Chandni Bar

The following is a blow-by-blow account of the events that occurred on the night of Saturday March 12th 2005. The previous weekend had been a major let down cause we did not end up leaving home till about 12:15 AM and much to our chagrin by the time we reached the tube station all that awaited us was an innocuous phrase scribbled with a red marker on a white board outside the tube station; “the last train to Central London has already departed”…. Bummer !! It was too damn cold to deal with buses etc so we trudged back home and vowed to leave early the following weekend.

The plan for the following weekend was to go to ‘Pascha’, which is currently one of the more popular ‘seen and be seen’ hangouts in Central London. Zulfi, my partner in crime, had already been there a few weeks ago and could not stop raving about the ambience not to mention the extremely ‘soothing to the eyes’ clientele. The die was cast and as Saturday night rolled around we were all set to rock the night away on the crowded dance floor of this much sought-after nightspot in London.

But as is the case in every such pre-planned exercise, we ended up having dinner at 10:30 PM and by the time we were set to leave it was already 11:15 PM. The seeds of cynicism were already blossoming, as we knew it would be quite a task getting into a popular lounge without any female companionship. Zulfi’s cousin stepped in to salvage the situation. He volunteered to call in sick from work – apparently that’s easily done when you’re doing the graveyard shift at a posh London hotel - and opted instead to join us for the proposed nocturnal festivities. This meant actually driving into town as opposed to taking the tube or walking around in the uncharacteristically cold March night but that’s England for you.

There was a fourth party contributing to this major project in the guise of Zulfi’s uncle – whose wife was out of town, which left him up for some bachelor life nostalgia. A perfectly innocuous seeming gentlemen if a little too enthusiastic about the proceedings. But Zulfi assured us that this unexpected development was actually well worth getting excited about. Allegedly, ‘Uncle’ had friends in London who own nightclubs and if our ‘Pascha’ aspirations were to fall through which increasingly looked to be the case, he would usher us in free of charge at one of his contacts friendly establishments.

We finally departed from West Finchley at around 11:45 PM and half way to London safely dropped the idealistic notion of getting into ‘Pascha’. We were now heading straight to ‘Uncles’ friend’s club somewhere near Regent Street. We arrived at our destination, clad in the requisite black attire and as we turned the corner towards the club entrance I spotted ‘IT’: a banner slung across the club’s entrance announcing in Anglicized Sanskrit; Mumbai Club!!! Visions of 50-60 overtly British South Asians gyrating to perpetually jarring bhangra tunes assaulted my senses. I mentally prepared myself to expect the worst. Excuse my snobbery but when I go out partying at night I try and avoid ‘South Asian’ centric clubs as best possible cause they rarely have any regard for quality music and insist on playing the ‘bhangra’ version of every Hindi song ever made not to mention an all pervading desire to mix popular western tunes with ‘gay’ ‘and I use the term loosely’ abandon. It’s most irritating, disturbing and downright criminal. Just a personal opinion, not meant to be shoved down anyone’s throat. I apologize in advance to those who perennially ‘shake that ass’ to the critically acclaimed ‘Punjabi MC’ mixes.

To make a long story slightly shorter, this lounge/club/desi bhangra fest was a veritable disaster. For one, the ratio of men to women was safely 10:1 and those with steady squeezes were huddled away in corners or grinding away with numerous oglers scattered on the peripheries of the dance floor. There were also the standard isolated groups of 2 or 3 women dancing amongst themselves with their own set of ogling gents around them. One drink, one fleeting glance and I was about as ready to leave, as the kids staying at Michael Jackson’s Neverland!!

Just to give you a glimpse of what we had to suffer; there was enough smoke in the place to warrant fire engines responding to a 5-alarm call. There were guys wearing white leather jackets with a bright crimson bulls eye emblazoned across the front. There were dudes in fluorescent blue kurta’s on top of black pants. The women wore 6-inch stilettos and 3-inch leather minis and a few were large enough to literally sit around the club whilst gratuitously flaunting the same 3-inch minis!!

The disappointment and disgust was plastered all over our collective faces. The only one relatively ‘rocking’ was ‘Uncle’. He went off on a couple of discreet reconnaissance missions across the dance floor and insisted on offering sporadic advice to our bemused trio. The nature of said advice shall be left up to the reader’s imagination. At this point Zulfi’s cousin decided that yet again he must make a concerted effort to save the night. He suggested we move to another location but remained extremely cryptic about the name and location of this next venue. We immediately grabbed our coats and headed to the car.

As we embarked on this subsequent expedition, Zulfi and I noticed that we were heading out of Central London. We asked cousin dear to please elaborate on the true nature of our destination but his only response was ‘North London’. An hour and forty minutes were spent searching for this establishment. Uncle seemed pretty excited about the next stop and kept talking to cousin dear in code discussing other such venue’s he had visited with his friends. But no matter how much Zulfi and I tried we could not decipher the nature of this alleged entertainment spot. Naturally we were getting increasingly peeved by the thought of yet another failed Saturday night. Finally we pulled up in front of a single story house. There were white blinds on all windows, but we could detect the faint flickering of multi-colored strobe lights inside. There was a white gentleman dressed in a black suit, stationed outside on whom could be conferred the title of ‘Bouncer’. And finally, I spotted the innocuous sign on the ground leaning against the front wall; “Chandni Bar”.

Before we could even begin to fathom the connotations of the name we had been hustled past Sir Bouncer and entered the club/lounge/pseudo gentleman’s cabaret.

