Riday Thakur runs a beer and hard liquor distribution business from a warehouse based in a South Mumbai locality. It's a traditional two-storey structure that's emblematic of the industrial neighbourhood, with different stocks segregated in mountainous piles and an office area where employees carry out business operations. Usually, the place is buzzing with activity, with workers loading and unloading cases daily to distribute beer to outlets across a thirsty city. But right now, the building is under lock and key. The piles are gathering dust. Thakur can't even open its shutters to examine the desolate interiors because we are in a dry state at present and thus the law has tied his hands. Even the loaded vehicles outside the warehouse are parked as they were in mid-March, and Thakur is concerned about an increasing spate of robberies that have taken place, with desperate addicts and potential bootleggers breaking into the tempos for an illicit supply of liquor. That's why he requests us not to name the company he owns, or even the location of his warehouse. It's a cause for real concern if the information gets leaked, he tells us.

Pouring misery

The entire situation reflects the hapless state that the beer industry finds itself in at a time when it was meant to be thriving, what with peak summer upon us. This is the season when tipplers take to the brew like ducks to water given the hot weather. "Around 50 per cent of our annual sales take place between March and June," says Vipul Hirani, co-founder of Crafters Taphouse, a beer bar in Powai. But he adds that the alarm bells started really ringing loud in 2020, in early last month. "That's when things started slowing down. We weren't getting the crowds that we used to because people were worried about the stories coming out of China. They were scared because the virus is an unknown entity. And then the Maharashtra government ordered that malls must be shut down on March 14 meaning we, too, had to close operations the next day because we are located in one," Hirani tells us.