A rash of new watering holes in the city is taking over from the traditional ones with style and panache.
Labonita Ghosh
ISSUE DATE: Oct 29, 2001 | UPDATED: Oct 1, 2012 18:13 IST
LIVING IT UP: The pool-side bar
Archana Agarwal's children work as hard as her. Since the HR manager at Tata Tea in Kolkata keeps busy, she has enrolled her children in a school-cum-creche. Guilty, Agarwal decided to join a club, hoping her children could catch up on some outdoor activities.
She tried three of the city's best places, but didn't make it. While two clubs told her they were too full, the third informed that her membership might take a decade. "I can't wait that long," she says. "My children will grow up by then."
Entrepreneur Ravi Arora had a different experience though he is in the same boat. When he wanted to join one of the better known clubs in Kolkata, a member of its managing committee promised to push his application for a generous fee.
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"I was asked for Rs 1 lakh even though the membership fee is a little over Rs 50,000," says a disgusted Arora. Like Agarwal and Arora, there are at least 10,000 people who have been waiting long to get into one or the other of Kolkata's 10 best clubs, a recent IMRB study reveals. Some of them have been on the list for over a decade.
The good news is that a rash of new clubs are cashing in on this lopsided demand-and-supply situation and are fast weaning away the wannabes. While Agarwal is now a member of Ibiza, a new country club 25 km from the city, Arora is part of The Circle, which opened in 1999.
A month into operations, Ibiza has notched up 300 takers, each paying Rs 60,000. The Space Circle, which has not even opened yet and has a steeper membership fee of Rs 1.1 lakh, already has four times that number on its rolls.
There's also the highway-skirting Lake land Country Club, besides some others in the pipeline: Princeton, another venture by the group which owns Ibiza, and Country Roads, a farmhouse complex with a club, which will be operational by the year 2003.
The billiards room at Ibiza
The well-heeled Kolkatan, for whom clubbing is a colonial hangover, couldn't have asked for more. With fewer watering holes than other metros, the club is an essential hangout in Kolkata for taking the family out for a Sunday lunch, entertaining prospective clients or getting sporty on the weekend. "Wherever the British set foot, the first thing they did was to set up a club," writes novelist Budhadev Guha.
The penchant for clubbing is so strong that membership of one or more of the city's prestigious clubs has come to dictate one's social standing. Most of Kolkata's turn-of-the-century clubs had been the preserve of the Brown Sahib till the 1960s.
Now everyone wants to be a part of that charmed circle, forcing the clubs to tighten membership norms. While Bengal Club targets only the top company executives, Calcutta Club bars women and under-30s as members.
The Calcutta Cricket and Football Club, the Royal Calcutta Golf Club and South Club prefer entrants with a sports background. Others cite legal reasons. According to air commodore (retd) K.B. Menon, managing member of the Tollygunge Club, the club's charter forbids more than 1,500 permanent members. "And rightly so," he adds. "A club is an extension of my home. I would like only the people I could bring home to be around me at the club."
That leaves a huge chunk of young people - teens, yuppies, middle-level executives - with virtually nowhere to go. "The new clubs recognise this and are cashing in on it," says A.K. Dutt, former president of several of the city's traditional clubs.
The facilities they offer reflect this. Space Circle is investing big money in a 7,000-sq ft indoor cricket ground, rollerblading and ice- skating rinks and a two-storey practice rock for mountaineering buffs. The Circle already has never-before perks like an art gallery and a huge children's room equipped with nannies.
Glossing over Tradition
The Calcutta Club
Advantages: A home away from home, the colonial clubs have an old-world charm about them.
Drawbacks: Hemmed in by financial and space constraints, they offer few facilities and fewer memberships.
New Entrants
Drawbacks: Located in the suburbs, they rank low as status symbols.
At Ibiza, members get to try their hand at sports like angling, boating and pool. They could use a kilometre-long, specially designed jogging track that has a cushion of sand and hollow bricks, or a mini driving and putting range.
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While traditional clubs would balk at the idea of a full-time disco on their premises (most are content with a special "nite" or two), the new clubs can't imagine life without a dancing floor. Some of this is admittedly gimmicky - like the submerged pool-side bar and open-air jacuzzi at Ibiza - but members are lapping it up.
While a ceiling on members seems fair, change makers feel the traditional clubs need to do some soul searching."If the older clubs don't move with the times, they will lose out to the new ones," says Dutt. The picture already looks grim.
Many of the better-known clubs are hamstrung by shortage of space and finances. Most of these clubs are housed in heritage buildings in the city and cannot expand or change at will.
Nor do they have the funds to do so, even though members pay a monthly subscription ranging between Rs 300 and Rs 450. The Saturday Club, for instance, has an annual turnover of Rs 3.5 crore. But till April, it was spending Rs 1.75 crore on staff salaries every year.
When officials suggested a cutback, a violent union forced the club to shut down for three months. Similarly, the Calcutta Club, which gets about Rs 1.5 crore from its 4,000 members every year, has to spend almost Rs 2 crore on staff salaries annually.
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Recently, when some members proposed a three-tier underground parking system to generate money, the idea was shot down: it would be against the philosophy of the club to go "commercial.
Children's Hall at The Circle
The new clubs have no such qualms. "Money's not the important thing," says Sushil Mohta of Ibiza. "I offer my members a club and four-star hotel rolled into one." In other words, he runs it like a business.
But does it matter? Deb Kumar Bose, who recently signed up at a new country club, believes the "old-world charm of the traditional clubs" doesn't sell anymore. "I don't care for it," he says.
"My children will care even less." That's a warning call to some of the older clubs, says a committee member of Tollygunge Club. "They have to shape up if they have to fend off competition," he says. "If a club is a home away from home, no one wants an outmoded dwelling."
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Least of all the wait listed.
Published By:
AtMigration
Published On:
Oct 29, 2001
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