The Gymkhana Club’s ungentlemanly move
In a move that is bizarre and insulting to its members, the club has decided members must deposit money for dining, etc in advance. They must have a ‘positive credit balance’ to dine at the club or use the services of the Bar
If you’re a member of a club, you’ll know it’s special. Introduced by the Raj, they’re associations where people of equal standing can meet and relax, without fear that what they say or do will be made public. By definition, clubs are private and intimate. That’s probably why members become fond of them and are, often, inordinately loyal to them.
It follows that members of a club are deemed to be ‘gentlemen’. That’s true of the ladies as well! An unwritten but well known code of conduct prevails. At its core is the assumption that members will always behave honourably. They can be relied upon to do the decent thing.
Traditionally, members of a club sign for the services they avail of and pay when they are billed. Whether it’s drinks at the bar, food in the dining hall or charges for the sports facilities, there’s never any doubt that once partaken of or used they will be promptly and fully paid for. After all, gentlemen honour their debts.
Alas, it seems the Delhi Gymkhana Club, by far the most prestigious and sought after in the Capital, no longer believes that to be the case. In a move that is both bizarre and insulting to its membership, it has decided that members must deposit money in advance. As the management puts it, members must maintain “a positive credit balance” to be able to drink at the bar or dine in the club. The fact you pay an annual subscription is no longer enough.
For a start, this undermines the central purpose of a club as a place you can visit whenever you want. Now, if you haven’t maintained a deposit, you can’t eat and drink. The best you can hope to do is scrounge off someone else!
But it’s worse. Clubs are a place where the convivial atmosphere encourages you to buy others drinks or dine in their company. You may have come on your own, but you often end up as part of a happy group. But if the advance you’ve deposited is not sufficient, you can’t offer drinks or pick up the tab for a friend’s dinner.
Even commercial restaurants treat their guests with greater regard and consideration. They pay once they’ve finished eating and are ready to leave. They don’t need to deposit money in advance. And unless you look particularly disreputable and untrustworthy, no restaurant would ask, as you enter, if you have the money to pay for what you propose to eat! Yet, in effect, this is what the Gym —as its members fondly call it — proposes hereafter to do.
The Club’s excuse for this discourteous treatment of its membership is that some people do not pay their bills. Sadly, that’s true. Even the prominently displayed list of defaulters is not enough to shame them. But this is a wee minority — if not a fraction — of the membership. Out of the list of people with signing rights, which probably is well over 10,000, habitual and incorrigible defaulters are unlikely to be more than 100. I’m deliberately not including those who are only late in paying, often for legitimate and acceptable reasons. Now, should everyone else — the honourable and preponderant majority — be distrusted and penalised because the Club can’t find a better and more effective way of responding to them?
It seems the Club’s answer is yes. That, itself, is cause to be concerned about the management. It doesn’t understand what a club is and should always seek to be.
However, there’s another solution which has been inexplicably overlooked. If the management is really worried that a growing number are refusing to honour their bills, it could have asked members to pay for their drinks and food as soon as they’ve finished and before they leave. Like guests in a restaurant. In fact, this is what several London clubs do. It would be both more trusting and more polite. Now, why on earth did the management not think of that?
Karan Thapar is the author of Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story.The views expressed are personal