Last Round at Gymkhana

LET US PAUSE for a moment of silence. Not for Ukraine. Not for Gaza. Not even for the rupee. Let us pause for the Delhi Gymkhana member: that magnificent, irreplaceable specimen of post-colonial entitlement, who woke up last week to discover that his 113-year-old watering hole is being shut down by June 5. The president of India, through the Land & Development Office, has essentially said what every outsider has wanted to say for decades: Time's up, darlings. Clear your whisky glasses and go home. The question that grips the nation is a simple but profound one: What on earth will these people do with themselves?

Let us begin with the retired IAS officer. This man has spent 40 years believing that the arc of the moral universe bends towards his reserved parking spot at Gymkhana. His entire social architecture has collapsed like a badly cooked soufflé. Hewill nowhavetogo toIndiaInternational Centre. This will kill him faster than his cholesterol.

Then there is the Delhi housewife who has been on the waiting list since 1987. She has outlasted six governments, two husbands' promotions, and one full renovation of her Vasant Vihar kitchen waiting for that membership. She is currently lying in a darkened room. I pray for her.

The military folks will manage. They always do. They'll simply march into the next available institution with the same ramrod posture. But even they will miss the Gymkhana pool, that chlorinated symbol of a republic that believed its officers deserved to swim in Lutyens' Delhi while the rest of India stood in line for water tankers.

The politicians, naturally, are having a field day pointing fingers. Congress has already suggested, with the subtlety of a foghorn, that Rahul Gandhi's membership is the real reason behind the closure. That is, of course, a delicious theory: the idea that the Central government would demolish 113 years of institutional history just to inconvenience one man who already jogs in public and doesn't need a club pool. But in India, no conspiracy theory is too baroque to be completely dismissed.

Meanwhile, 500 employees-bearers, groundsmen, cooks who have been making the same club sandwich since 1978-have been told that their services are no longer required. These are the people nobody in the signature campaign is actually thinking about.

The members are rushing to the Delhi High Court; the staff is busy wondering how to pay school fees in June. Spot the difference between the two groups and you've understood everything about how Indian institutions work.

The India Habitat Centre will see a surge. The Chelmsford Club will suddenly become aspirational. The Imperial Hotel bar will be overwhelmed by retired ambassadors nursing single malts and their memories. Somewhere in South Delhi, a Punjabi businessman is already converting his farmhouse into something he will call 'The Meadows-A Private Member's Experience', with a WhatsApp group and a joining fee of `40 lakh.

And what of the great Gymkhana building itself-27.3 acres of Lutyens'-planned, history-soaked prime land, now vesting absolutely in the president of India for "defence infrastructure"? One shudders to think. In this republic, 'defence infrastructure' can mean anything from a genuine security facility to a very large office for a very important officer who needed a nicer address.

The real tragedy is not the club's closure. Clubs come and go. The real tragedy is what the Gymkhana represented-the last great fiction that independent India was run by a meritocratic, secular establishment that lunched together and argued in good faith. That fiction has been unravelling for years. The government just handed it the eviction notice.

So, raise a final glass, Gymkhana members. Raise it to the bearer who remembered your drink order for 30 years and never got a bonus. Raise it to a republic that gives land on perpetual lease and then reclaims it on a Friday afternoon with 10 days' notice. And raise it, most of all, to yourselves, the last true believers in an India that no longer exists. The bar is now closed. The tab, as always, will be settled by someone else.

As for me: I applied for membership 37 years ago. And never got in. This closure hurts even more because I always lived in hope.