I was caught between two conflicting narratives of Diwali in Delhi, a tale, in a sense, of two cities. One friend warned me that the traffic would be intolerable and the parties interminable. His advice - step out only to go to work and to shop for essentials - sounded similar to those one received when Hong Kong was hit by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) more than a decade ago. The other was the view of a friend who moved back from the US about 10 months ago and thought Diwali in Delhi was half the reason to return, a time of bright lights and gay festivities.
Within hours of the first friend's warning, I was in a traffic snarl so intense last Saturday evening near Lajpat Nagar's popular market that I was 15 minutes late for a physio's appointment. I would have been later but for the fact that I abandoned my taxi, whose driver, very unusually for Uber, had taken a decidedly long and winding route to get me there. I ran the last one and a half km to the clinic. For part of the way, I found myself squeezing past cycle-rickshaws wedged against cars as the jam worsened. After my treatment, I was ditched by the next Uber cab I hailed; Diwali traffic indeed was turning the natural order of things on its head. I was left forlorn in the clinic, where I had been waiting for 20 minutes, till the physio Jatin offered to drop me back to the office since he was heading roughly in that direction.
Dropped off near an underpass on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, I turned philosophical as I contemplated this act of kindness by someone at the end of his long work day as I picked my way through the puddles of sewage water that are part of the scenery at one end of Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg. A pipe appears to have broken more than a fortnight ago without a repair crew anywhere in sight. Swachh Bharat may be a rousing clarion call by the prime minister, but news of the effort has not reached the office district that houses The Times of India, Indian Express and Business Standard. What I realised was I could tiptoe around Diwali in Delhi and grumble about the toing and froing - or revel in the enhanced sense of community and camaraderie.
Since this was my first Diwali in Delhi since I was in college in the city, I decided to attend every party I was invited to. They were mostly small family affairs, which is to say there was little of the air-kissing my colleague Kishore Singh abhors (People like Us). In any case, if SARS taught us anything, air-kissing is actually sensible.
Inclined as I am to be Scrooge at festivals, there was so much bonhomie, good taste, generosity and love on display that I was converted. One of the parties I attended took place in a small cottage at the back of a mansion with a courtyard that looked out of a fairy tale. The card games were in an upstairs aangan designed with irregular marble slabs bought by the host's mother years ago. Listening to her wonderful description of buying the marble reminded me of a scene in Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh; the Canton tiles of the Jewish synagogue in Cochin are similarly dissimilar. At another party, which often seemed like a completely unexpected college reunion, the setting was the rooftop of the three-floor building. It had been turned into a secret garden, complete with grass on the terrace and creepers wrapping themselves so effectively around the ubiquitous and ugly water tanks of Delhi that they were rendered invisible. I have rarely been in an urban setting so delightfully transformed. I had come from a quasi-work cocktail at a five star hotel, where I cut a less than distinguished figure in a deep pink kurta. Everything at this party seemed so much more memorable, starting with a march-past of marigolds that led to the second floor front door where I met, again unexpectedly, the Pune-based mother of a Hong Kong friend, who was my original connection with the hosts.
And so it went till on Diwali itself I wound up at three parties in succession - one at a childhood friend's from Kolkata, another at the home of my more gifted tennis partner from school and a third hosted by the parents of a friend from Hong Kong. For starters, the evening was a car commercial of empty roads, making getting to three homes easy enough. And I wouldn't have missed all the intra-family ribbing for the world. At one, when the host's mother won the first game of cards with bets of Rs 20 each on the table, her whoop of delight prompted her mischievous grandson to whisper: "I don't think I have ever seen anyone so happy."
In a sense, I had never seen Delhi so happy, which is what made Diwali special. And one of the happiest events of all celebrated the beginning of a new year and a new book, but had little to do with Diwali. The launch at the India International Centre of Leila Seth's Talking Of Justice, a book on the shortcomings of India's justice system, was enlivened by the late arrival of Gopal Subramaniam. He was, of course, stuck in traffic on his way from the airport, but paid a warm tribute to the author, who has eloquently voiced her support for the rights of women, the rights of homosexuals and the rights of juvenile criminals. Justice Seth, who turned 84 on Monday, was in stellar form. She received a standing ovation at the end, even before Vikram Seth led the audience into a wonderfully festive rendition of "Happy Birthday to you".
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