My friend H came to Bombay after a long time and off we went to our old haunt—Jaypee in Goregaon East, the kind of place where you order rum by the quarter (hence quarter bar) and surmai by the fat tawa fried slice for an ordinary amount of cash while Sharara Sharara plays on the never-too-loud speakers.

For a woman in India it’s hard to go drinking in a no-fuss way (namechecking Bangalore). In smaller towns, we have been denied after-work drinks because “ladies ke liye no entry”. Rejected in Ratnagiri, Teetotalled in Thrissur, we were once Assiduous in Allahabad. With some difficulty my two colleagues and I found a place with beer, ghazal singers and entry for women. Absorbed in conversation, we suddenly realised that a group of men were parked on the table beside ours, though the restaurant was empty, gazing at us, silent and unblinking. I wrote about it on my blog, and for years people would land there via the search “group sex in Allahabad”—no idea what’s going on there and I don’t mind it staying that way.