Actor in a Wodehousian comedy

Rahul Jacob has experienced the delightful and the ridiculous in clubs with rooms the size of basketball courts but utterly illogical rules

I have spent most of my life, it seems, getting into trouble at India's clubs. I am conventional to the point of being boring, but many rules at India's grandest clubs belong to another era, circa 1920 perhaps, especially the strictures against national dress. There are few places on earth that I would rather stay at than the Madras Club, but no sooner had I left my room a couple of summers ago, walking purposefully towards the car park, than the man at the reception was running towards me with a look of alarm. The 'emergency' was that I was dressed in a kurta churidar for my cousin's wedding dinner, and he was worried I might be headed for the club where such dress is prohibited. My aunt had trouble bringing a bishop in his regal cassock there to lunch because he was wearing sandals.

As a child, I complained bitterly about the Calcutta Club's restrictive timings. If memory serves, children were tolerated at the club for all of about four hours in the afternoon and only in the area around the pool. We had just enough time for swimming lessons, which consisted of being thrown into the deep end by an instructor. This bizarre tutorial was followed by delicious club sandwiches and cheese toast before a bell would ring that meant all children had to disappear, like Cinderella. When my brothers and I griped to my parents, we were told that the Calcutta Club had admitted Indians as members long before any of the other clubs that were more tolerant towards children, many of which excluded natives till the early 1960s.

These days, I bristle with nationalist fervour at the absurd rules against wearing Indian clothes at clubs. Blessed with elegant kurtas and crisp dhotis to choose from, we must wear Western clothes sloppily instead. Mostly though, I find India's clubs a place of Wodehousian comedy, delightful and ridiculous in turn. The rooms at the Madras Club are so large that I woke up the first morning dreaming I was sleeping in a palatial bed in a basketball court. The staff are so courteous that one stopped to warn me that the strap on my watch, though clasped firmly, had not passed fully through the loop. "It might fall off, Sir," he said, sounding like an Indian Jeeves.

But, the Madras Club's Rubik's Cube dress code makes my suitcase bulge and my head hurt; sports clothes are allowed at breakfast on the verandah facing the Adyar river. By lunch, however, a formal shirt with a mandarin collar will mean you are denied entry to the majestic River Room, a chandeliered setting so elegant I want my 75th birthday party there. The Bangalore Club proudly displays an unpaid bill from the profoundly racist Winston Churchill in its lobby so I often wonder whether I should visit it at all. Invited to the Club a few years ago, I was stopped by the receptionist because he regarded my black shoes as sneakers. He had a point; they were rubber soled and Nikes. But they were lace-ups and leather so I invited him to touch them to ascertain whether they were leather. Recoiling in horror, he waved me through.

Given this track record, I have neither applied nor would I qualify to be a member of these clubs, but I happily and hypocritically return as a guest. From their vast verandahs to their sprawling lawns, they are a respite from the alternately Punjabi Baroque and PWD architecture of Delhi, for instance. In December, as I arrived at the Delhi Gymkhana for tea with a friend who was comfortably ensconced by a fire-place at the edge of its ballroom, I realised I had foolishly worn sneakers. We were graciously shown the door - to the much prettier lawns at the back. Thinking we had gotten the better part of the bargain, my friend and I ordered Darjeeling tea. A waiter informed us that the rule was that pots of tea could only be served inside. On the lawns, we must drink 'ready-made' tea. Every appeal to common sense was summarily rejected. We grumbled, then chuckled and conceded. At India's clubs, rules are rules, and the more illogical the better.