Dressed in a pink, strappy dress, 24-year-old Shahana Minz surveys her bar-room opponents. She might have been a college party beer pong champion, but she figures this match at Calcutta’s Sports Bar is going to be way tougher. Beer pong, for those who haven’t tried their luck at it, is a game involving throwing a ping-pong ball across a table into a glass. If you succeed, your opponent has to drink the beer and, obviously, the more he drinks, the harder it gets to aim!

Like Shahana, people from all ages are thronging pubs on weekdays in Calcutta to bond by competing in games and trivia matches. And drinks and prizes are the chasers to an evening of good fun.

One pub pulling in crowds is Xrong Place, a rock-and-retro establishment in south Calcutta, which hosts the weekly shaver contest. Teams must shave off foam sprayed on a balloon with a razor without bursting it and the fastest to do so wins. But to grab the grand dinner-for-two prize, you have to win the triathlon — the shaver-shooter-sucker contest. To win the shooter, a contestant must down the most pre-mixed shots. To capture the sucker, they have to suck drinks the fastest. Then, there’s the Beer Olympics with that old-time favourite — the Chugathon. If you win, you take home a crate of beer.

Amit Hathiramani, owner of pubs like Xrong Place, The Loft and The Great Booze Story, says games have drawn customers in droves. “In Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, the pub culture is more developed but Calcutta’s is nascent. When we took over Xrong Place in 2013, people would only go out for a drink on the weekends.  That’s all changed.”

Ashok Singh, owner of Sports Bar, tucked away in a busy area of Salt Lake, decided to have games like Sip-Sip-Shot in which a group sits in a circle and a player taps people on the head to take a sip. Then someone calls “shot” and that person has to gulp a shot. The pub also organises the Name Game which is played in a large group and it begins with one player naming a celebrity. The next person has to name another whose name begins with the last letter of the previous celebrity’s name. Anybody who fails to rattle off the name immediately has to drink a shot. This game, Singh says, is a real ice-breaker: “It’s astonishing to see how even strangers bond. We’ve had guests who’ve come alone and joined a group playing. There’s so much interaction, they become friends.”

While most pub games encourage you just to let your hair down, The Irish House makes you exercise your grey matter and their Tuesday Trivia is one of Calcutta’s most popular pub evenings. It’s a quiz and the winner bags a Rs 500 voucher. “The questions are about cricket, football, entertainment, beer, music, movies, culture, and the city. We avoid politics,” says Debayan Datta, The Irish House’s restaurant manager.

 

Trivia was designed to appeal to weekday crowds. “We decided to design activities where pub staff would interact with the guests directly. There are games in which people just drink and win prizes or lose, but in Tuesday Trivia, there’s lots of crowd interaction,” says Dipanjan Sarkar, the assistant marketing manager of The Irish House.

Meanwhile, at Calcutta’s Hoppipola, the staff organises creative days in which guests turn bartenders and devise new drinks. Their Luck of Hoppiness is a game exclusively meant for ladies where they get to win a shot of their favourite drink. Then, there’s Hathiramani’s team which customises games that are hugely popular in the West to suit Indian pub-hoppers.

“In general, the response to hosting activities has been overwhelming, says Pushpendu Kayal, assistant manager of Hoppipola. “Yes, the prizes are interesting but people enjoy these games and activities so much out of the sheer joy of involvement and having a fun-filled outing with friends and even strangers,” he says. Singh says, “While there are people who like to enjoy a drink in a pub corner, there are others who love to have fun while chatting and downing a beer. These games are perfect for them.”

So, like Shahana, who eventually won three rounds of beer pong and took home a Rs 1,000 voucher and lots of good memories, you too can have a fun-filled evening with friends — and make new pals — over rounds of your favourite drink. Get ready to enjoy!