Fans of suburban bar Zenzi fight for its survival
If you've got your ear on the ground here in Mumbai you'll be picking up notes of a war brewing over keeping Bandra's open-air bars and restaurants open, and open late.
This week Mumbai's municipal corporation served notices to close to 20 Bandra bars and eateries for allegedly bending rules and regulations, including popular places like Tavaa, Hawaiian Shack, Sheesha, Mezbaan, and Kareem's.
But the most emotional battle is over Zenzi, a resto bar on Waterfield Road which served as Bandra's veritable living room for young professionals, especially filmmakers, designers and media lok for six years between 2005 and 2010, before it shut down last summer.
Ostensibly for refurbishment but also amid rumors that the management was ordered, by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), to demolish Zenzi's illegally extended outdoor section, that narrow, long open-air bar corridor which was the artery of the place.
"A pop culture heritage site if you ask me!" writes one Zenzi fan on the wall of a new Facebook support group called "Keep ZENZI BANDRA Alive!!!!!", launched by local musician and Zenzi regular Randolph Correia this Monday.
The open group has gathered just shy of 300 members in four days.
"Everyone has a Zenzi story," write the reviewers at Brown Paper Bag, a popular local blog.
"Remember when we bought a black and white photograph off the wall...when we drank free Tuesday night Cosmos... when we spotted Jesse Metcalfe at the bar... when we went home with a bevy of Brazilian models...
"But of course you remember. You were there too."
When on December 26 Zenzi reopened, (sadly, not a patch on the old one) within weeks the BMC decides to halt renewal of the new Zenzi's license.
What's the crime?
Civic authorities, Mumbai cops, the traffic department and residents' associations have made a list of Zenzi's alleged breaches.
As reported by MiD Day, they are:
Open space is used for commercial purposes
Management has not reinstated inner walls that they have demolished
No parking space creating traffic snarl and nuisance in the area
Five foot walls have not been reinstated
Kitchen is creating problem for residents residing above the establishment
Many illegal exit and entry points have been made
Zenzi fans and loyal patrons on the new Facebook group have been following this game of Bandra bars vs the BMC for the last year. They see an entirely different side to the story. That their right to have an after-work beer is being violated by corrupt civic authorities who are targetting and harassing select bar owners for bribes. Group founder Correia writes, "there was an article in a well known paper today saying many things
about zenzi bandra are illegal....is there a single venue in this city
that does not pay the bmc and the cops and the ministers to carry on
their illegal businesses??...and if you dont support that kind of
corruption they come shut you down...what will then be left of this
city if you only have shady clubs and dingy bars for good night
out?"The Facebook push back
For more on Mumbai's noise pollution and other laws strangulating Mumbai's party scene read,
CNNGo Deepika Sorabjee: Mumbai's dim-witted noise laws need to be more music friendly
CNNGo Amana Fontanella-Khan: It's time for an alternative nightlife scene in Mumbai
