The city of joy loves controversies, and it does so more than ever when the issue revolves around elitism and the target is easily accessible but a bit hard to access using the average Bengali’s finances. Even better if it allows them to justify their own yearnings for being a class apart from the rest. None too surprisingly then, they pounced on a simple incident involving a restaurant’s refusal to serve a driver. As if they would take their drivers to dine with them any day. As if they would be able to afford drivers in the first place. As if….the point of this post is not to rant about the contradictions of the Bengali mind. Enough has been said about it, and more will be said in coffee parlours and over hilsa fish. Let’s leave that for now.
The point that I wish to focus upon is the rationale behind the restaurant – Mocambo’s – action and what my reaction to it speaks about me. Alright, first the event. Apparently, some woman who had not spent much time in Kolkata before was here for a week, and being the quintessential elitist that such people generally are (I’m generalizing here, and happily doing so), she decided to head to Mocambo. What separated her from the rest was that somewhere inside she had a sense of guilt regarding her behaviour with her driver. To ensure that she gets her rightful place in heaven (or wherever she intends to go when she’s done with Tata Motors and this life), she decided to treat her driver to Mocambo. Said driver probably wasn’t informed beforehand, since everyone knows that going to Mocambo involves some amount of dressing up. The result was that said driver and said guilty city-hopper were politely given the boot.
But why ? According to the aggreived party, the reason was that the driver was not dressed properly and spoke in “Indian” languages. That’s apparently the reason that Mocambo gave. If indeed they said what they said, you could bet that the management and staff of the restaurant would make very very poor politicians. Not only did they say the obvious in the face of an angry patron, they phrased it in very poor language. I mean, couldn’t you just say that you have a dress code of sorts ? An informal one that the driver was not following. And couldn’t you simply omit the part about Indian langugaes ? This is the sort of stuff angry and time-wasting litigation is made of, and if the Bengalis had the guts they would already be quequeing up outside courts instead of writing sad statii and sendingg letters to the PM and who-not that will probably never be read (if you receive the same email 100,000 times, chances are your spam filter will kick in). But even then, the ratingg of Mocambo on Zomato has fallen overnight to 1 out of 5, courtesy of a lot of people who vented their anger in extremely despicable language. Indeed, if this is the language that anyone in Mocambo or any other restaurant (or dhaba, or joint, or whatever) used, I’d personally request that person to be thrown out.
But that still doesn’t tell us why Mocambo threw them out. I mean, they could simply have allowed an exception and tried to get rid of the unwelcome company as soon as possible. Perhaps the answer lies in a reply that a certain Sabina Yasmin received when messaging Mocambo. The restaurant used the term “fine dining” and argued that allowingg people of the driver’s ilk inside would ruin the experience of the other patrons. This all may seem elitist, and classist, and “racist” (really ?) but consider for a moment why people go to Mocambo. Is it for the fine food ? Some indeed do. Is it for the fact that it is located in the heart of Kolkata and is quite close to the business districts ? For that matter, Flury’s and Trinca’s and a good number of other restaurants are too. In fact, they are all crammed into one stretch of road that otherwise has nothing remarkable.
No. Most people go to Mocambo for the experience. They want to feel that they are back in the old Calcutta of the sahibs and the memsahibs. They want to feel as if they are entering a place that is reminiscent of the old Uttam Kumar flicks and stories they have read. And unwittingly, they want an experience that probably would have been denied to their forefathers. In other words, they want an experience outside their class, or, in their eyes, confirming their class when a good many other things, from having to clean their own houses to bickering with “chhoto lok” neighbours, seems to suggest a certain fall from grace. In still other words, they become classist or wish to express their classism when they go to Mocambo.
Now if this is true, why in the name of the Good Queen Victoria would the restaurant want to break away from it ? Neither the management nor the staff nor anything but the apperance of the place has continued from the days of the British. So if the restaurant was to give up its aura of elitism, what would it have left ? Why would people shell out beaucoup bucks to eat what is offered (to some extent) by a much cheaper Oly Pub ? It is this experience of dining where the whites supposedly dined, eating what they supposedly ate and feeling oneself in their supposed imagined hypothetical company, that adds a premium to the food of Mocambo. Ample proof of this is to be found when you find Bengalis (and that obnoxious category called Bongs) referring to Mocambo in particular and Park Street (where it is located) in general as representing the old Calcutta, the polar opposite of the rajbaris (palatial houses) of the zamindars. It is quintessential British Calcutta as imagined by the Bengalis, and Mocambo caters to this imagination.
