Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects 9780815358886, 9781351121637

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Money, Culture, Class

Based on ethnographic research, this book explores the ways in which elite women use and view money in order to construct identities – of class, status, and gender. Drawing on their everyday worlds, it tracks the intricate and contested meanings they attach to money. Focusing on weddings, travel, and spirituality, Parul Bhandari delineates the entitlements and privileges as well as the obsessions and vulnerabilities that underlie the construction of class, the shaping of elite cultures, and the curating of femininity. As such, this book offers an innovative account of the interplay between money, modernity, class, and gender. Parul Bhandari is currently a Visiting Scholar at St. Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, UK. Previously, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), Delhi. Dr. Bhandari obtained her PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge in 2014. She has held Guest Faculty positions at the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and the Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Delhi. Her research interests lie in the study of class (elites and the middle class), urban India, gender, marriage, and family. Her recent publications include a co-edited book, Exploring Indian Modernities: Ideas and Practices (2018), as well as a journal special issue ‘Changing Family Realities in South Asia?’ (SAMAJ, 2017).

Routledge Focus on Modern Subjects Series Editor: Saurabh Dube

Research Professor of History, El Colegio de México, Mexico City

Routledge Focus on Modern Subjects has a broad yet particular purpose. It explores quotidian claims made on the modern – understood as idea and image, practice and procedure – as part of everyday articulations of modernity on the Indian sub-continent. Here, the category-entity of the subject has wide purchase. It refers not only to social actors who have been active participants in historical processes of modernity, but equally implies branch of learning and area of study, topic and theme, question and matter, and issue and business. The series addresses such modern subjects in a range of distinct yet overlaying ways, focusing on capital and class, culture and power, gender and identity, politics and privilege, nation and narration, design and dominance, aesthetics and authority, and science and subjectivities – in everyday and institutional arenas.

Books in this series Frontiers of Freedom Cold War and Social Modernism in Postcolonial India Daniel Kent-Carrasco Money, Culture, Class Elite Women as Modern Subjects Parul Bhandari The Dazzle of the Digital Unbundling India Online Meghna Bal and Vivan Sharan For a full list of titles in this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Focus-on-Modern-Subjects/book-series/RFOMS

Money, Culture, Class

Elite Women as Modern Subjects Parul Bhandari

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Parul Bhandari The right of Parul Bhandari to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-8153-5888-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-12163-7 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage LLC

For my parents

Contents

Series editor’s forewordviii Acknowledgmentsxvi 1 Introduction

1

2 Fashion and travels

21

3 Weddings, opulence, and hospitality

45

4 Hindu glamour: of invitations, hierarchies, and snubs

68

Epilogue

88

Bibliography93 Index96

Series editor’s foreword Saurabh Dube

It is a pleasure to write this foreword to the second title in the Routledge Focus on Modern Subjects. In what follows, I shall first introduce the series and then turn to the book.

The series Routledge Focus on Modern Subjects has a broad yet particular purpose. It seeks to explore quotidian claims made on the modern – understood as idea and image, practice and procedure – as part of everyday articulations of modernity on the Indian sub-continent. Here, the category-entity of the subject also has wide purchase. It refers not only to social actors who have been active participants in historical processes of modernity, but equally implies branch of learning and area of study, topic and theme, question and matter, and issue and business. The series attempts to address such modern subjects in a range of distinct yet overlaying ways. Questions of modernity have always been bound to issues of being/ becoming modern. These themes have been discussed in various ways for long now.1 For convenience, we might distinguish between two broad, opposed tendencies. On the one hand, over the past few centuries, it is the West/Europe that has been seen as the locus and the habitus of the modern and modernity. Such a West is imaginary yet tangible, principally envisioned in the image of the North Atlantic world. And it is from these arenas that modernity and the modern appear as spreading outwards to transform other, distant and marginal, peoples in the mold and the wake of the West. On the other hand, such propositions have been contested by rival claims, including especially from within Romanticist and anti-modernist dispositions. Here, if the modern and modernity have been often understood as intimating the fundamental fall of humanity, everywhere, so too have the aggrandisements of an analytical reason been countered through procedures of a hermeneutic provenance.

