Madurai Dive Bar

The Green Spot, Madurai

Sometimes I like to play along with a hustle or scam, if the consequences are minimal and outweighed by adventure. That's what happened last night, when I went to a great little 'bar' here in the manic temple town Madurai. At first, I wasn't even going to leave my room for dinner. I'd just gotten back from a long afternoon of visiting Meenakshi Temple, not getting killed in traffic and quality-checking the coffee at three different street stalls. I wasn't that hungry, but after listening to a little ZZ Top on the balcony outside my room I felt like eating meat and drinking beer. I found a tasty chicken biryani in a frantic side street near the hotel and stopped by the 'wine shop' to grab a beer on the way home. Kingfisher, sir? While the guy grabbed a cold bottle from the cooler on the floor, I checked the stock. Five different kinds of brandy and a few cheap whiskeys. Hmm. I paid and we bobbled our heads to conclude the transaction. As so often happens in many parts of India, a smiling young guy with very wavy hair and a red bindi dot on his forehead appeared out of nowhere. Hello friend! Bar, this way! He grabbed my beer and motioned toward a narrow passageway running behind the shelves. I looked at the shopkeeper, who smiled and bobbled his head. I paused for half a second, weighing the options in that filthy, frenetic, fantastic little lane. I could assert myself, take back my beer, and return to my hotel room. Or I could follow this guy down the passage and have some sort of adventure, probably for no more than a few rupees.

I should note that for a country of one billion, there aren't many bars around. Most Muslims and Hindus don't drink, and in general it can be tough to find even a liquor store (not that I look very often.) So to find an actual, authentic little dive is an anthropological goldstrike.

Down the little hallway was a 10 X 15 foot room containing a few tables and plastic stools. The hallway continued, past another little window with more booze to another room. My friend sat me down at one of the tables and asked me what kind of snack I wanted. Aha! As I looked around I realized that this was a kind of hideout, a place where men could drink away from the street, catching a quick buzz before heading off again. Buying a snack was essentially paying a fee to sit and drink out of public view. I didn't want anything to eat, but I said Yeah, sure. Some chicken, whatever. My friend raced away and I sipped my beer, surveying the room. At some point in the distant past, a thick, glossy coat of peach paint had been applied to the concrete walls. This had faded to dirty flesh-tone, where it hadn't peeled away completely. A few flies buzzed under the fans, which weren't doing much to dissipate the heavy heat. The requisite pictures of Hindu dieties hung crookedly in one corner. I shared a head bobble with a gentleman at my table. For some reason he wasn't wearing a shirt or shoes. My smile got wider and wider and I almost started laughing out of pure enjoyment.

The system was this: buy your brandy or maybe a beer out front, come in here, order the mandatory snack, mix your liquor, pound it and scram. Almost everyone that came through had a half-pint bottle of brandy, XXX Shiva and Honiej Day being the most-favored brands. Pour half of the bottle into a plastic cup, fill the rest with water, and don't waste time. Two swallows max. This was no tasting room. You could also be a total badass like another guy at my table, who cut his brandy with beer. Most of the guys looked very unimpressed with the snack they were given, some kind of meat in a unsavory-looking brown sauce. For some reason mine was different - little crispy chunks of something with red onion and lime. It definitely wasn't chicken but I ate a few pieces anyway.

While I sat there drinking in a cloud of bidi smoke, I reminisced about other barsI'd hit on my travels. The crumbling concrete shell in Pondicherry, which looked like an old basketball court with no ceiling, or a possible venue for a steel cage match. The tiny front room in the mountains of Colombia, where I got drunk one afternoon with some local farmers, with a makeshift urinal in the corner of the room behind my chair. The Sealaska Inn, pride of Hyder on the Alaska panhandle, where you can get 'hyderized' by downing a shot of grain alcohol and stumbling around the pool table. And the room tucked away in Quetzaltenango, where upon buying some cheap local firewater, you can save a few pennies by letting the landlady pour it into a plastic bag, saving the bottle fee. Sweet, sweet memories. . .

This post could go on and on but I'll leave it there.