H2O - The Liquid Lounge

The TimeOut mint planner

One of Kolkata’s, and India’s, best-known DJs, Sanjay Dutta, who has been performing since 1990, has spent a year and a half in Mumbai. In that time, he promoted electronic dance music, performed at Submerge (at the Electronic Dance Music nights run since 2003 by Nikhil Chinappa, DJ Pearl and Hermit Sethi), did one-off gigs at various Mumbai clubs, and even started his own club night, Evolve, at the Khar club H2O. But as the months went by, Dutta realized that the amount of money he was making from Evolve night could barely cover the cost of sending out SMSes informing people about the event. Evolve shut down when Sanjay Dutta moved back to Kolkata early last year, to spend more time with his family.

A quiet Friday night in Bandra

FRIDAY nights in Bandra are a party animal’s dream-come-true. Bars and pubs, choc-a-block with youngsters, throb with music. Streets are abuzz till the wee hours of the morning.

But this Friday night—nine days after the police crackdown on restobars allegedly operating without all the necessary licences—Bandra was eerily silent.

No tunes booming out of DJ consoles. Barstools and corner tables were unoccupied and soft music wafted across rockers’ dens. Those who stepped into some of these bars returned disappointed.

A pub trail of nine of the 23 nightspots on the police list revealed more than the disappointment and anger of party animals.

H2O The Liquid Lounge, 10.55 pm: This place was the least affected of all the clubs we visited, mainly because of the owner, who’s also the president of the Association of Hotel and Restaurant Owners. The music was low, and most of the tables were occupied by middle-aged businessmen enjoying a drink and meal.