At Indigo the joint was thrusting and grinding. The midriffs on display were not the kind on the postcards home of ‘Rajasthan woman carrying a water jar in the bright colours of the Madwari tribe’

To the right, sixteen smooth thighs splashed through the water. To the left, filling the screen, appeared the crease between a leg and a buttock, fringed by skimpy gold shorts. The Ukraine women’s formation swimming team on Sky Sport to Kylie Minogue’s new video on MTV.

‘Bloody hell,’ sighed the turbaned Sikh on the running machine as Kylie shook her stuff and the Ukrainians slid beneath the waters, all pointy toes to the sky.

‘Time we were doing this swimming thingy here in India.’

We had been talking about nightlife in Bombay. He called his city that, not me. I’m so nervous about being called an Empire reactionary that I have been calling India’s financial capital Mumbai since the day the name was changed a few years ago. Everyone else continues to call it Bombay, except politicians when talking politics, sari-clad newsreaders on the national station, Doordashan, and arrival and departure boards at airports (a device simply to upset the foreigners). The Sikh had many opinions about Bombay nightlife. I was just intrigued by the stillness of his turban as he bounced on the running machine, a stream of night-club and late night drinking news.

The gym we were in, with its bank of televisions, its gleaming equipment and constantly restocked pile of very white towels, has about the same membership price tag as an expensive London health club. A Sea Breeze at Indigo, one the Sikh’s favourite hangouts in cool Colaba, costs the same at one at the Soho Club, though the beggars on the street outside are begging resourcefully, unlike the sad, sagging homeless figures in Soho’s doorways. A two bedroom apartment in the chic Malabar Hills of Bombay costs about the same as a two bedroom flat in South Kensington. Bombay is right up there price-wise…and hip-wise.

At Indigo the joint was thrusting and grinding. The midriffs on display were not the kind on the postcards home from Rajasthan—’woman carrying a water jar in the bright colours of the Madwari tribe’. Indigo’s midriffs were gym smooth, hipster-wearing and crop t-shirt-topped. A sleek mane of glossy hair swung past my face.

‘Hey Raju, heard your new song, shit man it’s cool,’ said the tiny girl with the swinging glossy hair. She was a dusky china doll version of Kylie.

‘Simmy, big story going round,’ shrieked a tall girl with an even thicker, glossier mane. ‘Says you’re going to London for the awards with SRK’s gang.’

‘Nothing doing,’ snapped back gorgeous green-eyed Simmy.

SRK is Shah Rukh Khan, possibly the biggest star in the Bollywood film industry’s twinkling tiara. The awards were the first Indian film awards to be held abroad—the abroad in this case being the Dome in Greenwich.

A few weeks on and Bombay’s Bollywood cool has come to London. Sixteen leather-clad thighs are strutting their stuff around a tiny bouncing girl in a very short gold dress that beautifully shows off the crease between her thighs and buttocks. It’s intermission entertainment time at the International Indian Film Awards. Thoroughbred Bombay beauties smile elegantly from the soft folds of their chiffon saris, all suggestion and no show. Kylie, bouncing on the stage in her short gold dress, looks almost embarrassed to be exposing so much flesh in the face of such skilfully draped subcontinental elegance. Shah Rukh Khan is right up at the front wearing a smile almost as wide as the Dome, jiggling his ‘best male artist in a film’ award on his knee in time to Kylie. Simmy from Indigo is not in his gang, nothing was doing. The ‘best male lead in a negative role’ is up next, to be presented by a former Miss India. The power fails just after Kylie’s routine ends, an Indian dancer trips over amongst the leather-clad thighs, and the food is over an hour late. No one seems to mind. It happens all the time in Bombay. Bollywood is the hot export, Bombay-wallah are the new stars of screen and software, dusky skin is this season’s black. And it just wouldn’t be the same called Mollywood.