JIMMYING OPEN GYMKHANA DOORS

THE bubble has burst and nothing will quite set Humpty right again.

- DILIP CHERIAN

No committee, court order, heritage note or emotional WhatsApp forward by a wailing cop can quite put it back together. A full-scale attack on clubs is now underway, leaving everyone perplexed about the intent. The touch-me-not charm that clubbers inhabiting these manicured islands of privilege had, is destroyed in a way that can’t quite be described by those who haven’t felt their bliss.

The roughshod entry of regulatory rulers into these hallowed portals has once again raised the question of what this brouhaha means. And club members will forever feel that horror every time they hear the bells toll.

Let’s draw out the three blimps that float around in this debate. First, there are the trustees, committee members, members and their dependents, and those close to the finish line on that forever-waiting list. Then there are the outstation users and frequent guests. Employees, somehow a special worker-class (often hereditary), fall into this second category. In the third circle of the Venn diagram is the larger mass of city dwellers whose aspiration is just to be a powerful auntie in one’s resident welfare association, or be part of a colonial club that doesn’t entitle one to any fields of fancy, bars of belonging, or floridity of ritual beyond paying the measly dues.