Sagarika Ghose Throws A Bash In.... A To Do About Dos

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New Delhi's a party town and here's news about the newest hottest party. It happened last Saturday at the new nightclub at the Downtown Hotel. A party with a difference, an example of a millenium corporate marketing strategy: capitalism with a heart. Party hard but strike out for social justice. Jive and give. Apart from the usual glittering array of celebrities, models and fashion designers and all of us who are born to enjoy ourselves, they invited a few prominent city beggars too. The beggar from Moolchand was there. I don't like her aggressive attitude and those ugly stumps for arms. I prefer beggars when they're self-effacing and posses most of their limbs. I hate beggars who're rude and don't know their place. But they're so wonderfully conscious of their bodies these days, strutting around with their stick-like silhouettes and skeletal jaws, as they should be, of course, because they're so fabulously thin, aren't they? Without even trying. How lucky they are that they don't have to hide their bodies, that they needn't apologise. Just as we don't have to apologise for being rich, don't have to apologise in that dishonest loony Lefty way, don't have to apologise that we're not poor. Thank god we don't need to apologise anymore. God, it feels good to have liberalised and reformed the economy and set the country on course to becoming more fashionable and in tune with world trends. The urchin girl from Defence Colony was there too, with the bleached hair. I asked her how she did it. Apparently it happens if you don't eat enough! This is the dawn of our brave new economy. We may be a country of the poor but we're a country of the happy and the elegant poor. We're a country where the poor too can feast on avocado vinaigrette. We may be poor but we can still party: that's the joyful message we must send out to a world which expects us to show the way in tackling mass poverty. We mustn't be boring about these things anymore. I thought the beggar party was a great idea. The doped man without legs who rolls niftily near the Habitat Centre on his wooden platform was also present. He has a gorgeous bone structure. We all watched as he rolled into the hotel. Lots of designers got ideas for the ramp just seeing him enter. The models loved his look: the way he only needs to wear a shirt! Oh, how they all clutched the extra dry martinis with their black paws, leaving shit stains on velvet sofas. Their shit smells different, you know natural, almost herbal. It must be the high roughage diet. Such a 'happening' party. The food was poverty chic, do you know what I mean? Thick tasteless rotis served in tres tasteful steel plates, a little dented at the edges for the authentic bhikhari look. And the decorations were haute jhuggi. Absolutely unliberalised and squalid. The legless man got drunk in an interestingly underclass sort of way, he began to bleed from the mouth, and had to be taken to hospital. I'm sure he survived although the police weren't hopeful. The guards came at midnight. They rounded them up and dumped them back on the streets. But the beggars created such a to do! They screamed and they kicked, they tore off their rags, but alas they're karmically destined. There was a riot, the police had to use tear gas and water cannon to get them to leave the hotel. But the way they howled and broke all the glasses! Poor things. They'll be all right once they get used to partying. Just like we have. A writer, Sagarika Ghose's first work of fiction is expected shortly

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