How To Meet A Guy in 10 Ways

This city is like an old woman. She has her secrets and she has seen better days, which she will reveal to you by and by, if only you remain faithful. Like all torrid affairs, there will be times you will want out. Her moods won’t help. Snobby, giddy, activist, delirious, bureaucratic, pretentious.

Her rules are tough to negotiate with. She functions like an exclusive club. You must know people to know more people. In true Victorian manner, it is better if you are introduced around by “connected” friends. If you are fresh off the boat like I was, asking a well meaning local for pointers is recommended to avoid much chagrin.

The desi version of Café de Flore/ Les Deux Magots, 4S in Defence Colony is ideal if you’d like to chat up a starving journalist, the press-wallahs flock here. Maybe it’s a sense of history that adds to the ambience: this was a cool dive bar before dive bars were cool, or maybe patrakar salary conditions left this as the only option in south Delhi then. The tradition has continued, many a novel has been born on their grimy tables and thankfully, many abandoned in their tiny loo.

Gold digger is a gender neutral term. Or maybe you just like their suits. Or you probably ARE looking to get married. Rick’s Bar at Taj Mahal Hotel holds these Ivy League mixers where the Harvard/ Princeton/Dartmouth-types hang out. They happen on a monthly basis and no one checks on the door. The hotel also does weddings. Just saying.

The foosball table at Monkey Bar is the newest entrant on this sinister list and none too soon. No skills necessary, not only is the place casual and the cocktails fun, it’s a non-gaze zone. The meetings happen inadvertently, like spontaneous conversations. A stray HKV hipster may also walk in; generally deep V-neck tees are the identifiers.

RSVP at The Vasant Continental is the place you’ll bump into people if you’ve been game-sharing. This wisdom came via a friend who “happened to visit there but didn’t go in anywhere else. It still is on the one-off night. But you can’t be averse to Bollywood music if you want to live this down. The Twenty Four Seven convenience store nearby is where the after party is. It’s the only exception to the “Don’t pick up women in bars” rule. Technically, you are not in a bar but you’ve just left, carrying all the after-effects with you. Offer to buy her a hotdog, offer him a spliff, put your food on the hood of the parked cars and hog. She’s not coming home with you, but a quick informal survey proves no one has declined phone numbers there.

The Rick’s Bar at Taj Mahal Hotel holds these Ivy League mixers where the Harvard, Princeton, Dartmouth types hang out. They happen on a monthly basis and no one checks on the door. The hotel also does weddings. Just saying.

Sunday brunching is part of the Delhi party-circuit tradition. Saturday nights are for going out and liberal Sunday mornings for nursing the hangover with mimosas. If you want to join the mile-high club, the Grand Hyatt is where the pilot sits to dine. Having tied up with a couple of airlines, you’ll find the cabin crew lingering over brunch or lounging in the spa. Come early though, and the pool gets taken over by expat kids in their annoying years.

After you’ve spent a couple of years there, you’ll want to stop going to TC/100% Rock/ Raasta because that is where all the exes hang out. It’s as if they have a Whatsapp group and look out for each other, “Bhai, aaj teri wali aai hai”. But it’s a tradition to be generally erased. Most meetups are so drunk and so frequent that hangovers are not awkward. And it seems to have worked out for some people.

Lastly, an excursion where the cavalcade of Delhi descends upon Rajasthan — the Jaipur Literature Festival. You may find some people from 4S here, but the group rarely overlaps. It is restricted to mid-level journalists who think of it as a constructive holiday, those looking to get published, rock star authors that you may get to brush shoulders with and their hopeful groupies. While 4S will have more “hardcore” journos, the literature festival is the chaise lounge of the features writer and the lifestyle journalist — those who started out as reporters but weren’t cut out for all the standing in the sun outside sansad bhawan/ political party headquarters.

Remember the local friend whose help we enlisted in the beginning? Word of caution: Delhi tends to be incestuous. They will have an inner circle; school friends with a smattering of college people who become home base. Slowly and surely, you will learn that the relationships in it are more jangled than in a comedy of errors. Do not get too close and also hob-nob with the out-of-towner, because if Delhi is a mysterious old woman, like most of them, she has a clandestine past.