Is Madras Club the best club in the nation? Author Prajwal Parajuly thinks so

Illustration
| Photo Credit: Saai

Calcuttans of a sure classic suppose the Tollygunge Club is the Taj Mahal and a membership there the pinnacle of aspiration. But they’re cackled at by members of the Calcutta Club, who, in flip, are put in their locations by the Bengal Club mafia. This hierarchy of golf equipment is a riotous, ridiculous notion for somebody who grew up in Gangtok, a city with no golf equipment. I haven’t fairly been capable of perceive the funding individuals put into being related to Raj-era nostalgia, extra pronounced in Calcutta than in every other Indian metropolis. 

First, there’s one thing flagrantly racist about many golf equipment rolling out their frayed crimson carpet for foreign-passport holders, who are sometimes exempt from leaping the similar hoops as Indians to achieve membership. But level this out, and a wildly gesticulating clubbie will checklist the virtues of their non-racist club: subsidised alcohol, central location, like-minded individuals, sporting services, 177-year historical past, city oasis. For all this, a club membership is value the sometimes-decades-long waitlist, they are saying. 

I’m a self-anointed skilled on the Indian club as a result of I can provide an outsider’s perspective, untainted by reminiscences of horse-riding and swimming classes and Christmas roasts. My verdict is that the best club in India isn’t Delhi’s Gymkhana Club or Hyderabad’s Secunderabad Club. It positively isn’t any of the unexceptional golf equipment of Calcutta. The Madras Club, Chennai’s little snobdom, is with out query the Number One club in the nation. 

I see a Delhi Gymkhana member elevate her just-threaded eyebrow and string a sentence with some permutation of “But in terms of exclusivity ….”  The Tolly Club veteran will provide an opinion about its latest refurbishments. “And the Yacht Club?” a Mumbai native will say. “The views are swoon-worthy.”  Someone or the different will label my jaundiced tackle golf equipment as being new cash. It nonetheless doesn’t imply I’ll rank your club larger than the Madras Club. 

When Vidya Singh, a good friend of a good friend, prompt we convene at the Madras Club for our first assembly, I hesitated. I had been scarred by the golf equipment of Calcutta — the insipid meals, the laissez-faire service, and the theatrics of tipping waiters on the sly — and didn’t need my social life in Chennai to copy that. I’d even have to stick to a ridiculous costume code when shorts and flip-flops have been my uniform in Sri City.  Jerry, the Madras Club martinet, really eyed my loafers a number of instances as I climbed as much as the club’s lobby.  Luckily Vidya had warned me: a collared shirt, sneakers, and socks. Over dinner of hen roast and mashed potatoes, I let it slip that I had been staying in motels on my Chennai visits.  “Hotels?” Vidya mentioned with disdain. I’d keep at the Madras Club as an alternative, she determined.

See, the good motels in Chennai have each amenity however grounds on which to stroll. And when this Himalayan goat doesn’t get his steps in, he morphs right into a grump. In this eminently pedestrian-unfriendly metropolis, footpaths aren’t precisely footpaths. Parks are onerous to return by. Finding a spot for a stroll that’s not a seaside is hard. That is why the Madras Club grounds are such a privilege. The strolling observe right here is pleasure in sand and clay. 

I like that the club’s happy-making mild yellow Palladian constructing isn’t the deep yellow of the buildings of the Mediterranean. The cupola is good-looking, the pool colossal. Staying in the rooms — so large that you can really soar rope in them with out inflicting misery to any of the colonial furnishings or the sepia photos on the partitions — is like spending an evening in a good friend’s well-appointed guestroom. This, I perceive, is what many golf equipment aspire to. It’s simply that the Tollygunge Club quarters have all the character of a PWD guesthouse with miniature pink soaps. 

When I keep at the club, I rise at the morning time, go for a leisurely stroll and eat idli, serenaded by birdsong, on the club verandah. I learn extra right here than I do wherever else. The club ambiance, after all, lends itself to revisiting the classics. Evenings are for Mulligatawny soup, supposedly invented right here, and sneakers (and socks) and collared shirts in the formal eating room. 

My checkouts are a little bit of a spectacle. The receptionist asks if he ought to name for a cab. I smile. I stroll — sure, gasp, stroll — out of the club, my suitcase rattling behind me. I depart the confines of the Boat Club Road, one among the few semi-walkable neighbourhoods in Chennai, and, politely saying no to autos, head to the Nandanam Metro Station. I practically get run over by a rushing bike. A fast metro trip delivers me to Chennai Central. There, I take a non-air-conditioned practice to Sri City, a two-hour journey as egalitarian as the Madras Club just isn’t. 

Prajwal Parajuly is the writer of The Gurkha’s Daughter and Land Where I Flee. He loves idli, loathes naan, and is detached to espresso. He teaches Creative Writing at Krea University and oscillates between New York City and Sri City.