THE OTHER DAY, A FRIEND AND CO-OWNER of one of my favourite brewpubs in India, rang me up late in the night. For a change, I wasn’t out for a pint at my usual jaunt, but at home instead. He enquired about a minor verbal altercation between one of his crew members and a regular, which I was witness to. When we met a few days later, the co-owner told me what went down. The regular, it turns out, had broken up with his long-time partner. He arrived at the bar looking for a time off with his regular trivia-night crowd, but got worked up when his beer order was delayed.
The incident made me think about the beauty of being a regular. You show up at your best. You show up at your worst. Over time, you enter a circle of trust. People believe your word. They begin to count on you.
A sundowner on a quiet Sunday. A busy bar. Inside my preferred brewpub in New Delhi, the lights have taken on a warm amber hue, mirroring the dimming sunlight outside. A journalist friend is in town. Where do we meet, she’d asked me the night before? There was always going to be one answer.
We sat at the bar, skipping the option of a table. When I took a quick phone call, one of the crew members checked on her. “Are you with Mr Nitin?” He put her at ease, told her about the specials, explained what to expect from the craft beers and asked her to holler if we needed anything during our stay at the bar. It was a proper welcome for someone visiting the place for the first time, the kind that makes a stranger feel familiar. When I returned to my seat, my friend was both pleasantly surprised and impressed by the level of attention.
When she flew back out of Delhi, I asked her what it meant to be recognised as a regular’s guest. “It meant that there’s a place for everyone in this world to be as is,” she texted me from Chennai. She continued: “It also meant that you’re a dude who likes a drink and who makes an effort with the staff.”
George Orwell understood this particular pleasure of being a regular. In his 1946 essay, The Moon Under Water, published in the Evening Standard, he describes his ideal pub: a peaceful, Victorian-style establishment with a loyal group of regulars.
In his description of the perfect London public house, he writes: “The barmaids know most of their customers by name, and take a personal interest in everyone… and they call everyone ‘dear,’ irrespective of age or sex.”
There’s a kind of intimacy in being a regular. I know the staff at my favourite pub just as well as they know me. It’s simple: I remember their names, acknowledge themwhen I arrive, when they deliver a crisp pint on time and when I leave. The highfives, the handshakes, the extra beer samplers at no extra cost, the constant supply of crackers: all this and more follows. Oh, and there’s also the loyalty discount (shh!).
The same goes for the other regulars. I remember them and they remember me when I return.
And I always return. The running joke in my circle of lager lovers is that I can usually be found haunting this jaunt. If there’s an after-party and I am asked for suggestions, my moral drinking compass points only in one direction.
Do you own a stake here, someone asked me the other night.
Funny, eh?
Recently, an acquaintance told me about her experience of having a personal shopper. She’s a regular customer with some of the biggest luxury brands at one of Delhi’s most prestigious shopping malls. Her personal shopper alerts her whenever something new comes in. He knows her shopping patterns, what she likes, what she doesn’t. He knows her usual.
Being a regular at a bar is something similar. I don’t need the menu to know what I want. There’s an unsaid telepathy between me and my favourite server. A look, a nod, a gesture, sometimes even a thumbs up. That’s all it takes for my usual drink to arrive at my table.
But before the first sip of beer registers and the hops explode over my taste buds, my man behind the bar knows the ritual: a tall glass of water, two cubes of ice. Hydration.
English novelist and poet Kingsley Amis, who wrote gloriously on the subject of drinking, believed that knowing your drink meant knowing a part of yourself. It also meant not wasting the server’s time, or yours for that matter, the precious seconds that are lost waiting on the menu. “If you don’t state a clear preference, then your drink is like a bad game of poker or a hasty drug transaction: it is whatever the dealer says it is,” Amis wrote in Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis.
That fluency, that understanding of rhythms and patterns of how an establishment functions, goes a long way towards making your relationship with a place stronger. The fact that I discovered this place with a partner I am not in touch with anymore tells you all you need to know. When I left a previous news organisation after a long stint, my colleagues gifted me a payment voucher for the brewpub. The only voucher ever made at the establishment. At least the voucher didn’t break my heart.
When you frequent a bar, you find a balance: it’s a community but also a neutral territory. The owner of the brewpub I spoke about at the beginning of this piece called me because he trusted a regular’s judgment and point of view.
Trust, it turns out, is a good friend when you are regular.
I trust the way the place functions. It’s completely fine, for instance, to have a fixed table. But it’s also equally classy to be a floater and work the floor on a busy night, when other discerning customers might be looking for a place to sit. I find it really cool to stand at the bar with a few other familiars, with a pint in your hand.
Orwell always likened the pub or your regular bar as a place of belonging. Amis believed it to be a place of ritual and familiarity. The modern-day bar regular will know what to order, where to sit or where not to sit. They will know when to talk and more importantly when not to talk. I have sat here in silence, in introspect, in admiration and grief. Holding a cold pint, as the condensation on the glass slowly moistens your palm, sometimes gives you clarity like nowhere else. It’s like going to the church, seeking silence. Maybe that’s what trust in a place really means: knowing it will hold your silence as readily as it holds your company.
I read a quote on Instagram recently, which sums up this part of being a regular perfectly. “Being recognised at a fancy restaurant is classy. Being recognised immediately at your local bar is an accomplishment.
If that’s not enough, here’s a pop-culture reference that best describes my relationship with this brewpub. Remember Shaun (Simon Pegg) from Shaun of the Dead? His ultimate plan to survive a zombie apocalypse was to hunker down at the Winchester, his favourite pub, and wait it out. Crazy, I know, but it’s a feeling very few understand.
The world might be ending. But how about we discuss that over a glass of beer?
I know a place.
To read more stories from Esquire India's October 2026 issue, pick up a copy of the magazine from your nearest newspaper stand or bookstore. Or click here to subscribe to the magazine.