A Night at Spook Central

Halloween. The night of the free witches and the free cocktails. It is a free world, mostly, after all. You can dress up just as you like, whether as a witch or a banshee, or to relegate suspicious-looking gender stereotypes, ghouls and Draculas too. This you may do on Halloween, the 31^st of October—or any other day of the year for that matter. The world of free spookies and free cocktails are yours for the taking after all. You must be wondering why I harp on ‘free cocktails’ (and here I said it a third unabashed time) when clearly the theme is Halloween. The deal is, I didn’t get any. Sigh, here is how I almost did.

So Kartikeya and I (ever partners-in-weirdsville!) set off to Hauz Khas village to explore what it was this place had to offer on the occasion of Halloween. HKV has ALWAYS, read ALWAYS been a general blingo-holic, binge-oholic Delhiite’s delight and it has never miserably disappointed. Armed with such self-assuredness built over years of Delhi navigation (and haven’t we all!), we landed up at HKV totally expecting to be bowled over. And bowled over we were! From where the Village begins, from the undulating crescendo that is the front of the wooden restaurant Imperfecto, all the way down to the famous lake, the zone was suddenly Spook Central for the night. HKV’s glitz and glamour of riot and colour had metamorphosed into black and gore, noir and panache. Banners and streamers of black flapped against restaurant walls, skull-and-crossbones motifs splashed across them. Skeletons and their kith and kin leaned casually against doorways inviting you in, mouths wide open. It was eerie, it was delicious, it was just what I expected!

Having just walked in, a guy took extra care to walk up to me and hand me a coupon, completely ignoring Kartikeya. I soon found out why; it was a complimentary cocktail coupon for the ladies: one of those freebies life hands to you that, for that one joyous infinitesimal moment of raising your glass—to that  last free gulp, entirely silences the raging feminist in you that would otherwise have protested against freebies :D. So of course I was propelled to follow my feet, and my feet in turn my throat, which would have me walk towards the place that served up these magical free cocktails: Themis. Themis is located at the top of a little staircase, that you come to after having walked through the most unassuming of gullies. ‘Nuff said, it isn’t hard to find and we were there. At the gate, we were both offered Halloween masks which I accepted with a whoop of delight. Unashamed photographic evidence follows ( :D !)

I posed with skeletons and men in horns and capes and took our table. As it was our first time in, we were both still drinking the place in till I remembered the actual drink I had come for. Happily I made my way to the bar, only to have my hopes dashed to the ground when it was announced to me that I must pay 500 rupees for my desired cocktail as ‘free time’ would begin only after 9.30! I was disappointed for the coupon had mentioned nothing. I resigned myself to waiting a half hour, and with Kartikeya, proceeded to order a pizza while we waited. The waiter then informed us it would only be available if we paid for it first. I am not quite sure if such was the policy of the night, or the running Halloween theme, but needless to say, it put us off almost instantly and we left, wanting to sample nothing!

After this of course, our path was clear. The answer had stared us in the face right from the beginning, we had just chosen to walk by it, for it was the obvious, the easy give-away. So we went to Imperfecto. Yes it has never disappointed and it did not this night of Halloween either. Sporting perhaps the biggest Halloween banner in HKV from the roof to the bottom of its building, Imperfecto filled our halloween-hungry hearts with gladness. On the staircase up to the roof (if you have been, you know there is hardly a better seat), I bumped into a hanging skeleton and got the fright of my life when it shrieked back in indignation at me! Ah for the first Halloween fright for the night! Ek to banta tha :D. Kartikeya and I got excellent seats. They were right at the edge of the little winding stream of water they have running through a divide in the floor, ripples of water rushing over clear cobbled stones, while we watched, in chairs right next to it, catching the many, many lights that had decorated the place ever-so-beautifully. The night was made excellent also by the satisfaction of having been served by men in red-tinged Mummy bandages and black costumes, who gallivanted here and there! We hadn’t really come to eat, to be honest. I’d had a massive diwali feast-and-function at office that day and Kartikeya was full, and truth be told, we’d merely meant to “check out” a Halloween-ish ambience. To revel fully in the black, black glory that pervades you only for a night.

Yet not eating at Imperfecto is a sin, and hence we ordered their Grilled Tenderloin: a tried and tested favourite. The meal was finished in five minutes flat! It had been romantic for it had just been the two of us, it had been sheltered even in the midst of fake cobwebs ambitiously climbing down to your hair, and skeletons all around you, for even in the midst of all that spookiness, we felt protected by the singular peculiarity of the night. For such is that night, Halloween. It is of a queerness that abounds not just in costumes and face masks; or in blood pellets and audio recording devices of banshee cries; it is a queerness that protects and at the same time, encourages your inner singularity to unleash itself, be it as a ghoul for the night, or the Heath Ledger-made-legendary Joker you always wanted to be. Or, as in my case, simply yourself, with your inner whacked out psycho worn proudly on your sleeve J How you wished you could be it every night!

---Urmi