The next step beyond the front door was the dance floor. Six maybe seven South Asian women dressed in various ethnic, semi-decent attire were dancing in the center of the floor. Gentleman of all shapes and sizes were sprawled across the room, at the bar, on couches or just standing around staring. The lighting was fairly dim but not dim enough to obscure the expressions of all those present. Having absorbed the initial shock I turned to cousin dear and asked some fairly obvious questions. ‘Where the hell are we?’, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’, ‘When are we leaving?’. His responses; ‘We are in North Harrow and privileged to be at London’s best kept South Asian secret. This is Chandni Bar’ as if to say how could you even ask? The name is of course derived or simply stolen from the infamous Bombay establishment and as seen in the controversial Bollywood flick. More importantly, cousin dear elaborated, ‘we will proceed to watch these women dance to the various tunes being played and you can request your own tune too. If you like the performance of a particular dancer you can hand her a minimum of 5 pounds’. ‘We will leave once we have had a few drinks and spent 40-50 pounds on the dances/dancers’!!

I could scarcely believe my ears. Here I was in London and the only place that we could end up on a perfectly normal Saturday night was this sleazy, hole in the wall, demeaning to the opposite sex, pseudo strip club!! A pinko-liberal nightmare to boot! We proceeded to plant ourselves on four bar stools directly facing the dance floor. Uncle and Cousin dear and I really think he deserves to be Cousin with a capital C) ordered drinks whilst Zulfi and I ordered a red bull each in an effort to zap our senses out of this madness.

The girls noticing our arrival approached us single file and proceeded to shake hands with each of us. Maintaining unflinching eye contact they moved back to the dance floor and continued their pulsating performances. While Uncle and Cousin dear were just getting started, all Zulfi and I could do was exchange bewildered glances. Uncle meanwhile had been discovered by a caked up beauty dancing a tantalizing few feet away. He kept staring and staring and staring. Finally he signaled for her to approach him and for the next 10 minutes proceeded to choreograph her dance moves. The girl was an amateur only at the art of dancing cause for the rest of the evening she was dancing to Uncle’s tune, practicing the vulgar moves he was dictating and gracefully accepting 5ver after 5ver after 5ver. Meanwhile Cousin dear had his own Miss World to contend with and even though he had no choreographic wisdom to impart yet his gaze would not (or could not) leave the vision in red and he too proceeded to whip out countless 5vers.

They weren’t the only ones engaged in this activity - there was of course a milieu of gents engrossed in said activity. Mostly over 40!! There were a few 20 something’s and 30 something’s as well but those guys were too busy fooling around with each other and occasionally shouting cheap lines at the dancers.
The over 40’s were all over these women, handing out cash like they had just returned from the California Gold rush. They were drunk, they were lecherous and they were having a whale of a time. At any point during a particular song you could signal to any girl that struck your fancy and she would hop over to collect her reward. These girls could not have been over 25 at the most but what was truly fascinating was that the girls did not seem at all uneasy or bashful. They had the moves or at least most of them did and they wanted the cash. At the end of each song ‘n’dance the girls would re-group in a corner, wait for the next song to start or wait for one of the clients to request a uniquely poignant number.

The beauty in blue that Uncle had snared informed him that he must return every weekend for the next two months cause her stint was to last a mere 8 weeks. She needed him to continue his coaching lessons and of course expected to get paid while learning those complicated dance moves.

This madness lasted for a good hour. Finally at 4:25 AM in the midst of a particularly enticing number the door opened and 20 gents in various stages of inebriation walked in. That was the owner’s queue. The music abruptly stopped, the girls gave Uncle and Cousin one last amorous glance and disappeared into a back room. The show was officially over.

The bouncer was summoned and the new hopefuls were duly informed that the night was at an end. There were a few loud protestations and grumblings but they were all too wasted to start a brawl and the bouncer just herded them back out the door.

At this point Uncle decided that the night would not be a raging success unless he established a firm bond with the owner of this fine enterprise. Mr. Owner was duly summoned, introductions and niceties exchanged and the banter continued. He thanked us for our patronage and invited us to stop by any time. Stated that he only allowed decent, cultured and well-mannered folks to frequent his place. His sole purpose was to provide quality entertainment and made sure there was never any trouble.

Uncle and cousin assured him that we would be back and exchanged contact info with Mr. Owner. My friend and I meanwhile were at wits end. 4:45 AM on Sunday morning and where were we … Chandni Bar in North Harrow.

The experience bordered on the surreal. Of course such places exist all over the world. There is something for everyone where ever the demand exists. And ‘if you build it, they will come’. Chandni lounge is thriving in North London not because the dancers are available or willing but more so because the patron’s are seemingly regular husbands, brothers and fathers with an insatiable desire for this rather sad form of entertainment. The dancers may not be pageant winners but they stare deep into the eyes of the men watching and give them a certain degree of attention, which they might be lacking in their everyday lives. Sure each prolonged stare has 5 pounds associated with it but what’s 5 quid when you have a woman dancing for you and just for you. What other reason could there be for 40-something men to waste their time and money here till 4:30 AM. There’s no sex, there’s no physical interaction, there’s no stripping or lap dances. Just a few girls wearing skirts and flimsy blouses dancing away and staring at you. Just your average harmless voyeuristic fun, is it not?

I am not here to judge these men or to take the moral high ground on a relatively trivial topic. I’m just wondering what could possibly drive a person to spend time in this fashion. For all intents and purposes no one can really accuse these guys of any serious wrongdoing. They are just watching, but their eyes – well the eyes they tell a certain story. At some level one should be held responsible for intentions and not just actions.

Maybe next weekend I’ll get to go to ‘Pascha’ where I shall find a suitable vantage point at the bar and watch the dancers on the floor do their thing. :)