Letter from India: it's no easy matter being a woman looking for a decent drink in Delhi

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/22/letter-from-india-women-drink

Version 0 of 1.

My introduction to Indian boozing came on the flight over from Heathrow in June. Having just read the cautionary chapter on women and drinking in my guide book, I was a little surprised when the two 23-year-olds in the neighbouring seats enthusiastically accepted the offer of wine from the flight attendant.

Giddy daddy's girls from posh South Delhi, they were on their way home after a year studying for MBAs at a London university. Between gulps from their warm miniatures, they offered increasingly slurred advice on surviving Delhi. Never take public transport and only shop in the air-conditioned malls, said the girl in the window seat. "You won't know you're not in Bluewater," added the other.

I fell asleep, only to wake to the sound of retching. Window girl was rubbing her friend's back with one hand and holding back her hair with the other, as the girl in the middle puked noisily into an Air India sickbag.

I didn't need to make a mental note not to follow their advice: like every other pretentious foreigner from the gap year rahs to the retired yoga addicts, I had no intention of stepping into a shopping centre. I was going to discover the real India.

Within a month, I was lost in an auto rickshaw trying to find Select Citywalk mall in the south Delhi suburb of Saket. After four weeks of 43C heat and 80% humidity, I'd like to pretend I was craving the air con. But that would be a lie. There were cooling units in all but one room of my house. Really, I was on a booze hunt.

Drinking alcohol is perfectly legal in the Indian capital, as it is in most states in the sub-continent. You have to be 25 to drink in Delhi despite talk of lowering the age to 21. It's easy to spot the off-licences, which usually operate as English Wine Shops. "You guys drink English wine?" I said to my friend Manvendra when we stopped off en route to a house party during my second weekend in town. "No one in England even drinks English wine." He laughed. "When we say wine, we generally mean whisky." And it's not English – or indeed Scottish – but domestically produced hard liquor, generally distilled from molasses rather than fermented grain.

The Wine Shops do tend to sell a few bottles of plonk, made in India and generally covered in dust, warmed to Glühwein temperature after festering in the heat. People keep telling me Indian wine is getting better, to which I can only say: what did it used to taste like?

So when I invited new friends around to sample a British roast dinner, I decided I was going to serve foreign wine – not English, but French or Italian; Australian if necessary. But how? The bootlegger all the other correspondents used wasn't answering her phone and my contact at the British High Commission couldn't find what I wanted in the diplomatic enclave's special shop. That's how I found myself in House of Spirits, the upmarket offie at Select Citywalk mall, paying £15 for a bottle of Jacob's Creek.

I had already scandalised a local friend by buying the beer. Anita and I were in the back of a taxi when I asked her to tell the driver, in Hindi, to take us to a Wine Shop. She was aghast. "I just can't," she said. "You'll have to do it in English." She refused to come into the shop with me and looked on in horror as I staggered back to the car with a crate of Kingfisher. Indian girls might drink alcohol, but they cannot be seen in public buying it. Same with many Muslims. I had a tour of Old Delhi from a thirtysomething who lamented that he would have been a sommelier had he been born into another religion in another life.

So much Indian drinking is done on the sly and off the books. At unlicensed restaurants, beer comes in a teapot or clay beakers, served as "special tea". In villages, men get loaded on home-brewed hooch. Officially, just 35% of adult men and 5% of women consume alcohol in India. But it's impossible to assess how many people are really getting drunk. According to research from the Indian Alcohol Policy Alliance, "undocumented consumption" accounts for almost 50% of the total.

On my way back from the mall, bottles clanking conspicuously, I got out of the first taxi when I realised that the cab smelled of booze not coming from my shopping bags. Despite various government campaigns, drink-driving does not yet carry much stigma here. It's partly to do with the shortcomings of public transport – the new Delhi metro is great, but the stops are too far apart and all the trains are in the sidings by midnight. Plus, Indians love their cars. They steam into carparks with a glass of whisky on their dashboard, chuck a valet their keys, spend a few hours throwing more booze down their necks and then hop in their jeeps to go home.

At first, when offered a lift, I refused to get in. Once or twice I persuaded my friends to get a taxi instead. I'm not proud to say I now accept the ride, telling myself the alternative could be an ill-intentioned tuk-tuk driver who has been glugging moonshine round the corner all night. My shoulders are up to my ears and I hold on to the door handle the whole way home. But I still take the lift.