The Age of Social Terrorism

COME OCTOBER, the pangs of social terrorism will inflict themselves on you when you are least prepared. Your choices will define your host’s stature rather than your own. Delhi, the citadel of ostentation, unfurls itself just before Diwali and everyone then begins to check their stress levels which are directly proportional to the number of invitations they get. More people spend time in their cars rushing from one party to another than they actually spend at the parties they are invited to. Given the shortage of celebrity caterers, you can determine the cuisine of the evening by just spotting a server. And you will then know if it’s Marut Sikka, Puneet Sikand, or Varun Tulli.

These parties are the epitome of both social and cultural evolution: at one such party, someone asked me what I was busy with, and I replied The Golden Road (William Dalrymple’s brilliant new book), and this bloke embarked on fulsome praise for Nitin Gadkari. Thank the Lord, I do crosswords, I have a twisted mind and couldn’t fathom what he was actually saying. Not surprising that India’s soft power has now been converted into horsepower measuring the power of your Maybach. Then there is of course the timing of your arrival. Being born and raised in Calcutta, time for me is sacrosanct and now at the age of 61, I am not going to change. And Delhi helps if you read. I almost often carry a book to any dinner knowing that I may have to wait for the hosts to be ready and I don’t find it embarrassing at all. The irony is neither do the hosts. Some are laced with empathy: who will call me before their parties to say that while the invitation mentions 8PM, please don’t come before 9.30PM.

But then there’s another set of people in Delhi who never read their invitations. Some will land up for dinner on April 28 when the card says May 28 but that is something you will have to learn to live with. I have often wondered how some of these people, who are successful business persons, run their empires when it is so difficult for them to read and comprehend a simple invitation card.

There is also the whole issue of themes. In the good old days when someone invited you to a Diwali party, you knew what to expect. You went in Indian attire and if you played cards (which I never have), you sat at the table; either made money or lost; beat up someone and left. Today, things have become thematic. A friend of mine visiting from London told me he was invited by some gutka bloke to an ‘Emily in Paris’ themed party for Diwali. Using my crossword-trained mind, I tried to find some correlation but just couldn’t. Now, why on earth would you have an ‘Emily in Paris’ theme when most of your guests look as if they have just walked out of a Karol Bagh showroom? Why would you take out your anger on the increasing subscription fees of Netflix on a hapless and hopeless guest list? But then, when you have bought your Rolls and your Bell helicopter, what else can (or will) you spend on? Philanthropy is a word that these folks don’t understand.

I think it’s time to return to the fervour and flavour of the old. Where festivals are spent with family and friends. Where diyas light up the room and not some miserable shiny apparel or lab-grown diamonds. Where you savour the year gone by through anecdotes and not shopping lists, and where smiles are real and not dentistry provided. I am sure there are many homes where the old is the constant but that’s now becoming scarcer.

In these times of social upmanship and social terrorism, you are left with fewer and more feeble choices. The fear that is now all-pervasive is where do you go and what do you skip? And this form of terrorism is worse than any other. God forbid if one of your so-called hosts finds out you went to some other dinner rather than theirs, your vanvasa would make Lord Ram’s look like kindergarten. Which is why the best antidote to this is to tell everyone you are travelling and instead read a fine book.

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