TO STAND AT THE CROSSROADS near Mumbais Haji Alis Tomb is to witness a slice of modern India at its most vibrant.
Giant-sized billboards loom down over the seething traffic, alluring the nouveau riche with the latest in must-have fashions and all mod cons.
Down below, reclining primly in their chauffeur-driven cars, this new self-made class do their level best to block out reality, a realm thats never more than a pane of glass away. They seem immune to the incessant hooting, the droves of beggars, the eunuchs, and the street hawkers, all of whom glide through the gridlock like sharks hunting prey.
Spend a little time out in Mumbais human stew, and you feel yourself being poached alive. But salvation is at hand – to a privileged few at least.
A stones throw away from the traffic jam, theres a gentle haven of calm, a throwback to another time – a world that couldnt be more incongruous if it tried. Drive in through the solemn silver-painted gateposts, and you enter a kind of fantasy island, albeit one adrift on turbulent seas.
Inside, there are sprawling verandas cooled by ancient swirling ceiling fans, manicured lawns, and waiters dressed in starched white shirts and little black bow ties. There are crustless sandwiches as well, and scones and lemon tea, chit books, jam tarts, and miniature brass bells for summoning the legions of staff.
A bastion of propriety and good form, The Willingdon Club is part of a legacy which dates back to the earliest days of the British Raj. Its a lost shard of a world in which old-fashioned values diehard. In a country more often regarded for its own blend of perfected chaos, The Willingdon, and other clubs like it, are run with almost military efficiency. Membership is valued as the epitome of social status, the dividing line between old wealth and the rising nouveau riche.
In the heyday of colonial rule there were many dozens of such clubs, found across the subcontinent, the Far East, and Africa. Established for the droves of bureaucrats who powered the colonial machine, they were as ruthless in their rules and membership requirements as any club on Pall Mall. Their drawing rooms were where colonial policy was thrashed out, and where the Rajs secrets were circulated among the privileged elite. It was a domain in which the old boy network thrived, one reserved for British gentlemen alone.
During the Raj, each club catered to a specific social strata. A tradesman or low-ranking bureaucrat would never have aspired, for example, to membership of Calcuttas exalted Bengal Club. And, membership for top-notch clubs had waiting lists so long that applicants often perished from consumption much before they ever came up for membership at all.
When the British set sail for home after Independence, sixty plus years ago, there could have been few who would have imagined that the colonial clubs could endure. After all, they were a symbol of decadence and, of course, of the despised British rule.
But endure they have.
Almost every major Indian city has at least one club. Mumbai has half a dozen, Delhi has several, as does Chennai, and as do the hill stations like Simla, Darjeeling and Dehradun.
The most snobbish and historical of all are the clubs in Calcutta, the capital of India under the Raj until 1911. The sniffiest of them all is the Bengal Club. Founded in 1827, with waiting lists that run into decades, its ambience has to be experienced to be believed. The highlight is the ‘Reynolds Room, a salon whose walls are adorned with murals inspired by the painters life work. Its great rival is The Tollygunge Club, known by all as ‘The Tolly, an oasis even now of decorum and stiff upper lip. Laid out over a hundred acres of former indigo plantation, once owned by Tipu Sultan himself, the clubhouse is more than two centuries old.
With the financial explosion gripping modern India, the clubs are a sure fire way for the old elite to set themselves apart. Basking effortlessly on the white-washed verandas or, playing bridge in the card rooms, the landed gentry manage to assert their social status by membership to a closed world. Its the perfect way of distancing oneself from the growing swathes of society who are cash-rich but culture-poor. Membership subscriptions arent usually cheap, but its not about money. Its about being approved.
As soon as I was married into a known Mumbai family, my in-laws put me up for The Willingdon Club. In the years that Ive had membership, I have been enthralled by a system that, despite all odds, has managed not only to survive, but to thrive. What impresses me is the way that theres almost no slack in the system. The rules, committees, and sub-committees, maintain a state of blissful harmony, and keep the prevailing state of mayhem outside the gates at bay.
