From PM Modi's Harvard comment to marching ahead: Delhi’s Belly by Malavika Sangghvi

Marching ahead

The next few weeks will see a spate of high profile birthday celebrations in the Capital as March throws up a shoalful of fishy janamdins. NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant and TV newscaster Vinod Dua have birthdays this month, as do Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, woman-about-town Bina Ramani, media maven Tarun Tejpal, graphics guru Vivek Sahini, Sufi songstress Zila Khan and grande dame and uber garment exporter Mani Mann. The month will also see Congressman Shashi Tharoor mark the oncoming of his 60th year, with a party thrown for him by close friends at their Chattarpur farmhouse. “I look forward to welcoming you as I turn another year older — and hopefully a little wiser!” said the author of the bestselling Inglorious Empire.

Harvard and backward?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent attempt at punning on ‘hard work’ and ‘Harvard’ has given rise to much mirth among his critics, with the likes of alumni P Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal lending their considerable heft to the Opposition ranks, and loose cannon Subramanian Swamy lending his considerable heft to any passing cause that catches his fancy it appears futile to diss the celebrated incubator. This attempt at wit had political commentator and think-tanker Mohan Guruswamy, who studied public policy and management at Harvard, post: “He has a point about hard work, but there is no getting away from Harvard for him. His (Modi’s) closest aide and advisor, his Principal Secretary, Nripendra Mishra, is a Harvard MPA from the class of 1981. He can tell Modi that it’s hard work and intelligence that takes you to and out of Harvard — not ‘entire Political Science’, which is not on the curriculum anyway”. Indeed.

Road less travelled

If travelling on Delhi’s roads and thoroughfares appears to be magically free of traffic snarls and stops, put it down to the ‘UP factor’, political insiders say. “The Cabinet and almost all of its members have shifted base to Varanasi to campaign for the BJP in the upcoming phase of the Assembly elections,” informs a source. “Never have so many ministers been missing in action (MIA) in the history of Independent India,” he says. Meanwhile, all work is said to have been put on hold and visitors and guests have been told to wait till March 8 if they want appointments with them. “People must be happy as there’s less VIP movement and lal battis in Delhi till March 8,” says the source, adding: “But for ministers, their lal battis are at stake as they’ve heard of the imminent Cabinet expansion to be held after the elections, and every one of them is campaigning their feet off to impress the boss.”

Traffic and career management going hand in hand? Nice!

Oenophile enchantment

The Delhi wine scene has been crazy in the last 10 days,” says Reva K Singh, founder and editor-in-chief of Sommelier India — the country’s first wine magazine — about the past few days. Of course Singh, a petite and elegant banker’s wife, was not alluding to your average bacchanal, but a series of decorous occasions which saw the Capital’s leading oenophiles gather to raise a glass or two. Fittingly, this season of the grape was kicked off with the Ghulam Naqshband Memorial Wine Dinner. Naqshband, a travel industry doyen and epicure founded India’s first wine club way back in the late Nineties as Table de France, which had later metamorphosed into The Wine Society as more new world wines became available.

Hosted at the Taj Mansingh’s Longchamp, and attended by sundry bankers and socialites, it witnessed the uncorking of some memorable bottles, made more memorable by the auction that raised a substantial sum for charity. What followed next was the International Wine & Food Society’s Bordeaux Dinner at the Leela Gurugram, held on a floodlit golf course in the style of Fete de la Fleur meets an India wedding extravaganza, with international IWFS members fresh from their tour of the Rashtrapati Bhavan and India Gate, sporting Rajasthani turbans, seated at tables named after Indian rivers.

And as if that wasn’t enough, it had dovetailed into the Tasting India Symposium and a Gala Burgundy dinner. “I had barely recovered from this, and it was on to the tasting of De Bortoli wines from the Yarra Valley in Australia with the visiting GM,” says Singh, who was on her way to yet another wine tasting in Gurugram when we called her on Friday evening. “I am only going to register my presence,” she said, adding: “I am definitely not staying for dinner.”

Drop-dead style

The Capital’s most ferocious grandees were agog with the ongoing Patiala-Kashmir nuptials which they swore brought forth such a blitzkrieg of drop-dead style that it made their heads spin — emeralds the size of pigeon’s eggs, bejeweled princesses, swashbuckling polo players and porcelain publishers had the Capital’s  stylistas swooning. 

A case in point was Shagun Khanna, Patiala royal and leading beauty blogger, who showed up at Thursday night’s sangeet looking like the true Simla Pink (a desi variant of the Sloane Ranger) she is. Note the casually pulled back chignon, the dewy, almost make-up free face and the serious, but understated jewels. Even the Rajmata would have approved.