This time, exactly a hundred years ago, Delhi was buzzing with a humdinger of a party, bigger than anything it had hosted before, or since. The occasion was a durbar – larger even then anything the Mughals, known for their opulence, might have put up – and the princes who had been commanded to put in an appearance by Emperor George V and Queen Mary had spent months preparing their wardrobes, commissioning gifts for the visiting royals and practising their curtseys.
A hundred years ago, Delhi had been reduced to a mofussil town, important for its strategic location but little else. But George and Mary’s symbolic laying of the foundation stone of the new capital called for celebrations on a scale that no city had probably seen before. There were, after all, 568 princely states big and small that had all arrived with their entourages of wives, ministers, secretaries, aides-de-camp, cooks, butlers, drivers, doctors, astrologers and even their menageries of pets, accompanied by carriages of clothes, jewellery and all the creature comforts that would make their stay in the tented cities that had sprung up in the flat plains around Delhi bearable. Smoke clung to the braziers, silk carpets were rolled out in the tents, silver beds and chairs were ordered for their ease, cauldrons bubbled with hot bath water for the royal households, kitchens rolled out strictly Hindu meals, kosher Muslim ones and bland European fare as princes entertained each other, argued over taxes, debated the claustrophobic hold the political agents and residents had over their states, and bickered over the concessions some had wrested to their benefit over others who hadn’t been as fortunate.
In spite of the orderly parades and processions and presentations of nazar, the couple hosting the grand party must have wondered at the underlying chaos that marked clan relations, dynastic legacies and claims of hierarchy and superiority. That they were perhaps paupers compared to the wealth of some of the princes attending to them must have rankled sufficiently to condone segregation on the basis of colour. But here was pomp and ceremony — and champagne, to boot. Each camp had brought hundreds of bottles of the best, the meat that was served included duck and venison and wild boar that must have considerably diminished the scrub forests around the city of wildlife. Jewellers from Europe were in attendance, photographers had to schedule princely appointments double-quick, there was polo, cricket, croquet, picnics and the charms of shopping from vendors in the old city to boot.
How many of those present on that occasion would recognise the Delhi of today? No other Indian city has changed as much in a century, going from the medieval ages to a sleepy capital to world city on steroids. The plains around the city have all but disappeared, the winter is no longer as cold, the romantic ruins and magnificent architecture have been overtaken by an encroaching megalopolis marked by a sterile skyline, the ridge is bereft of game, politicians have replaced the squabbling royals, and jewellers and couturiers now pay court to a newer jet set of millionaire and billionaire merchants. If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, it is Delhi’s love of a good party … hundreds of which will take place in the city’s commemorative week. If most revellers will be oblivious to the occasion, it is because Delhi has turned its back on its past. Perhaps it is India’s only city that, far from being concerned even with the present, dares to look the future in the eye. George and Mary would have been as disconcerted by Delhi in 2011 as they had probably been in 1911.