Before Insta, there was Page 3!

Marcellus Baptista (right) with cricketer Sunil Gavaskar and journalist Behram Contractor (left)

I guess it helps to have someone take you under their wings, if the career you're opting for has no particular roadmap. One such ‘man about town', Ramesh Sattawala, known in social circles as ‘Happy Birthday' (because that's how he greeted everyone) took a shine on young Marcellus Baptista in the late 1980s.

Happy Birthday used to be a PR manager with Air India, and all the five-star bar tenders in the vicinity of his office building (Oberoi, Ambassador, etc) would fish out free drinks as soon as they saw Happy Birthday enter every night. That was his aura. In turn, Marcellus (shortened: Marcy), tagging along, became those bar-managers' buddy.

Marcy switched from beer to (the cheap and delicious) Old Monk, that no friendly bar-tender would mind offering a small complimentary peg or two of - if they felt you were a special guest. It's not like journalists, then or now, can afford five-star hotel bars, all nights of the week, anyway! Marcy was in his early 20s. What career did he embark on?

From a certain angle, surely even then, Marcy looks like Uddhav Thackeray who, as we speak, is still the boss of Shiv Sena. Only the word ‘party' means different things to both. Marcy has been partying for a living, for about three and half decades. With COVID-19 having screwed with his brains in the interim because he had nowhere to go, he lost weight; looks like he's recovering now.

What does a professional party animal do? Well for that you have to first define what a party is. And that naturally changes given your stage in life. Starting with hectic nightclubbing over loud music, downing shots after shots, which is impossible to physically sustain and therefore, most stop by their 30s. What takes over, if you're still socially inclined, without too many familial responsibilities, are regular nights at bars or homes, with a steady stream of alcohol, and often random or mostly comfortable company, depending on your persuasion.

Marcy, 63, lifetime single, lives alone - his mother died at 103 in 2019, so he's clearly blessed with good genes - attends multiple, private parties/events, organised by brands/venues/assorted hosts, over a single night, to write a thing or two about them, but not much.

Because the picture, of people having a good time, for the vicarious pleasure of gazers/viewers is the point. This phenomenon called the ‘Page 3' peaked in metropolitan India between the mid '90s and mid noughties - mainly to fill up coloured newsprint that could attract expensive advertising of international lifestyle products that were new to a post-liberalised market.

Who do you put on those pages everyday though? The actual, ‘aspirational' rich/famous have more to do than go out each night, or be clicked at all. What emerged was an unusual class of celebrities - models, starlets, restaurant owners, etc - and people didn't know what they did for a living anyway. But since they regularly appeared in print, even nightly lifestyle TV shows, one assumed they must be celebrities, by virtue of being celebrities.

A gregarious oldish man, Kishin Mulchandani, I remember, used to be the patron saint of Page 3, appearing in different clothes from the same night that he'd change into in his car, going from one ‘party' to another.

Whatever happened to them? "I don't know man," says Marcy, a man of such few words that he could even come across as a bore - it's the reverse. I don't think he ever gets bored! He's just a smiling, quiet man, in an existentialist sort of way, who can confidently show up solo, after-hours, in his Hawaiian shirt, at bars after bars.

And he knows how to just be rubbing no one the wrong way, equally getting close to no one enough, that he has to make exclusive plans. He's got other places to go. Excessive booze shouldn't be an issue, because he nurses a glass of whisky for as long as it takes me to polish off a six-pack (of beer).

Like his other mentor, the great Bombay chronicler Behram ‘Busybee' Contractor, despite nightly decadences, he's up early. Most places you go to, people say hi to Marcy. Back in the day, he could mention names of those who said hi to him, in his popular nightlife columns.

In time, those Page 3 print spaces became advertorials - you gotta pay to be famous, for being famous. Likewise if you get on social media, you'll realise Instagram is the new Page 3, full of ‘influencers', selling you dreams (like Dan Bilzerian or Sahil Khan)!

Where does that leave Marcy, I ask him, at Soul Fry, a 27-year-old Bandra institution that's been hosting fully-packed Monday karaoke nights for 24 years, and where he's a regular. Marcy and I turn into music critics, trashing/praising singers.

"I don't know man," he says, for he's any way always had a 9-to-5 job - only it's 9 pm to 5 am. Just that Mumbai itself is hardly that ‘9 pm to 5 am' city, no? Sexagenarian Marcy of course doesn't care for five-star places much. He's more the local bar guy.

Next he plans to show me around Shree Lakshmi, a humble, quarter/dive bar on the dank Bazaar Road, off Chapel Road (Bandra): "Let's go." Mumbai, like Marcy, mustn't stop partying for a living still - it's all we've got!

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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