The colonial club is alive and well, but still won’t let me join
By Nury Vittachi
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So there I was, applying to join a swanky, high-class leisure club with leather armchairs and stuffy waiters. Me? Elitist? No way. I have the utmost respect for the people who live around me, even though most of them are low class, smelly rabble with foul, uncouth habits typical of the poorly bred.
But I’m sure you understand that every man has a need in the deepest part of his soul to be able to say: “I shall be dining at my club tonight.”
These clubs, styled on the British gentlemen’s clubs from colonial days, exist in most major cities in Asia these days.
Anyway, I got the application papers to the one nearest my home. But reading the small print, I was horrified to discover that the club had racial quotas. Waiting lists for some races were much longer than for others.
I was about to be horribly outraged when staff told me would be on a shorter-than-average waiting list. Why?
Because I would be classified as “Indian Race” despite the fact that I am not Indian and have no connection with that country, other than having a passing resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi if you catch me posing in an over-sized diaper in very, very low light.
Learning this changed things. While I couldn’t estimate exactly how long each applicant would have to wait, I reckoned I would get in only 20 years after my death, while some would have to wait 30 years after they were dead. You can’t turn down an advantage like that!
Further investigation revealed that American applicants and French applicants were classified as separate races. At this point I changed my opinion about the club’s membership policies. They seemed to me unusually perceptive and insightful.
Intrigued, I did some more research and found that the current policies, odd though they may appear, are actually a modernized version of earlier club constitutions, which I found in a drawer in the back office.
Those specified quotas not in general terms (“X per cent Chinese, X per cent Indian, X per cent British” etc) but in precise numbers of individuals from each country.
In other words, it said things like: “The club shall have three Norwegians, two Israelis, and a small Sri Lankan.” In those days, whenever a member died or left, they had to search for a replacement that precisely matched the vacancy. This was tough for the membership secretary, who was forever writing notes which said: “Membership is open to everyone, providing you are an overweight Latvian married to a left-handed Bangladeshi.”
Now it’s obvious to me that clubs with these sorts of arrangement are anachronisms and won’t be around for much longer. But until someone important notices and makes a fuss, these little oddities will exist in all corners of Asia.
So what happened in the end?
The bad news is that I didn’t get into the club. But my wife is a different race, and her application went through speedily and successfully.
These days, she kindly allows me to visit as a Member’s Spouse.
The only problem is, the sentence I have been waiting all these years to say has been adjusted slightly, and just doesn’t sound quite so impressive any more.
I shall be dining at my wife’s club tonight, if she’ll let me.”