady income bracket. Typically, they start out earning about Dh430 a month, but with service charge and tips, the total rises to more than Dh1,300.

When Mr Verma gets behind the bar for special events, on the other hand, he commands about Dh9,125 a day. “And I’m sold out 20 days of the month.”


ccotroneo@thenational.ae