The Bar Licence's Operating-Hours Restriction

The licensed bar’s 10:30 p.m. closing limit shaped Sohrabji’s nightly work: he had to clear a room whose customers often resisted leaving, even as drinking gave way to quarrels and damaged glasses. The rule was more than a timetable. It exposed the gap between the orderly conduct Sohrabji wanted from his establishment and the demands of patrons who treated a late evening at the bar as theirs to prolong.

The Closing Time and Its Enforcement

Sohrabji’s bar closed at half past ten. As the evening wore on, some customers refused to leave or insisted that the bar stay open later. Sohrabji had to invoke the licence, which did not permit a later closing. His enforcement could provoke insults and broken glasses, making the final part of the working day a difficult confrontation rather than a routine shutdown.

The problem was sharpened by the pattern of drinking in the hours before closing. Sohrabji described customers arriving in the afternoon and drinking as night fell: their mood might move from well-being to cheerfulness, then embarrassment and, with another drink, madness. He disliked the troubles that followed, but the bar’s reputation for serving good drink without watering it did not prevent disturbances. The closing rule set a firm endpoint; it did not ensure that customers would accept it calmly.

Customers, Disorder, and Uneven Authority

The recurring strain was not limited to closing time. One night, around nine, two men shouted, struck their glasses against the table, and sang. Their cricket commentary turned into insults, while nearby regulars—whose daily bills came to between three hundred and four hundred rupees—warned Sohrabji that the disturbance was damaging the bar’s reputation. When he intervened, one of the noisy customers began to cry and accused him of threatening to throw him out for being drunk.

The episode revealed how unstable Sohrabji’s authority could be. The patrons who first demanded that he control the room also left after he acted, telling him that drunkenness did not give him the right to insult a customer and threatening to organize pickets. The bar then remained closed for nearly three weeks because customers stopped coming. Sohrabji went to the dissatisfied patron’s home, apologized, and explained that he had intervened in response to the request for a quieter establishment. The man agreed to bring his friends back, but cautioned Sohrabji against trusting a drunk or insulting anyone at another person’s behest.

The Rule’s Human Consequences

At closing, Sohrabji sometimes arranged a taxi or rickshaw for customers too drunk to get home safely. They might return the next day smiling and asking after one another, though the atmosphere gradually changed again. He was tempted to tell them to have only a couple of drinks and go home to their wives, but did not dare. The rule required him to stop service at a set hour; it offered no easy way to manage the habits and social pressures that had accumulated before that hour.

The licence limit thus became one part of a broader cycle: drinking, disturbance, attempted control, resentment, and return. Sohrabji could neither extend the hours legally nor reliably depend on customers to accept the boundary. Its significance lies in that mismatch between a clear institutional restriction and the unpredictable human behavior the restriction was meant to contain.