Hafezji's bar

Hafezji's bar was a Calcutta drinking establishment where Sohrabji first found work as a boy and later served as a paid companion to women customers. Recalled by Hobbs, its history exposes how bar regulations could turn companionship into a means of survival, while the proprietor's dealings with police made official oversight part of the bar's nightly routine.

A First Job for Sohrabji

Before working at the Hotel Shahjahan, Sohrabji served as a bar waiter at Hafezji's bar. Hobbs remembered him as no more than fourteen when someone reported him to the excise department: boys of his age were not permitted to work in bars, and the complaint threatened his livelihood. Sohrabji came to Hobbs in tears, and Hobbs helped get the complaint withdrawn. The episode links Sohrabji's early dependence on the bar to the precariousness of work available to a child in the city.

Companionship as Work

Hobbs also recalled how Sohrabji later earned food by accompanying women to bars. Under the excise laws as Hobbs describes them, women could not enter many Calcutta bars without a male companion. An Anglo-Indian acquaintance helped the young Sohrabji find this work, and Hafezji did not insist on the companion's being of legal age. Younger companions cost the women less. Hafezji's practical condition was that each pair order at least two bottles of lemonade, protecting the bar's reputation and its sales.

Sohrabji's first such arrangement involved Cynthia, whose regular companion needed a temporary substitute while away for a week. The substitute warned Sohrabji not to mistake a customer's or woman's friendliness for a promise of a lasting place. At the bar, Sohrabji initially felt out of his depth amid the smoke and the musicians. The musicians called on the women to dance, explaining that the bar could not afford to hire dancers. The scene shows how the venue relied on customers and workers to provide its atmosphere as well as its trade.

Inspection and Informal Order

Sohrabji could not bring himself to ask customers for tips, and instead watched the bar's routines. He saw police officers arrive under cover of night and Hafezji attend to them, offering drinks and asking whether they wanted anything. The officers then entered a standard account in the inspection book: that they had inspected the bar at eleven, received personal treatment from Hafezji, found it full, and saw that all the women were accompanied. Hobbs remarked that the same kind of comment was still being written in Calcutta bar inspection books. The ritual presents regulation not as an outside force simply imposed on the establishment, but as a procedure managed through hospitality and familiar formulas.

Significance

In Hobbs's recollection, Hafezji's bar is neither merely a workplace nor simply a drinking venue. Its business depends on a law that restricts women's entry, on young men whose poverty makes them available as companions, and on a proprietor who adjusts enforcement to the economic needs of both the women and the bar. Sohrabji's path from an underage waiter to a companion seeking food traces the vulnerability behind the establishment's ordinary routines; the police register, meanwhile, records an orderly account that leaves those arrangements largely unexamined.