Before Insta, there was Page 3!

I guess it helps to have someone take you under their wings if the career yoursquore opting for has no particular roadmap One such lsquoman about townrsquo Ramesh Sattawala known in social circles as lsquoHappy Birthdayrsquo because thatrsquos how he greeted everyone took a shine on young Marcellus Baptista in the late 1980sHappy Birthday used to be a PR manager with Air India and all the fivestar bar tenders in the vicinity of his office building Oberoi Ambassador etc would fish out free drinks as soon as they saw Happy Birthday enter every night That was his aura In turn Marcellus shortened Marcy tagging along became those barmanagersrsquo buddy Marcy switched from beer to the cheap and delicious Old Monk that no friendly bartender would mind offering a small complimentary peg or two ofmdashif they felt you were a special guest Itrsquos not like journalists then or now can afford fivestar hotel bars all nights of the week anyway Marcy was in his early 20s What career did he embark onFrom a certain angle surely even then Marcy looks like Uddhav Thackeray who as we speak is still the boss of Shiv Sena Only the word lsquopartyrsquo means different things to both Marcy has been partying for a living for about three and half decades With COVID19 having screwed with his brains in the interim because he had nowhere to go he lost weight looks like hersquos recovering nowWhat does a professional party animal do Well for that you have to first define what a party is And that naturally changes given your stage in life Starting with hectic nightclubbing over loud music downing shots after shots which is impossible to physically sustain and therefore most stop by their 30s What takes over if yoursquore still socially inclined without too many familial responsibilities are regular nights at bars or homes with a steady stream of alcohol and often random or mostly comfortable company depending on your persuasionMarcy 63 lifetime single lives alonemdashhis mother died at 103 in 2019 so hersquos clearly blessed with good genesmdashattends multiple private partiesevents organised by brandsvenuesassorted hosts over a single night to write a thing or two about them but not muchBecause the picture of people having a good time for the vicarious pleasure of gazersviewers is the point This phenomenon called the lsquoPage 3rsquo peaked in metropolitan India between the mid rsquo90s and mid noughtiesmdashmainly to fill up coloured newsprint that could attract expensive advertising of international lifestyle products that were new to a postliberalised marketWho do you put on those pages everyday though The actual lsquoaspirationalrsquo richfamous have more to do than go out each night or be clicked at all What emerged was an unusual class of celebritiesmdashmodels starlets restaurant owners etcmdashand people didnrsquot know what they did for a living anyway But since they regularly appeared in print even nightly lifestyle TV shows one assumed they must be celebrities by virtue of being celebritiesA gregarious oldish man Kishin Mulchandani I remember used to be the patron saint of Page 3 appearing in different clothes from the same night that hersquod change into in his car going from one lsquopartyrsquo to anotherWhatever happened to them ldquoI donrsquot know manrdquo says Marcy a man of such few words that he could even come across as a boremdashitrsquos the reverse I donrsquot think he ever gets bored Hersquos just a smiling quiet man in an existentialist sort of way who can confidently show up solo afterhours in his Hawaiian shirt at bars after barsAnd he knows how to just be rubbing no one the wrong way equally getting close to no one enough that he has to make exclusive plans Hersquos got other places to go Excessive booze shouldnrsquot be an issue because he nurses a glass of whisky for as long as it takes me to polish off a sixpack of beerLike his other mentor the great Bombay chronicler Behram lsquoBusybeersquo Contractor despite nightly decadences hersquos up early Most places you go to people say hi to Marcy Back in the day he could mention names of those who said hi to him in his popular nightlife columnsIn time those Page 3 print spaces became advertorialsmdashyou gotta pay to be famous for being famous Likewise if you get on social media yoursquoll realise Instagram is the new Page 3 full of lsquoinfluencersrsquo selling you dreams like Dan Bilzerian or Sahil KhanWhere does that leave Marcy I ask him at Soul Fry a 27yearold Bandra institution thatrsquos been hosting fullypacked Monday karaoke nights for 24 years and where hersquos a regular Marcy and I turn into music critics trashingpraising singersldquoI donrsquot know manrdquo he says for hersquos any way always had a 9to5 jobmdashonly itrsquos 9 pm to 5 am Just that Mumbai itself is hardly that lsquo9 pm to 5 amrsquo city no Sexagenarian Marcy of course doesnrsquot care for fivestar places much Hersquos more the local bar guy Next he plans to show me around Shree Lakshmi a humble quarterdive bar on the dank Bazaar Road off Chapel Road Bandra ldquoLetrsquos gordquo Mumbai like Marcy mustnrsquot stop partying for a living stillmdashitrsquos all wersquove gotMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper