[Back on the outskirts of
Fatehpur Beri, drinking sweet, milky tea out of tiny cups, older men nod in
recognition; that is what their family, members of a subgroup of the Gujjar
caste, is known for. Omprakash Tanwar related a local legend dating to the mid-19th
century, when two British men passing on horseback made rude remarks to village
women harvesting a field of mustard. Outraged, the village men are said to have
pulled the foreigners off their horses, yoked them to a plow and forced then to
plow the field. When British reinforcements arrived, the story goes, they
surrounded the village and shot all the young men they found.]
By Ellen Barry
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Men working out in
Fatehpur Beri in the Delhi region. Many have jobs as
bouncers in local clubs.
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GURGAON, India — In a smoky nightclub on
the third floor of the Sahara Mall, blowing off steam to the thudding bass line
of a Bollywood dance mix, are the inhabitants of the new India — the sales
representatives and software developers and call-center cubicle dwellers, all
of them dancing giddily, hands flung in the air.
Amid the din, it is
almost possible to miss the half-dozen strongmen circulating slowly among them,
watching from the edges for any signs of trouble.
Look closely and it
becomes clear that the bouncers are all of a single physical type, their chests
and biceps built like the front bumper of a sport utility vehicle. If they look
like cousins, it is because they are. A startling number of them share a family
name, Tanwar, and when the nightclubs close many will return to the same nearby
village, a place where women walk down dusty lanes with their faces obscured by
a cloth, balancing stacks of dried cow dung on their heads, much as their
ancestors did three centuries ago.
There are few places in
India where historical periods slam into each other quite so forcefully as they
do on the outer edges of Delhi. The musclemen from the village of Fatehpur Beri
are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the city, a genetic line
that fortified itself over the course of centuries as they defended their
village against waves of invaders on their way to the seat of empire.
The sons and grandsons of
cow and goat herders, they were born in an outpost surrounded on all sides by
croplands. As Fatehpur Beri was swallowed by the expanding city, its spartan
strongmen continued to train in the traditional way, stripping down to
loincloths and wrestling in a circle of mud. But they were forced to look for a
new line of work.
“There is an element of
the warrior in the Tanwars,” said Ankur Tanwar, who opened the village’s first
gym about a decade ago. “We fought with the Muslim invaders. We fought with the
Britishers.”
“Much has changed in the
last 20 years,” he added, with a thoughtful pause. “We never thought we would
be working in bars.”
The man who says he led
the Tanwars into the security business is Vijay Tanwar — known as Vijay
Pehalwan, or Vijay the Wrestler — and he has a handshake like a carpenter’s
clamp. As a boy, he was put under the tutelage of the village wrestling coach,
a barrel-chested Brahmin who communicates largely in parables from the Hindu
epics. His students are put on an ultrahigh protein vegetarian diet consisting
of dried fruit, clarified butter (during training, a wrestler can eat a pound
at a sitting) and gallons of fresh milk.
Mr. Tanwar grew up
expecting to raise goats, but in 1996 a restaurateur approached him asking for
“strong boys” to stand at the door of his new establishment. The scene was
particularly shocking for men from villages like Fatehpur Beri and neighboring
Asola, places so conservative that adult women do not leave the house without
permission from their husband or mother-in-law.
“Initially it was very
difficult for us to see — this new tradition of drinking alcohol, the
non-vegetarian food and the girls,” he said. “We are simple people. We do not
have much money.” He shrugged, thinking it over. “Now I feel that they are the
rich people, they have the right to have fun.”
It would be hard to
imagine any Indian social mores that were not being violated at the Sahara Mall
in Gurgaon, outside Delhi, on a recent weekend night. Outside the row of
nightclubs, where wall plaques read “drugs and ammunition strictly prohibited,”
wiry men offered their services as “party organizers” and women in tight
dresses agreed to dance with the club’s mostly male patrons for 500 rupees, or
about $8.
“Only horrible people
come here!” yelled one man, who said he worked for Johnson & Johnson,
trying to make himself heard over the music. “We are horrible people!”
Among their co-workers,
the bouncers are famous for their discipline. “There is something in their
genes,” said Bishar Singh, 29, who was working the door at a club called
Prison. “They don’t drink. They don’t smoke at all.”
Back on the outskirts of
Fatehpur Beri, drinking sweet, milky tea out of tiny cups, older men nod in
recognition; that is what their family, members of a subgroup of the Gujjar
caste, is known for. Omprakash Tanwar related a local legend dating to the mid-19th
century, when two British men passing on horseback made rude remarks to village
women harvesting a field of mustard. Outraged, the village men are said to have
pulled the foreigners off their horses, yoked them to a plow and forced then to
plow the field. When British reinforcements arrived, the story goes, they
surrounded the village and shot all the young men they found.
“This is in our DNA — to
fight for our homes and the honor of our women,” Mr. Tanwar said. “Because we
have a tradition of protecting women, we do the same at the clubs.”
Delhi’s encroachment has
brought a rush of money, and some change, to the village. As fields were
snapped up for luxury residential compounds and malls, residents found that
their land was skyrocketing in value.
Local police say nearly
all of the district’s violent crime is related to property disputes between
relatives — “hitting with iron rods, bones are broken, a lot of bloodshed,” as
one official put it. Lately, he added, it seems “there is a gap of many generations
between father and son.”
Women, however, still
live under severe restrictions. Marriages are arranged by families, and many
women abide by purdah, obscuring their faces with a cloth in the presence of
men other than their husbands. Unmarried women are not allowed to own
cellphones; young women in college may be given the right to use them but are
expected to hand them over to their brothers or fathers when arriving home.
The nightclubs where
their husbands work are impossibly distant, though Priyanka Harsana, 25,
overcome by curiosity, once peeked into one when her husband took her shopping
at the Sahara Mall.
“My first feeling was,
something about this is not right,” she said. “Oh my God, I thought how scared
I would be if someone saw me here.”
The village men, asked
what they would do if their daughters showed up at a nightclub, looked blank,
then burst into laughter, exclaiming, “Shock! Punishment! Not possible!”
Vijay Tanwar, the bouncer
entrepreneur, now manages a company called Storm Group, placing a contingent of
around 50 village strongmen with restaurants, hotels, hospitals and politicians
running for office.
The market, he said, only
continues to grow. “As the money increases, the crime increases,” he said. “And
as the crime increases, our business increases.”
One measure of his
success is that, though his two sons have been wrestling since the age of 8, he
hopes they will be part of the first generation of his family to work desk
jobs. He looked on proudly as the elder son, a broad-shouldered boy named
Kunal, answered a few questions in halting English and confessed with a shy
smile that he would like someday to become an accountant.
Hari Kumar contributed
reporting.