Helen Pidd’s Letter from India: it’s no easy matter being a woman looking for a decent drink in Delhi

I had already scandalised a local friend by buying the beer. Anita and I were in the back of a taxi when I asked her to tell the driver, in Hindi, to take us to a Wine Shop. She was aghast. “I just can’t,” she said. “You’ll have to do it in English.” She refused to come into the shop with me and looked on in horror as I staggered back to the car with a crate of Kingfisher. Indian girls might drink alcohol, but they cannot be seen in public buying it. Same with many Muslims. I had a tour of Old Delhi from a thirtysomething who lamented that he would have been a sommelier had he been born into another religion in another life.

Photograph: Macduff Everton/Corbis