Founded by the Marquess of Willingdon, in 1917, the club was supposedly established after the peer was refused entry for his guest, an Indian Maharajah, at the nearby Bombay Gymkhana. (According to legend, that club had a sign at its gates, bearing the slogan, ‘No dogs or Indians allowed). Needless to say, membership there was, like everywhere else at the time, restricted to whites. Incensed, the Marquess, later to become Viceroy, set up the first club with the radical new vision of membership for all.
But open membership doesnt mean for a moment the lowering of standards. Even now, Bollywood actors dont have a hope in getting their names onto the list. Nor do those who flout its rulebook. In a famous Mumbai moment, the celebrated artist M. F. Husain, who never wore shoes, was refused entry for arriving barefoot. (The rules also stipulate that rubber sandals or bedroom slippers are unacceptable).
Set in acres of greenery in the middle of the city, The Willingdons land value runs into billions of dollars. All around it, fashionable tower blocks are rising up, swish homes to the newly arrived.
As with many of the clubs established during the Raj, The Willingdon is predominantly a sports club. A little further south, in Colaba, is another – the Royal Bombay Yacht Club. Overlooking the Gateway of India, and next door to the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Yacht Club is set in a hulking Indo-Gothic building. One of the oldest of all Indian clubs, it was founded in 1846, and was awarded royal patronage by Queen Victoria.
For foreign visitors to India, temporary membership to a wide number of clubs is possible. The easiest way is to track down a local member to vouch for you. But if you cant find one, there are other ways of slipping in under the net. The Royal Over-Seas League in Londons St. Jamess, for instance, has reciprocal membership to a plenty of old colonial clubs across India and the Commonwealth, and it is forthcoming to new members.
Before being married I used to stay at the Yacht Club, in the grandest chambers imaginable. They were vast, had a view right over the Gateway of India, and they came with a manservant who was meek, fawning, and ever available. He even offered to dress me once, and did a great job killing the cat-sized rats that infested the upper floors. I used to spend months there at a time, fraternizing with characters straight out of a Graham Greene novel, and forgetting my responsibilities elsewhere.
In the evenings the resident members would congregate in the bar, its walls adorned with ensigns and naval insignia. Over pegs of whisky, they would swap tall tales from the high seas. The most colourful character of all was an Irishman. An Honorary Consul, who had managed to arrange for himself a grand apartment on the first floor, he was known to all as ‘Callaghan of India. A friend of his, an impeccable old member and former admiral in the Indian navy, once told me of the time during the monsoon that a sea of rats swarmed up from the sewers and into the Yacht Club.
‘They were simply everywhere, he said dreamily.
I asked what was done to quell them. The admiral shrugged.
‘One of chief members was a Jain, he replied, ‘and refused to allow them to be poisoned. So we just put up with them. A lot of them are still here. The old admiral sipped his Scotch. ‘I fear they outnumber the members six to one.
Although a great many of the colonial clubs now find themselves in the middle of sprawling cities across the Subcontinent, many more are tucked away in small towns and hill stations. In their ceaseless search for cool climes, the British would decamp en masse from the cities each summer, and move to higher ground. Hidden in the Nilgiri Hills is the hill station of Ootacamund (known as ‘Ooty by all). A bastion even now of English decorum, Ooty traditions die hard. Theres still fox-hunting in red jackets, even though there are no foxes at all. And, right at the centre of Englishness, is the Ootacamund Club.
Entering into the clubhouse is to step back into a sepia-tinted world right out of The Far Pavilions. The walls are hung with game trophies, the antique furniture carved from rosewood, mahogany and teak. The reading room has an imposing portrait of Queen Empress Victoria, and all around there are pictures of the Hunt.
Founded in the first half of the 19th century, the Ooty Club is a nugget of real England, albeit one far away from home.
Theres English fare (Spotted Dick and Yorkshire Pudding), snooker, croquet, and rigid codes of dress. But, most English of all is the weather. Indeed, the English must have been in seventh heaven there. Discovering the Nilgiri Hills for the first time, in 1819, Lord Lytton wrote home to his wife:
‘Such beautiful English rain and English mud!’