Women’s Road Trip: A Desi Bar Experience in Diu

Desi bar: Should We – Should We Not?

In March 2020, my mom and I went on a road trip from Mumbai to Diu.

Prior to going to Diu, I didn’t know much about the place except that it was called ‘Mini Goa’ – amazing beaches, cheap petrol, cheaper alcohol, and scrumptious seafood.

Diu was supposed to be everything I associate with Goa.

On our first night, we headed to the only commercial beach in Diu hoping to try out the seafood and drinks at a nice shack – a la Goa style.

Very quickly we realized Diu was very different from Goa in that respect – there were no shacks. There was only one ‘bar aani restaurant’ on the beach: Gangasagar Bar which was right across our hotel.

The bar seemed like a typical desi local bar frequented by local men and after our recce we realised it doubled up as a liquor store. Left with no other option, it was a coin-toss moment for us, although in this case it was more of an intuition thing; we enter, we feel and we decide.

Our back-up plan was to buy alcohol from their store and parcel some food for a ‘night-out’ in our room itself.

The scene inside was right out of a Bollywood crime movie.

Dark.

Dingy.

Sea of Men.

Noisy.

Crowded.

Strong smell of desi whiskey and rum.

As soon as we entered, a lot of heads turned. Thankfully, one of the heads was that of the manager.

I guess he understood the ‘should-we/should-we-not’ look on our faces and immediately came to our rescue by offering a table in the ‘family room’.

I gave in to the delicious-smelling prawns and could see a similar conceded look on my mom’s face. We decided to check out this family room.

The family room was quite quiet with only two of the other dozen tables occupied by…um, families. We were led to a booth.

Our order (and you could be pardoned for thinking we are a couple of gluttons) included:

Prawns Masala, Hakka Noodles, Dal Tadka, Tandoori Roti, Fish Fry and for drinks we thought that it would be safest to get a bottle of wine as it would be a sealed bottle; so Sula Chenin Blanc it was.

Food served, the manager, who had shown us our table, got us our wine too and then asked:

“Aapko kuchh aur chaaiye?” (do you want something else?)

Before we could give it a thought, he continued:

“Wine ke liye thoda Thums Up?” (some cola soft-drink to go with the wine?)

He clearly wasn’t used to serving wine to customers.

Or having his own wine.

The food tasted like typical dhaba food, also the kinds I like. And the sea breeze somehow always makes my food seem tastier.

Maybe it’s the salt.

Or my love for sea.

Doesn’t really matter though now, does it?

We managed to finish all of the food and half the bottle of wine.

Coincidently, we went to this bar on Women’s Day. Celebrating this day with my mom nearly 1000 km away from home and that too in a desi bar was definitely a n experience that put both of us in ‘high spirits’.

Looking back, I am glad we did go in.