T Surendar & Hemali Chhapia
16 Nov, 2006 2354hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK

MUMBAI: On weekends, the Hawaiian Shack, a pub in Mumbai's tony Bandra suburb, is packed to the brim. The place is smoky, loud and dimly-lit — waiters can't even find room to slip through and deliver drinks. Nothing's changed even though the Shack, within just three years of opening, added an extra floor and a second outlet in Colaba.

Young revellers, call-centre employees and highly paid media executives splurge four-figure sums on weekends, making running pubs a very profitable business. More places like the Shack are mushrooming all over the city. Blame it on diposable income, peer pressure or the lack of alternate entertainment, but pubbing is in — in a big way. With 80% of pub bills made for alcohol, getting high is plainly in fashion.

Students start young, families drink together, women flaunt cocktail glasses even as the young executive has developed a penchant for foreign labels. Said an advertising executive who designs promotional campaigns for alcohol brands, "The DNA of Indian drinking is changing rapidly. From a social taboo, it is now becoming a way of life in cities across the country."

Manju Nichani, principal of K C College of Commerce and Economics, spoke of how drinking has crept into homes: "Today, many fathers boast of having drinks with their sons. They call it a kind of openness in the relationship." The trend of growing alcohol consumption is validated by hard statistics. India's leading spirit and beer companies, like United Spirits and United Breweries, reported exponential increases in sales in the recent past. United Spirits'sales grew from Rs 790 crore to Rs 1,656 crore in the past four years. Beer sales of United Breweries doubled in the last three. A host of expensive whisky and wine brands have quietly debuted in the country in the past two years.

Vivek Nihalani, business development manager, Someplace Else, an Andheri pub, said: "Young couples in their early 20s spend a third of their dinner money on wines." This nine-month-old pub too has seen good business; a new outlet is coming up in Colaba. Now, Someplace Else has started offering wine-and-cocktail tasting sessions for select clients. At the other end of the spectrum, call-centre employees in Malad routinely drink early in the morning after their regular shift ends.

A United Breweries executive defended the spurt in liquor sales: "The consumption of alcohol in India was at very low levels because of non-availability, social reasons and unaffordability. Since most of these issues have been sorted out, consumption appears to have shot up suddenly. But it is still low compared to many other developed, health-conscious countries." High alcohol consumption is not restricted to urbanites. Members of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), a non-government group that conducts de-addiction drives for chronic alcoholics, are being invited by rural-area colleges to deliver lectures to youth there.

"About 40 years ago, pamphlets warning teenagers about excessive drinking were only used by our foreign chapters. Of late, we have felt the need to reach out to teenagers in India," said an AA member. Chairman of the federation of hotel owners'association Jaganath K Shetty said opening a permit room is good business sense right now in the state.

While neighbouring states, like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, have laws that control mushrooming of bars, "umpteen permit rooms have opened up here in the last few years".