Now imagine if you’d gone there to realise this imaginary world (and fill your stomach while emptying your wallet), and you found that a person in slippers and an untucked shirt was dining. No matter whose company he had. No matter what the year was, or what the Constitution said. Your experience would still be ruined. You may well feel that the dirty slippers of your humdrum existence had suddenly appeared in a fantasy world that you were living in. You may identify your own neighborhood servant, or dhobi, or someone else, in the man. The familiar would destroy the exotic, and the premium you paid for the experience would sudddenly not seem worth it.
Could Mocambo take the risk ? Probably not.
But what does this tell us about ourselves ? I will not generalize here, for I have already generalized way too much and may be accused of indulging in some weird mumbo jumbo such as “essentialism”. But I can talk about myself here. What do experiences mean to me ? Do I crave them, and what do I make of them ? What am I willing to give in order to enjoy them ?
For a very long time, yours truly was convinced that experiences were someting ethereal. What mattered was the hard stuff – how much you had, how much could what you had do, how much did what you have cost you, etc. It was all about quantity. I could revel in the fact that what my phone could do was equal to what a Samsung phone costing three times mine would. I could bask in the afterglow of having obtained free drinks or cigarettes or even money. I could dance to the tune of any company that was willing to offer free data or calling minutes. I was always ready to take the lowest possible road, and be happy that I could, at the end of the day, say that I had to give up the least to achieve what I did.
At other times, I felt I had something to prove. I could prove that I could have a Patiala peg or a flaming peg or some other monstrosity in a certain way. I could prove that I could have a certain amount of drinks or fags and still be in my senses. I could prove that I had sex at a certain age and with a certain minimum of effort. I could prove all this, and live up to peer pressure and the standards that I sometimes faced, sometimes made up. At the end of the day, I could still say that I truimphed in this test or that test of strength, or capacity or libido. And tha would add to my self-legitimacy.
But times change and so does the heart. The friends who wished to impose standards have usually drifted far, or are themselves coping with the realization that they are no longer the hip crowd of the rap videos. The standards I imagined have proved to be hollow, for once I achieved them, i neither got good memories nor anything to show for the trouble. And finally, repeated gadget failures and an endless cycle of technical problems have forced me to reevaluate the meaning of value for money.
Yet what stands above all this is the fact that I have come to value experience more than cost or anything else. Experience on my own terms and following my own capacities. Now when I drink, I drink in order to enjoy the taste and get the “feel”, not to prove how much I can drink. I shifted to postpaid two years ago, and haven’t changed my plan for a year and a half. Recently, when I bought the Macbook Air, it was partly because of the desire to experience Apple and partly because I wanted something that would be a true companion and not a cheap knockoff. In all this, I have come to value the experience gleaned.
But what does this experience mean ? At one level, this experience makes life easier and better. You find your sweet spot, your comfort zone, and you stay within it. There is no longer the need to constantly move with the crowd to the latest “in” thing. At one time I used to wonder why people still stick to old phones instead of joining the smartphone revolution. Approaching 25, I realize that many things make our life comfortable, and we no longer find any reason to move out of these comfort zones and grapple with new stuff. Perhaps we can’t, because the problems and work that life involves is steadily rising, and you want as many assured “working” things in life as possible.
At another level however, experiences imply memories. At one point in my late teens and early 20s, I used to value the peg or the plan because of the memories it could produce. Perhaps talking to my girlfriend for hours on end produced memories. Perhaps the experience of falling flat on your face (or back) after a particularly harsh shot of tequila produced memories. But they no longer do.
Rather, they no longer excite the mind as they used to. So I’ve begun to seek experiences that would make sense and give life more meaning. I’ve begun to seek experiences that are not necessarily the cheapest, the easiest or the coolest. I’ve begun to seek experiences, and value experiences, that stay in my mind as something worthwhile and something I may want to repeat. Hence, the Antiquity Blue, hence the Macbook Air, hence a good many other things. Hence the drinking with colleagues, hence the dining at good restaurants…..
Good restaurants ? Would I include Mocambo ? Probably yes, I would, even after what happened. I won’t set any standards for myself, as an English-speaking Bengali, as a middle-class Bengali, or any other form of human being. No, I would neither set any standards for myself with regard to the behaviour I would limit myself to there, for I know what is civilized and I won’t let them preach. But I would still go. I wouuld still want to know what sort of food they make, and what ambience they have, and what these would be like in the company of my family. Or friends, if I can persuade them to come along. If that made me feel a class apart from the rest of humanity, or made me want to be a White in the age of White supremacy, so be it. Why ? Because these would produce memories, and those are what I seek. And if I like what I find, I may go again, and again, till such time as I don’t seek that experience anymore.
After all, a great experience and a refreshing memory are worth more than any faux ideal, any angry hashtag or any amount of hypocritical disdain, because experiencces and memories, my friend, are what make up life.