Kishore Singh: Tumbling from champagne to chaat

A few years ago, we became acquainted with (let's call them) Sheela and VK. I don't know how we showed up on their social radar, but following a few phone calls from their "entertainment secretary" and some mutual friends, we arrived at their newly minted home in a tony part of New Delhi for dinner. The house, still smelling of paint, was a showpiece of lights, rugs and fake leather furniture being passed off as "designer stuff that Sheela likes". The "couple of friends" they wanted us to meet turned out to be few score strangers whom our new acquaintances seemed keen to befriend as they set roots in a city in which they had previously lived two decades earlier. VK and Sheela had arrived from the US, where their two children were now in college, following a layoff and lack of jobs at a senior level - this titbit shared by a "chaddi-buddy" -and he was now "studying the market, investing in start-ups, consulting in the financial sector", which I took to mean he was parking his money in the markets.

Over the years we met a few times and I was reminded by him on each occasion of his stint in the Big Apple. They entertained often and were pleasant enough, if a little desperate, about socialising and networking. With the exception of a few constants, the guests at their home changed frequently and included the jetsam and flotsam of Delhi society - politicians out of power, retired bureaucrats, senior defence personnel, the city's gossip-mongers and socialites, fashion designers and select media. As the flavour of the season, we ran into them at other parties too - not quite friends, but no longer outsiders either. Very soon, the grapevine VK and Sheela had assiduously cultivated began to turn against them: VK was "going broke", his business ventures were "bankrupt", "taking care of his parents back home" was a euphemism for managing their agricultural land. The high-decibel parties they were prone to throwing almost ceased; Sheela went to work in a design store; the friends disappeared; and as I write this, VK and Sheela are being struck off guest lists across the city.

This isn't an apocryphal tale. Over the last year, a number of VKs and Sheelas have blipped off the city's social map as businesses have turned turtle and fortunes have nosedived. Financial pain takes its toll, but social embarrassments lacerate more, with the mwah-mwah lot dissing Sujata's daughter's wedding which had "just three functions", or Mimi's betrothal party where the menu included "only eight types of desserts". The capital is a cruel city if you're on the way down - and there are many who're taking the tumble.

The downside isn't that the rich are hurting - though it's upsetting that hosts are hoarding their better whiskies and stocking fewer labels in their bars - but its repercussions among the hoi polloi. You can no longer get a bargain on a barely used second-hand car because, guess what, VK and his ilk aren't changing their cars every season and are driving three-year-old sedans. Wedding cards are no longer accompanied by magnums of champagne and first-class tickets to the venue. Clothes are being repeated, designers are feeling the pinch, budgets have been slashed, and VK and Sheela put up a brave face when they called up the old crowd for a "sundowner" accompanied by a meal that would have made them the laughing stock of the party people a year ago: chaat. Except, everyone loved it - "really, darling!"