The Bar Is Open For Lectures Now

From sessions on oriental carpets to the lives of bats, pubs are hosting lecture series

- Shweta Sharan

It's a Sunday night in Bengaluru and conservationist Rohit Chakravarty is talking to a crowded room about bats. He's not at a university or in a lecture hall but at a bar, with the room looking like a college classroom disguised as a cocktail party, or maybe the other way around.

Pint of View is a new event series in Bengaluru where university professors and experts give lectures in bars. It is inspired by the Lectures on Tap series in the US, which is so popular in New York, Boston and Chicago that it sells out weeks in advance.

You get to listen to an expert speak about quantum gravity or the search for alien megastructures, but instead of a classroom atmosphere, you find yourself in a bar. No one will ask you to lower your voice, and you can laugh, ask unusual questions, slip sideways into metaphor, with a drink in your hand.