The party secrets.

[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Warm-eyed ladies are moving around in formal costumes. The gentlemen pay tribute to the old-fashioned codes of chivalry by dressing up in suits and military uniforms.

This must be the real true world of the fashionable class.

It is evening and The Delhi Walla has walked into the Israel’s Independence Day celebrations at the Shahjehan Ballroom in Hotel Taj Palace. These beautiful people, principally from the world of diplomacy, are the capital’s invisible multitude. They are barely seen anywhere else in the city but surface in a crowd in such elegant receptions.

One woman, perhaps the tallest person here, is wearing pink. Another one, in a giant knotted scarf, is looking like a most formidable negotiator of human-rights accords. One woman is wearing a frock filled with spring flowers. Another one, in a sari, has white hair gently falling on her back.

One woman is loaded with pearls.

Looking at this gathering is enough to make one believe in the possibility of world peace.

As the gentry disperse towards the banquet tables, I exit the hotel and discover it is raining. There are no auto-rickshaws on the road.

People of the real world

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