The joyless club

Salman Rushdie spoke the truth about Mumbai sideways, with his Iranian restaurant called the Sorryno: so called because of the huge blackboard at the entrance reading, 8220;Sorry, No Liquor, No Answer Given Regarding Addresses in Locality, No Combing of Hair, No Beef8230; No Speaking of Horses, No Sigret, No Taking of Long Time on Premises, No Raising of Voice, No Change, and a crucial last pair, No Turning Down of Volume 8212; It Is How We Like, and No Musical Request 8212; All Melodies Selected Are to Taste of Prop.8221; And Mumbai8217;s dour caretakers are looking increasingly ridiculous with their bans and ordinances against any banal, ordinary thing that carries the faintest whiff of fun. After shuttering dance bars a couple of years back to the recent refusal to introduce sex education in schools for fear of being taken over by 8220;love gurus and sex gurus8221;, IPL cheerleaders are the latest subject that sends a delicious frisson of moral indignation across Maharashtra8217;s political class.

At a time when the state is confronted with pressing issues of growth and infrastructure, the BJP, Congress and NCP are all united in their opposition to the shiny happy girls who inject a bit of pep into the IPL spectacular. Minister of State for Home Siddharam Mhetre claimed that these 8220;simply vulgar8221; sights could traumatise the mothers and daughters who watch the matches. Such solicitude for delicate Indian femininity might ring less hollow if this was not the same city where police inaction in the face of public molestation of women shocked the nation a few months back. A state that cannot ensure a woman8217;s bodily integrity has no business claiming this inflated sense of propriety.

These instances of Maharashtra8217;s conservative crackdown might be laughable if they were not so tragic. Cheerless politicians have blighted the idea of Bombay, provincialising a hybrid, streetwise metropolis and practising a narrow resentful politics that takes its own measure by how much it hates and casts out. Until they stop dictating terms, the city that was once the heart of Indian8217;s modernity and its unique vernacular cosmopolitanism will remain a frumpy, cowed-down shadow of its former self. We fear for what other harmless pleasure they will turn their glowering attention to 8212; dancing at weddings, perhaps? Or maybe Bollywood, the delightfully lowbrow and life-affirming thing that defines Bombay for all outsiders. Maybe we should hope none of it offends the tender sensibilities of Mr Mhetre8217;s family.