The period of hibernation is now officially over and the mwah!-mwah! ladies are back to their air-kissing routines – the men always embrace like long-lost brothers — with the season’s new wardrobe carefully picked from cities around Europe, with nary a counterfeit bag, or shoe, in sight. Fake is passé, unless the plastic is on the face. Where once New Delhi’s chatterati would have tittered about the chief minister’s enforced ban on plastic, it’s raised no sniggers now: cosmetic surgery and uplifting, stretching, toning and shaping treatments are so routine, there’s no more scandal over the use of the scalpel, treated as little more than a minor medical inconvenience.
The capital started going svelte some years back, but it’s now blown into an epidemic. While the late-night glitterati haven’t shed their penchant for black, you can be sure you won’t spot a pot-belly anywhere in sight. To be unshapely is to be seriously obsolete. The cloned look is this season’s trend: the women all have the same hair (long, black, straight), the men gel theirs (and no, they aren’t allowed by fashion to go bald), they may not have abs but they don’t seem to have tummies either, and there’s nothing more serious than a fashion faux-pas. No more Ts to cocktails, no more torn jeans (only those uncouth Bollywood stars sport that scruffy look), no more getting drunk, no more being loud (despite the Lamborghinis and Porsches, Bentleys and Ferraris, in which they drive up to the porch), and any conversation about politics, or religion, is seriously gross.
No longer do men and women satiate their appetites separately, content to share notes and plates of salads that seem to consist of a lot of leaves and “no cheese, please”. No cheese? Maybe a clear soup though, skip the main course, skip the dessert, skip the coffee, a nibble of fruit perhaps, some sparkling water with a slice of lemon to accompany that, and the evening is off to a start.
Of course, you don’t sleep at night, not when there’s “darling Misty’s shower”, “Abe’s housewarming”, “Palak’s birthday”, all of them before you hit Anidra or Lap, Blue Frog or Hype, and allow yourselves a bucket of champagne. Mornings are for sleepovers and hangovers, so it’s a mystery when the city’s bright and beautiful work — but they must, if only to pay for their gyms and personal trainers and therapists. Breakfast is something that resembles birdseed, but lunch at home is no longer cooked — it’s curated by a chef with a fancy degree. A calorie-reading accompanies the plated offerings. Apparently it’s true: you need to eat very little to live.
Afternoons show up some gender discrimination. The women summon their chauffeurs to go shopping, the men drive to meetings. In reality, afternoons are when they cheat. She might have a coffee and, lustfully, a piece of cake. He might manage a whole samosa, or a quiche. And because they’re guilty, the conscience must be assuaged. She buys him another watch he’ll probably never wear; he calls to tell her to get those ear hoops she said she loved so much, so she will though already she’s bored because she saw another friend wear them and couldn’t possibly be seen in a similar pair — not after her friend wore them first.
But seriously, they’ll say to each other when they meet at night, it’s so hectic, this season, one can hardly wait for it to be summer again, if only because life is so much easier then.