Saturday Night in Pune

Smoke swirled up through the lights and into the night. We were part of the crowd. Snatches of conversation wafted past. We were trying to protect ourselves from the drizzle by standing against a wall. It wasn't working. We got soaked and at some point we stopped caring, as long as our cigarettes didn't get wet, we would wait.

Many people got in ahead of us, even though we had been waiting longer. Our friends were sitting inside in the warmth, enjoying their beers. They had forgotten us. Why did they get in before us? Because they are white.

This is the first unfortunate reality: that this is a racist country. The guy at the door favours white people. Everyone favours white people. Many people might disagree, and at some level they are right to disagree: this country takes immense advantage of foreigners. Foreigners are swindled and cheated, not only by shopkeepers on the street, but also by the government, which charges 750 rupees for a foreigner to enter the Taj Mahal and only 10 rupees for an Indian. But as I saw on Saturday night and on countless other occasions, the converse is also true. Foreigners get into nightclubs and bars far more easily and cheaply than Indians.

The second unfortunate reality is that this is an incredibly nepotistic and corrupt country. Connections are everything in India. I don't know how things work elsewhere, but in India if you know the right people, you can get anywhere you want and do anything you want. And knowing the right people is almost always a measure of how much money you have, your class-background, or, if you are a girl, your physical appearance.

The question of physical appearance also creeps into the issue of why the white people got into the bar first. Indian men are depraved. They think white women are better looking than Indian women, and they think they are easy sex. This is not a problem with Indian women. This is a problem with Indian society and education. India is very conservative. Sex is taboo and therefore sex is in short supply. Because of this, women are objectified. This is why an Indian man gets kicks out of going to the beach in Goa and ogling at bikini-clad foreign women. And I am not speaking of rural India here, but of the middle-class, educated, urban India that I know very well.

I have made a number of generalisations, but I believe they hold true for a large cross-section of this country's middle class and I think this is a pity and that it must change if we are to have any semblance of equality.

We did finally get into the bar, but only because I behaved like the kind of spoilt connection-wielding Indian boy that I hate. I spoke into the ear of the guy at the door and asked him if we could go in nicely albeit firmly, in the tone of someone who is used to getting what he wants by hook or crook. That's all it takes: the image of power, or, if I was a girl, sexuality.