It’s the Bombay incarnation of that backpacker bar you find in every city in the world.

The Leopold café was always packed, always lively and always a little charmless. No self-respecting local would sit below the rickety overhead fans but white Westerners poured in to share tall stories, Kingfisher beer and cigarettes for more than 100 years.

My brief visit to the busy bar seven years ago ended abruptly when my girlfriend and I were asked to refrain from completing our game of chess. The surly waiter interrupted, as I closed in on her king, to point out that board games were prohibited from the venue - presumably because moving the pieces may have slowed the consumption of our beer.

The money churning aspiration of the owner was evident but understandable and the full tables proved that if people noticed they were unconcerned.

In the short time between sitting down and falling foul of the gaming guidelines, the bar’s backpacker status was underlined to us in traditional fashion. The gentleman at the next table leaned over, explained that he was heading for the airport, pressed a loosely wrapped block of hash into my palm and promptly disappeared.

The Lonely Planet has it about right: “Drawn like moths to a Kingfisher flame, most tourists end up at this Mumbai traveller's institution at one time or another. Around since 1871, Leopold's has open-plan seating and a rambunctious atmosphere conducive to swapping tales with random strangers.”

Authentic Bombay nightlife it is not, but especially since it was romanticised in Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram in 2003, it has become iconic in its own right.

In Roberts’s account the bar is a modern take on the Café Americain which stars in Casablanca. The reality falls short but the art deco signage and location in the centre of the tourist district of Colaba make it a staple of visits to Bombay

Diane and Michael Murphy, a retired British couple on an exotic holiday, were sitting in the Leopold on their very first day in the city yesterday. In retrospect this bastion of Westerners was an obvious target.

Mrs Murphy, 58, was shot in the foot and her husband, 59, was left in intensive care in a Bombay hospital after a bullet passed through his ribcage and ruptured his spleen.

Details of injuries and fatalities are still emerging but the Leopold has taken a macabre step towards even greater renown.

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