The Indian propensity for bureaucracy is well-known: just ask anyone who has bought a rail ticket using Indian Railway’s arcane and Byzantine ticketing system that requires you to approach one counter to acquire a form to request your ticket, then another counter to pay (but that’s a story for another day).

Take my current accommodation – a private club in Bombay – which epitomises India’s love affair with all things bureaucratic. Despite being winter, temperatures here are what I would consider a “warm summer’s day” so the promise of a swim in the club’s pool was one key reason for staying at the establishment. Hour one of my stay found me front and centre at the pool’s reception desk in my swimmers and flip-flops.

“I’m sorry sir, your swim-wear is inappropriate,” said the young woman behind the desk.

Mortified that perhaps I’d forgotten to dress (a recurring nightmare of mine) I looked down at my blue board shorts, then up at the young woman, then down at my knee-length board shorts once more, just in case I’d dreamt the first look. Nope, they were there.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, nonplussed.

Without saying a word she stood up, turned around and pulled back a curtain revealing a hand-painted sign depicting appropriate and non-appropriate swim-wear. In the acceptable column were Speedos (aka “budgie smugglers” aka “banana hammock”) and “lycra shorts”. In the verboten column there was only one item – board shorts.

Now, there is no civilisation on Earth that post-1979 still considers the budgie smuggler an “acceptable” form of swim-wear and looking at the patrons in the pool only confirmed this view. Hairy male muffin tops and arse cracks are really not the thing that people should be exposed to – which is why I do not own a pair of the offending swimmers. I hide under a pair of rather voluminous knee-length shorts.

My attempts to reason that my choice of attire was far more modest and tasteful than the acceptable options fell on deaf ears. “Regulations” was the only reply I got. I was fighting the system and when it came to bureaucracy the house was always going to win.

Just as it won in the bar later that evening. Abandoning the idea of a swim, the next best thing was going to be a stiff gin and tonic in the bar overlooking the pool. It would have been perfect except for the fact that whoever built the bar decided that a view of the pool might cheer the place up a bit and so walled off any chance of a nice aqua-tinted outlook. With a large group of us on hand it was the waiters’ turn to be nonplussed when we asked them to push two tables together.

“It’s not possible,” was the reply.

Sensing that the answer to “why” would be “regulations” I suggested we just sit at two tables next to each other.

But no.

We were all ordering drinks together and so had to sit together, despite the fact that eight of us were required to squeeze around a table designed for six. This time I had to ask – “why?”

“There are only two of you at that table – other guests may want to sit there,” said the head barman.

Looking around the empty bar I didn’t consider this to be an entirely likely option, so I offered a compromise: we’d move if anyone wanted our seats. My friend was not in a negotiating mood and a stand-off developed – eight thirsty, would-be drinkers on one side, an ever-growing number of waiters on the other. Sensing that once again that regulations and years of protocol were going to defeat us, we turned around and faced the one table.

Bureaucracy 2 Common sense 0

The hat-trick came in the bathroom, where the only option in the shower was “scaldingly, blindingly hot water” or no water. Someone had forgotten to attach a cold water pipe to the shower. With the accumulated dirt, grime, crap and sweat of a day in Bombay on me, I really needed to clean up, but getting under the water meant risking third-degree burns. The only option was to stand out of the stream and splash myself with enough water to clean myself as best I could. For two days I showered like this until I noticed what appeared to be an extraneous tap on the toilet cistern. Reaching out of the shower and turning the tap on resulted in a glorious flow of clear, cold water.

“What the fuck?!” My mind raced at the thought of a plumber realising he’d forgotten to put in a cold water pipe. I guessed that regulations prevented him doing the job over so he simply figured: “I know, I’ll re-route the water that was meant for the toilet.”

Not that I cared. I raced to get my board shorts on and stood under the cool flow doing virtual laps in my own vertical pool wearing my inappropriate swim-wear.

That would show ’em.