WHATEVER happened to the season of the crescent moon—an idyllic month of power-brokering, networking, climbing, cloying, gatecrashing and fantasising in the country’s power Capital? This January, both the devout and the faddist, the power guest and the rent-a-crowd who thronged the gates of Delhi’s hi-fi Iftaar parties were in for a spectral surprise. The holy evening setting of breaking bread with the brethren was overtaken instead by burlesque, bombastic, power birthday parties. But always quick to recover and plunge unabashedly into the next best thing, the faithful were queuing once again to the rhythm of the birthday tune. In the bedlam of themes, cuisines and screams, the flurry of parties saw prime ministers and brandosaurs, exiled chieftains and domestic goddesses, Dalit queens and Yadav honchos, Bollywood and Bombayhood shake hands and scrape deals, bargain and strike heat, allocate and affiliate. Everyone was giddy with glee. The competition was unrelenting, creating a month of power-packed birthday parties, the most recent being celebrated by the Samajwadi Party’s Amar Singh. Singh and his voluminous birthday parties have now regulated our expectations—of Bollywood meets Bombayhood meets Delhi power belly. There is no clash between Gandhian atavism and post-Nehruvian consumerism as Singh revels in the din of glitter, wealth, tinsel and pomp of the newly arrived. In a pre-party show of glory which could put the Roman court to shame, Singh called a meeting of the country’s top tycoons—also members of his UP state development council—to announce a birthday package that could make the World Bank blush: A Rs 10,000-crore power project from best friend Anil Ambani, apart from other multi-crore dream projects from Sahara Housing, Godrej and the like. Only perfumes clashed as Singh paraded his guests like gladiators in the Roman arena. Bollywood A-list, tycoons, socialites and starlets were at the door welcoming guests or behind a gold rope in the cavernous Ashoka Hall or on stage singing ‘Happy Birthday’, micro-managed to the last cue. The crush of celebs, the overflow of exuberance, and the sea of swirling masses crowded the picture but Singh has shown he is the host with the most. AB may have left to rest his tired legs but he welcomed politicians of every hue, industrialists of every shade and stars from every galaxy. If his pet hate Mayawati cultivated the masses, Singh had got the classes. Only a week before Singh’s party, the diamond-studded Dalit Queen plunged the knife into her two-tiered birthday cake. Political alliances in UP shook as dangerously as the chunks of kiwi and orange on Mayawati’s cream cake as old foes like the CPM’s Surjeet and new friends like Sonia appeared at the door to wish her. Despite the photo-ops and imminent pacts, Mayawati, as always, used the occasion to reinforce Dalit empowerment. The BSP office was turned into a gigantic, shimmering mock palace which engulfed the entire gardens, front to back, resplendent with chandeliers, pyramids of food and a non-stop, digitally-enhanced life story of Behen Maya, swerving from Gautam Budh Nagar to Washington. Dalit youths watched in awe as Mayawati glided inside in a shining, white Toyota sedan, and it energised them with renewed vigour and ambition. Perhaps the first smell of success of birthday politics wafted on Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s birthday celebrations on Christmas Day. The party in Lucknow—a perfunctory event—was manipulated to bring back banished leader Kalyan Singh into the fold. The Prime Minister had never forgiven Singh who, five years ago, had played a diabolic role in the BJP’s fate at the last election. Singh’s effusive birthday greetings and oversized bouquets swept away the last shade of resistance but it gave birthday greetings a whole new meaning—a political device for artful manipulation and prodigious deals. It was suddenly open season: within 10 days of his grovelling success, it was Singh’s turn to be feted and fawned by unlikely guests. A bevy of Congress delegates, who had spent a decade calling him the Babri Demolisher, now stood beaming at his door clutching bouquets of flowers and a personal invitation from party president Sonia Gandhi to join the Congress. But over the cacophony of the Samajwadi Party, Congress and BJP brigade, Singh had ears only for the lonely Kusum Rai, an ambitious housewife, his confidante and minister. ‘‘Aye mere humnasheen/ chal kahin aur chal.’’ sang Kusum at the mushaira. Within a fortnight, she had metamorphosed from battle-axe to tragic queen. The distance between mentor and protégée had grown in proportion of the former coming closer to the BJP. It was a party Singh would not forget soon.
