Gormint approved drinking places

From bullock-cart to Benz. Whoever coined that term to describe Gurgaon/Gurgawa got it bang on. This is a city of extremes, no question.
A case in point is its liquor policy. When I moved here fourteen years ago, a month after I arrived, so did prohibition. Just like that, with no warning, no gradual leading up to it, no testing of the waters. Kapow! One day you were an honest citizen enjoying your glass of beer or wine in the comfort of your own home, and the next day you were a criminal for doing the exact same thing, and if caught by the minions of the law, were liable to be chucked into jail for what was decreed a non-bailable offence.
The people of Gurgaon panicked, and many were the distress sales of alcohol as terrified homeowners tried to rid their premises of the suddenly-contraband stuff by offering it at throwaway prices to their friends who swooped down in gleeful hordes from Delhi. Outside liquor vends there were drunken mobs, trying to drink down every drop they could before the end of the day, following which the bottles of beers, wines and spirits were to be smashed and poured away, leading to gutters overflowing with alcohol and the sight of distinctly wobbly cows and pigs that had drunk from them.
For two months short of two years the city was eerily dry. People would go to neighbouring Delhi to have a drink and country-liquor vends sprang up on roadsides just across the Delhi-Haryana border, with the government of Delhi raking in the revenues lost to the government of Haryana. But even detractors of the sarkar must admit that it's not completely dumb; although it took twenty-two months, the penny did eventually drop, and as abruptly as it was imposed, prohibition was repealed. Never one to do things by halves, the sarkar organised a convoy of trucks loaded with booze which rolled into Gurgaon to the cheers of the populace. The lead truck was garlanded like a bridegroom and a foo-foo band playing 'Meri Sapnon ki Rani' marched before it, leading 'baraatis' energetically dancing the bhangra as they escorted it across the border. Never did Majnu come home to a more ecstatic Laila than booze to Gurgaon.
That homecoming was the start of an unbridled license to drink. Anytime, anywhere, all day, all night. Gurgaon's liquor shops mushroomed across the landscape; you could hardly walk a hundred metres without tripping over one - or having one of its unsteadily swaying patrons tripping over you.
And now, going the whole hog, there are not just liquor shops, but what are described as 'Gormint approved drinking places'. A tiny one on the road just before Garden Estate is named Smuggler's Restaurant, and a large, noisy one adjoining the wall of the Media Centre, where I live, is named Machan.
When the residents of the Media Centre go for their morning or evening constitutionals on the circular road on our side of the wall, where children cycle and babies are pushed in strollers for their daily airing, our exercise is enlivened by the sound of voices shouting in affectionate camaraderie, gaily tossing around gaalis involving mothers and sisters and brothers-in-law. This is fine; one can always stuff cotton in ones ears to avoid eavesdropping on such private conversations. But when it comes to stuffing cotton plugs into my nostrils to avoid inhaling the odours that emanate over the wall as beer-laden bladders are relieved against it (along with other bodily receptacles that I would rather not mention), I admit failure.
Welcome to Smellinnium City.