Wine-y

I have a bunch of friends coming over for dinner tomorrow evening and I am out buying the groceries that will transform into what I hope will be a sumptuous meal. I live in one of Bangalore's largest residential areas and the stores have no parking available whatsoever. So I nip into a Food World that has a large no parking sign outside it (in front of which, of course, I have irresponsibly left my car - this is Bangalore, after all). This 'burb' being a notoriously vegetarian cuisine oriented one, I am apprehensive about finding some curry-cut chicken that I absolutely must have (I only make the best chicken curry I have ever tasted). To my delight they have some. So I quickly cruise the aisles, pick up the rest of my listed must-haves and empty my basket's contents onto the cashier's counter. Suddenly I realise that I have no wine. And I love wine. And no dinner party is complete without a Sula or a Grover red gracing it.

Without hesitation I ask the slightly-balding, middle-aged man at the till, "Do you have wine?"

He smiles to himself (why I do not know) and says almost sheepishly, "No, madam."

I sigh. Where am I going to get some in this neighbourhood? "Where can I buy wine?"

He is engrossed in counting out my change. "Er... you go towards the signal, madam, and take the first right."

I have been that way many times but do not recall a store selling wine. "Are you sure?"

He nods his head ambiguously, "Yes, yes."

So groceries in my safely untowed car, I swing around and head into the lane he had directed me to. I drive very slowly. This is a one-way so there's no turning back. I'm squinting at the several little shops that crowd the sides of the road in the already fading light. What rot, there isn't a wine store here, silly fool.... Oh wait! And then I see it.

It's one of those things that makes you go "Ishouldaknown!" in a long tired sigh.

WHEN will it be respectable for a woman to go into one of those stores? Anyone who has grown up in Bangalore, before the wine cellars and supermarkets that store alcohol popped up, will know what I mean. This kind of store, however different each owner, looks like it has been pasted on a film set and then reused in various different settings over and over. I took in the gloomy entrance, a narrow doorway through which you could make out a murky interior where a couple of questionable men leaned against a counter. I could make out the liquor bottles at the bar and there were a few wine bottles in the grimy window at the front by the door. I squinted hopefully, looking to see if there was a woman anywhere in there, as that would make it OK for me to venture in. But to my dismay none materialised. So I drove away, irritated and resigned simultaneously. Irritated for one with myself for not just throwing convention to the wind and walking in, and for another with the silly convention itself. I mean, who in this day and age expects that every woman who wants a drink will have to either go to an upmarket wine store/supermarket or beseech some willing male to go buy her some? And of course I was resigned: resigned for one because as long as I felt uncomfortable about entering a prominently male-dominated environment I was never going to get the bottle of wine that I wanted; and for another because by the time wine stores are "normalised," I'll probably be long dead.

So I have sent an email and text message to all my guests to kindly bring some kind of alcohol with them when they come to dinner tomorrow.

Not a solution, but still a means!