It's death by night at Lost Vegas

MUMBAI: This is a good city. It does not watch strip shows, does not officially gamble, does not order drinks after half past midnight and does not pick up anything that makes mom angry.
It drinks its milk and goes to bed before Wee Willie Winkie arrives. Welcome to the Lost Vegas of India. A city that shimmered in the romantic imagination of the rest of the country and was envied for footloose cosmopolitanism and partying has set itself bed timings.
After a police raid on strip club Blue Nile in downtown Colaba set the sun on the last of the city cabarets last week, citizens are questioning the authorities'' rights to apply their moral codes on the nightlife of an entire adult population.
More importantly, people are questioning their hypocrisy. Cabarets, for instance, are allowed inside five-star hotels, which get exotic belly dancers and cabaret artistes from Brazil, Russia and Turkey, while janta joints like Blue Nile are targeted.
One can drink through the night in a five-star,while there is a 00.30 a.m. deadline on serving liquor at lesser bars and a 1.30 a.m. deadline on closure, supposedly because of law and order problems. Gambling thrives in grubby, roadside dens while governments in other countries earn revenue from legalised casinos.
While sex workers are chased out of Khetwadi to facilitate the growth of software offices, prostitution proliferates like a hyper-hormonal weed across suburbia.
"Nightlife is being driven underground. Lowlife ''tadipaar'' guys are running prostitution chains and drinking joints outside octroi nakas. Hoards of bars have come up. Liquor is cheap. It means the government is actually encouraging a citizen to go there for a nightlife," says gay activist and Bombay Dost editor Ashok Row Kavi. "Puritanism of the Left and puritanism of the Right are both dangerous."
Citizens say that every international city keeps awake round the clock. One can sip martinis beside Sydney harbour throughout the night, dance until dawn to bhangra trance in a London nightclub or gamble until broke at a Bangkok casino.
But Mumbai is busy regressing into a yawning small-town, say citizens.