After a Delhi summer that feels as if the dev-il’s been breathing down your neck. After the monsoon has finally exhausted itself and bid goodbye for the year. After the bell jar humidity it brings in its wake, has been gradually zapped, the season finally begins. The early signs are sightings of the NRIs. Like migratory birds they flock here when the going is good – signalling that the party has begun.

Traditionally, this October-to-March marathon fest is referr–ed to as the Ramnaumi-to-Shivratri rush. Now re-christened the Diwali-to-Holi season, it starts with the month-long frenzy of cards that finally peters out with the lamps for Diwali being lit. On the high end tables for the serious card players – the smell of money mingling with thickening Cohiba cigar smoke – the players are getting even more Yudhishtra-like in the abandon with which they gamble away their nearly-all.

Ironically though, there was a surreal twist to the Maha–bharata episode in a village in Harayana. A woman, left with nothing else to gamble, offered herself. She lost and it was her husband who bought her back. I suppose this is an evolution of sorts for women’s liberation: at least this 21st century Draupadi took her fate in her own hands and was not put up as collateral by her husband.
It is also party time: you party for no reason but the fact that it is ‘The Season’. You meet people you’ve hardly exchanged weak smiles with for the rest of the year. But come September and October, you air kiss them on practically a daily basis, carrying on as if they are your best friends. Le tout Delhi now moves outdoors, into supersized gently undulating velvet lawns. Of course, with such expansive grounds socialites have to go beyond the numbers on their cell phones to put together a respectably-sized guest list.

It isn’t easy for the dahlingjis though. Every socialite has exactly the same idea. The resourceful ones almost injure their index fingers or thumbs working their mobiles trying to entice a fashion guru to their do: Rohit Bal (blond or brunette) always gets the flashbulbs popping and an entourage of acolytes often follow in his wake. Some blue blood, minor or otherwise, will also do: the various Scindias always add lustre.
Starlets and starlings also brighten up the scene – usually those who may have come down from Mumbai to cut the ribbon for the opening of a new jewellery shop or even a shoe shop. After which they drop by at parties, stealing for a brief spell the limelight from the regular page3wallahs. The best accessories, however, are nubile young men and women, brandishing their hot bods. Weddings have metamorphosed into a string of theme parties, leading up to the big day itself. You need mujras, dancing starlings and venues that look like film sets with massive Buddha heads or Ajanta-like murals to have a big fat Punjabi wedding.

Just a word of advice to the seasonal party-givers: don’t worry your well-coiffeured heads about the food. You see savvy party-hoppers flit from one place to the other, nibbling on a lettuce leaf here and another there. The really wise ones eat at home before they start out on their social binge.
And then, with the first hint of summer, everything is put away with the mothballs. It is also pack-up time for the overseas desis, until the next season.