Diwali card parties are all about high glamour and even higher stakes.
It sliced through Delhi’s creamy layer like a knife through ghee, and the mention of it still manages to rearrange the countenance of even the most stiff upper-lipped Gurgaon country squire. Imagine the wicked shame of it, the delicious horror, the hours of unholy carping when two of the Capital’s most eminent high rollers — both by a bizarre coincidence answering to the same first name — almost came to blows over an unpaid Diwali party gambling debt that was rumoured to be in the vicinity of a crore.
Mind you this was almost a decade ago, when a crore was still a crore and hadn’t been devalued by political scams that run into hundreds of thousands of crores. “I know of a high profile table a few years ago at which a Bentley was lost over teen patti,” says Ravina Raj Kohli, the founder and executive director of JobCorp, known for driving a Ferrari in a sari.
During the festival of lights, a significant part of urban India takes to gambling to propitiate Goddess Laxmi, some for fun, some for tradition and some for greed. But none do it with such fervour as the scions of Delhi’s old established business families.
Suhel Seth, maverick social commentator and founder of marketing consultancy Counselage, is not afraid to call a spade a shovel. “ In Delhi it’s the color of money; in Mumbai it’s the address of the person and in Calcutta it’s just the person,” he says of the three cities he’s gambled in.
“Delhi definitely is the World capital for Diwali Parties,” says Lalit Modi, the IPL emperor in exile and an avid card-player, from London. “People here look forward to their annual card binges. At the same time, it is very social. Mumbai, on the other hand, I have found to be more intimate and revolves more around playing cards; socialising is just secondary. London is smaller; there are a fewer parties with Indian friends catching up with each other.”
“Delhi, without a doubt, has the best Diwali card parties, “ says Ravina Kohli. “Shiv and Guddu Nadar and Kavita and Sanju Bali pull out all the stops with elaborate décor, great booze and food, and multiple card tables and a great classy crowd. Delhi has scale and money to show, and hospitality reaches its peak at Diwali,” she adds.
More From This Section
But Mumbai is no slouch when it comes to OTT. High-profile card parties in Mumbai, like much else in the city, follow a North-South divide, with the suburbs hosting Bollywood card parties — the most famous being the one held at Amitabh Bachchan’s Jalsa — where bonhomie, good-natured jousting and small stakes underline the benign mood of the evening. It’s so different from those held in South Mumbai where cigar-chomping, whisky-guzzling business folk risk health, reputation and fortune (and marriage) at the card tables.
But whether in Mumbai, Delhi or Kolkata, tradition is the order of the day. Diwali parties are a time when socialites put aside their little black dresses and Jimmy Choos and don their OTT ethnic threads with a vengeance. Their menfolk follow suit by wearing attire that once was associated with fancy dress costuming. Men and women sail through the several parties of the day clad in elaborate extravaganza and every one looks like they’ve walked off a Karan Johar film set (and they probably have!).
The middle-aged daughter of one of Mumbai’s most prominent film families says, “ In my parent’s time, they lost Mercedes cars. The setting at today’s film parties is traditional: candles, torans, rangoli, the clothes, colors and jewellery are traditional. The food is well thought out with a lot of finger food, so one can keep eating while playing. The men who want to gamble seriously for higher stakes grab the card tables, the women sit and play teen patti for small amounts on the mattresses. There is a warm friendly atmosphere and the party generally ends up in the wee hours of the morning when everyone goes off to a nearby hotel for beer and breakfast — mind you, after a night of heavy drinking!”
But perhaps things have changed a little post scam-tainted 2010 and pre-impending financial crisis?
“This year, Diwali is thandaa with a more discreet and socially conscious approach to entertaining (thank god). OTT is becoming uncool finally,” concurs Kohli. A third observer says young people prefer paying poker (for high stakes) to the traditional teen patti.
But whether social responsibility tamps down the conspicuous consumption, the Diwali card party is not going anywhere in a hurry: folklore has it that those who don’t indulge in some form of gambling during Diwali are destined to be born as donkeys in their next lives. there’s even a win- win for everyone in the form of rich rewards for the winners and the consolation that the losers are “unlucky in cards, but lucky in love!”
