Hippy Hippy Shake

If you've seen Tom Cruise's Cocktail or Coyote Ugly, you'll know what we're talking about. Flair bartending. The shakes and swivels and airborne bottles and flying kisses are no longer something foreign. A growing breed of Indian bartenders are trying to improve your spirit-ual quotient with flair. The logic: if you are down in the dumps and need a stiff shot of vodka to straighten out your troubles, a bit of showmanship by the bartender could go a long way.

Flair or extreme bartending involves swivelling of shakers, juggling of glasses and bottles and pints of charm, a dash of signature style and witty shots at the guests. This is apart from the basic skill of mixing a good drink. And the increasing demand for flair bartenders at pubs and private parties is turning out to be the next step in the evolution of pub culture in Indian metros.

Columnist Dilip Cherian credits it to the swish set who travel a lot and come back home looking for what they saw abroad. Shatbi Basu, the first woman bartender of India, who runs the Stir Academy of Bartending in Mumbai, feels that the slew of bars opening almost every week in the metros and the resulting competition are the reasons for the growing demand for flair bartending. Most of the calls she now gets for bartenders is for flair. "Bars are so much more fun now. Earlier people used to ask for someone honest. Now they ask if he can do flair bartending, if he can make great cocktails," says Basu. Cherian feels that attention at the bar has shifted from good drinks to good showmanship: "There's not as much talent involved in drink-making as there was earlier, thanks to the increasing number of pre-mixed drinks available in the market. The bartender naturally has to excel elsewhere to sustain the guest's interest."

At Provogue's new lounge bar in Mumbai, bartenders Tushar Ghalat and Kiran Hiwale perform acts of synchronised juggling with drink bottles, hit their clients with one-liners, dance on the bar counter and even make half-empty glasses tilt so that drunk clients feel that they are seeing things. Bhanu at Ruby Tuesday in the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon can balance five beer cans on his forehead. Ron Caravalho, who won a flair bartending contest last month at Gurgaon's Bristol Hotel, puts the bar counter on fire and juggles with two bottles whose mouths are on fire. Of course, traditionalists dismiss it all as tomfoolery, but the fact is that more and more pubs are sending their bartenders to schools to get trained at flairing.

These bartending schools have mushroomed in cities like Delhi and Mumbai. The Institute of Bar Operations and Management (IBOM), affiliated to the World Bartending Teaching Organisation, Canada, was one of the first flair schools in Delhi. Run by Sandeep "Sandy" Verma, it provides professional training to bartenders and also runs amateur courses for anyone who wants to learn the difference between cognac and whiskey and to serve a drink with panache and style.

The P3P circuit too is sold on flairing. H.S. Narula, owner of department store Ebony, had a group of flair bartenders at his birthday bash last month to add extra pizzazz to the cocktails. "They were serving us drinks in small glasses which we were supposed to throw into a lion's mouth after having the drink. There was a concrete wall behind the lion's head. So those who managed to aim correct would smash the glass on the wall," recalls socialite Nina Pillai who attended the do. Call it flair breaking.

But the reality is that India still lags far behind the world in professional bartending. "Even in Colombo, the standard is much higher than in India," observes Amrit Kiran Singh of Jack Daniel's India. Many Indian flair bartenders are better at juggling bottles than mixing a great drink, which is the real thing, feel the cognoscentiRishi Raj Singh, manager at Rick's bar at Taj Mahal Hotel, Delhi, recalls that at the launch of a recent high-profile bar in the capital, he had to wait pretty long before he got his drink as the bartender was busy juggling. "Finally, I had to ask him to cut short the frills and give me my drink."

Also, flairing often leads to flared tempers. Sandeep Verma feels that a good flair bartender should be able to handle such situations with ease. "After all, flair bartending is all about being witty and yet polite to the guest." He narrates an incident at a private party when a guest grabbed him by the collar and demanded "Bastard, give me my drink". "To which I coolly replied, 'How did you know my pet name? You get a free drink from my side for guessing that'."

Yangdup Lama, who runs Cocktail and Dreams, a school of bar and beverage management in Delhi, laments the lack of a proper bar culture in India. His observations find an echo with William Lowe, a Manchester-based flair bartender who often comes down to Delhi to hold training sessions at IBOM. "Indians are not in habit of saying 'thank you' after being served their drink," is Lowe's very simple observation.

Perhaps it is because of this lack of an evolved bar culture that India doesn't have many women bartenders, which is a normal feature abroad. For one, there's the chilling Jessica Lall episode. Then, in Delhi, an archaic 1930s excise law does not allow women to take a liquor order, or serve liquor, or be behind a bar. But in Mumbai, hotels like the Leela have women bartenders. People do ask for them. Also, women are taking to the whole concept. At Provogue's Lounge bar in Mumbai, bartenders give out free shots to the girls, but of course there are no free shots in the world. They then have to climb up on the bar counter and dance. Bartenders are also often asked out by women clients.

Still people have a way of getting what they want. One popular solution is foreign women bartenders (see box). They are often flown in for private parties. For instance, at an expatriate ceo's Christmas bash last year in Delhi, there were foreign women bartenders dressed in miniskirts and Santa caps serving stiff drinks in test tubes. "They seemed to be professional and not the shady kinds who would later go out with guests," recalls a guest.

It's ironic that the country which historically is credited with having some of the first vineyards when the rest of the world was still waiting for Bacchus's gift to mankind, trends like flair bartending are making inroads so late. But better now then never.

And Call Her The Flairina!

Women are daring to bartend. Take for instance Anoushka Illijic from Bosnia who is half Indian and half Bosnian. And Rachel Bentiba from Nigeria. Both the ladies have been bartending at private parties outside Delhi. While Rachel has stopped bartending now and has joined a local call centre, Anoushka is carrying on with the trade. In fact, she’s a big hit with the crowds. She has bartended at celeb parties including those thrown by UB group’s Vijay Mallya, Escort’s Nikhil and Shweta Nanda, Hero Honda’s Rahul Munjal, hotelier Shashank Bhagat. She came to India especially to learn bartending.

And then there are girls like Srishti Khanna and Geetika who are training to become wine experts or sommeliers. When through with the course they’ll be India’s first professional women sommeliers. "I was always fascinated by wines,’’ says Srishti who did her hotel management from PUSA and is now doing a six-month course in bar and beverage management from Cocktail and Dreams. She already has started interning with Turkinz, a company that owns Ssteel bar, Mashrabiya and Kashmiri Club at Ashok Hotel.

Shobita Dhar with Saumya Roy in Mumbai