Malavika Sangghvi writes on Delhi’s Belly

On a roll

Restaurateur Zorawar Kalra, the son of India’s preeminent foodie Jiggs Kalra, is on a roll. This week, his Massive Restaurants won seven titles at a recently concluded food awards show in the Capital, including ‘Restaurant of the Year’ for Masala Library, ‘Mixologist of the Year’ for Farzi Café, ‘Noteworthy New Restaurant’ for Pa Pa Ya, Saket, ‘Best North Indian Standalone’ for Made in Punjab, for Gurugram and Noida, ‘Best Venue for Gigs’ for Farzi Café and ‘Overall Restaurateur of the Year.’ And if this was not vindication enough for the hardworking young man, his newly opened Farzi Café in Dubai has been unofficially declared as Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum’s favourite eatery, having dropped in for a quick bite more than once.

All this success and growth, however, comes with a price.

“People see only one side of you,” posted Kalra’s wife Dildeep on the occasion, adding: “Honestly, no one knows the pains or stress you take. The fact that you are so excited about your work that you don’t sleep nearly enough, or that you don’t take any vacations at all”. Time to pack those bags now.

The whole nine yards

Given her palpable political zeal and the long hours she puts in to defend her party practically every evening on prime-time TV, it’s ironic that when BJP spokesperson Shaina NC (inset) appeared in Delhi, it was to showcase her talent as a designer. The well-known Mumbai-based advocate of the sari had been invited to present a collection this week at the Amazon India Fashion Week Autumn-Winter 2017 organised by Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), which had declared Jharkhand as its partner state.

Shaina had long been associated with the state. Not only had she held a show based on its exquisite tussar during the Surajkund Mela, following which her designs had been displayed at the Global Investors’ Summit, but she had also taken a clutch of fellow designers like Rina Dhaka and Shruti Sancheti to meet the state’s Chief Minister Raghubar Das, to pledge their support to promote Jharkhand’s fabrics and weaves. “The CM wanted us to help promote Jharcraft on the international stage and we readily agreed,” she says, adding: “I had visited Jharcraft a few months ago, and though there was undoubted talent at the grassroots, fashion nuances were sadly lacking. As a designer, I am now trying to make Jharcraft’s products market-ready with a modern twist, so that they get their due.”

However, what most want to know is when is Delhi going to afford Shaina her due? Articulate, with a modern outlook  and politically savvy, this  daughter of one of Mumbai’s venerable old clans, with deep links to its business and film communities and intelligentsia, appears to be long overdue for recognition herself. Will her political work be rewarded with a meaty assignment soon?

How to lose friends and entertain people

Oh dear! Can there be a crushing electoral defeat without the knives being brought out soon after? After Congress’s debacle in UP, and the sorry spectacle of it snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Manipur and Goa, the blame game within has started. Whereas the churning has seen a sizeable number of leaders train their guns at the usual suspects — the VP, the avuncular but ditsy grandee who tutors him, among others, one key member of Team RaGa has come in for particular flak. “He blamed the media and branded journalists like Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai and Nidhi Razdan as bhakts,” says a party member in horror, adding: “Rahul Gandhi’s office is the only public office where members in the office tweet publicly. This keeps media in Delhi guessing if these are the personal views of the leader himself”.

With this loose cannon’s indiscriminate attack on media persons, who were traditionally viewed as favourable (he had even tweeted that a leading national daily favoured the RSS), party men say he made the job of the communication cell even more difficult. This view is buttressed by the fact that a senior hack from the paper had dismissed his micro-blogging efforts as ‘entertaining’.

“In an environment where the Congress has lost narrative, it’s just abysmal PR!” says the Congress insider. Indeed.

Ab Dilli door nahin

The India Today Conclave, one of the Capital’s celebrated annual events, held in Mumbai for the first time, saw its fair share of melding between the cognoscenti of both cities this week. PR maven Dilip Cherian was spotted trying enthusiastically to catch industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla’s eye (the latter was in the audience to hear his daughter Ananya speak); YES Bank’s head honcho Rana Kapoor was seen leaving the hall with his arm around politico Amar Singh, and sundry socialites from both cities matched cerebral and sartorial brownie points  at the evening’s gala dinner. But the highlight of the first day, according to many, was when Mumbai’s bright spark industrialist Anand Mahindra was pitted against his Delhi counterpart NITI Aayog’s Amitabh Kant for a session titled: ‘The New Fault Lines: Global Economy, Local Flux’. “Both men, who are known to be progressive, visionaries and preternaturally articulate, were asked what they’d do if they were to switch jobs,” said an attendee. ‘Ab Dilli door nahin’ was the verdict after the session.

Not a moment too early?

For those who think that governments were formed with unseemly haste in Goa and Manipur, here’s something to chew on. “The convention has always been to call the leader of the biggest party in the house to form the government,” says political observer Mohan Guruswamy, adding: “This was the reason why ex-president SD Sharma, himself an eminent constitutional lawyer, called AB Vajpayee to form the government despite the numbers clearly stacked against the BJP.” Guruswamy goes on to say: “The president explained his reasons at length, first to Vajpayee and then to the Congress-led delegation that visited him. Vajpayee was given two weeks to prove his majority. He didn’t even try. He quit on the 13th day as the cobbled up opposition held. That’s how we got the narcoleptic  (don’t we just love the word?) Deve Gowda as prime minister and the hapless IK Gujral after him.

Certainly Vajpayee was the better man, but Parliament thought otherwise.” There’s a catch: Long periods given to prove majorities can be misused. “The Vajpayee government used the 13 days to approve the Enron deal, tried to scrap the Sukhoi deal and even ordered the AEC/DRDO to conduct a nuclear test,” he says. 

Unseemly haste in Manipur and Goa or commendable political prudency? Only time will tell.