Why should I pay for this?” she yelled, gesturing wildly. Rathish A.K. was stumped.
He’d seen her walk into the bar with another woman an hour ago. They’d ordered two rounds of vodka each — she wanted her cocktails sweet, her friend preferred hers sour. They sipped on their drinks and danced together, threw back their hair and laughed. When it was time to pay the bill, she was slipping away, while the other had conveniently vanished. “I’ll only pay for my drinks, I don’t know the other woman,” she insisted, her decibel level steadily increasing. Rathish groaned — the price for both the drinks he made ultimately had to come from his pocket.
“That’s when I learnt to always run a tab, or have a customer pay for their drinks as soon as they are served,” he says. He’s got many more anecdotes to narrate — of bar brawls, friendly celebrities, and couples who first met here. But now is not the time. It’s 9 p.m. on a Saturday night at The Park’s Leather Bar and people are just beginning to trickle in. “Where’s the bartender with the ear stud?” asks a woman who’s found her place at the bar, and Rathish grins sheepishly: it’s time to get to work. Men loosen their ties, women let their hair down; and the city’s ready to kick back, relax and ring in the weekend. Rathish, however, prepares for the busiest night of his work week.
He pulls a bottle out of the cooler, opens it in swift motion and sends the cork flying into a bin. He flips the bottle absent-mindedly before he pours some into a glass. He pulls out a lemon, slices and tosses it, and it’s into a glass of mojito that it promptly lands. He casually slides the drink across the bar counter and it goes zooming to the person waiting for it. “It’s all about style,” he says, grinning.
Rathish moved to Chennai from Madurai in 2003. While pursuing a degree in hotel management, he decided that working as a bartender would be “cool”. In 2006, he started at the nightclub Pasha and finally got to see what a bottle of single malt, which he’d learnt all about, actually looked like. Now, as the supervisor of Leather Bar, he’s come a long way. “The etiquette I’ve learnt here, I wouldn’t have learnt in any other service.”
“On a busy day, we have about 25 people at the counter at a given time,” he says, adding that he’s had to make 100 drinks in 20 minutes during such times. A complicated cocktail can have up to 10 precisely-measured ingredients, all of which a bartender needs to commit to memory. He also needs to come up with recipes for new cocktails; experiments, which when successful, find their way into the menu.
A gentleman sitting at the bar strikes up a conversation about the availability of small watermelons in the city. Rathish indulges him; getting to know the guests is part of the job, and making sure they feel comfortable while being at the bar is important.
The hotel even provides a policy that allows for them to give away complimentary drinks to keep their regulars happy. “The best customers are the friendly ones, who don’t look down on you like you’re a waiter,” he says.
As 11 p.m. draws near, the music gets louder, the crowd thicker and the call for alcohol only increases. The two men behind the bar zoom past each other — mixing drinks, taking orders, trying to avoid each other’s toes. “Coordination between the guys behind the bar is very important,” explains Rathish.
His shift stretches on till the wee hours of the morning. “After the night club closes, people come to the bar to grab another drink. Sometimes I dance with the guests,” he says, grinning shyly.
Even though his job allows for him to drink, he usually chooses not to. Because once the guests leave, and the bar closes, he still has to spend an hour checking the stock. “If I get drunk, who’ll do the closing work,” he asks with a shrug.
He manages to hit the sack at 8 a.m., when the revellers from the previous night are just waking up to get to work. He wakes up at 2 p.m. for lunch, and goes back to bed to get a few more hours of sleep. He’s up at 5 p.m. again, ready to get to work. He doesn’t see himself getting married anytime soon because, he says, “I can’t continuously keep working night shifts then.”
The hours are long and the work, hectic. Taking off during festive time is never an option, because that’s when the bar is at its busiest. But Rathish is convinced that he’s chosen the right path. He loves being surrounded by music, meeting new people and being the bartender who listens to their stories. Most of all, he loves his job.