Series editor’s foreword ix Needless to say, these contending tendencies have for long each found imaginative articulations, and I provide indicative examples from our own times. The work of philosophers such as Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor and historians such as Reinhart Koselleck and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht have opened up the exact terms, textures, and transformations of modernity and the modern. At the same time, they have arguably located the constitutive conditions of these phenomenon in Western Europe and Euro-America. In contrast, anti-modernist sensibilities have found innovative elaborations in, say, the ‘critical traditionalism’ of Ashis Nandy in South Asia; and the querying of Eurocentric thought has been intriguingly expressed by the scholars of the ‘coloniality of knowledge’ and ‘decoloniality of power’ in Latin America. These powerful positions variously rest on assumptions of innocence before and outside Europe and the West, modernity and the modern. Engaging with yet going beyond such prior emphases, recent work on modernity has charted new directions, departures that have served to foreground questions of modernity in academic agendas and on intellectual horizons, more broadly. I indicate four critical trends. First and foremost, there have been works focusing on different expressions of the modern and distinct articulations of modernity as historically grounded and/or culturally expressed, articulations that query a priori projections and sociological formalisms underpinning the category-entity. Second, there are the studies that have diversely explored issues of ‘early’ and ‘colonial’ and ‘multiple’ and ‘alternative’ modernity/modernities. Third, we find imaginative ethnographic, historical, and theoretical explorations of modernity’s conceptual cognates such as globalisation, capitalism, and cosmopolitanism as well as of attendant issues of state, nation, and democracy. Fourth and finally, there have been varied explorations of the enchantments of modernity and of the magic of the modern, understood not as analytical errors but as formative of social worlds. These studies have ranged from the elaborations of the fetish of the state, the sacred character of modern sovereignty, the uncanny of capitalism, and the routine enticements of modernity through to the secular magic of representational practises such as entertainment shows, cinema, and advertising. Routledge Focus on Modern Subjects engages and exceeds, takes forward and departs from such concerns in its own manner. To start off, its titles address the queries and concepts entailed in earlier explorations of the modern and recent reconsiderations of modernity by focusing on a clutch of common and critical questions. These issues turn on the everyday elaborations of the modern, the quotidian configurations of modernity, on the Indian sub-continent. Next, rather than simply asserting the empirical

x  Series editor’s foreword plurality of modernity and the modern, the cluster approaches the routine, even banal, expressions of the modern as registering contingency, contradiction, and contention as lying at the core of modernity. Further, it only follows that our bid is not to indolently exorcise aggrandising representations of modernity as the West, but to prudently track instead the play of such projections in the commonplace unravelling of the modern in India today. Finally, such procedures not only recast broad questions – for instance of cosmopolitanism and globalisation, state and citizenship, Eurocentrism and Nativism, aesthetics and authority – by approaching them through routine renderings of the modern in contemporary South Asia. They also stay with the dense, exact expressions of modernity yet all the while attending to their larger, critical implications, prudently thinking both down to the ground. In keeping with the spirit of the series, all its titles stand informed by specific renderings  – as well as focused rethinking  – of key categories and processes. Let me provide two exact instances. In different ways, concepts and processes of power and politics alongside those of community and identity variously run through the Focus Series on Modern Subjects. Here, neither power nor politics are rendered as signifying solely institutional relations of authority centering on the state and its subjects. Rather, the bid is to articulate these as equally embodying diffuse domains and intimate arrangements of authority and desire, including their seductions and subversions. Actually, as parts of such force-fields, state and government, their policy and program might now assume twinned dimensions in understandings of modern subjects. Here can be found densely embodied disciplinary techniques toward forming and transforming subjects-citizens, where such protocols and their reworking by citizens-subjects no less register the shaping of authority by anxiety, uncertainty, and alterity, of the structuring of command by deferral, difference, and displacement. At the same time, the series approaches community and identity as modern processes of meaning and authority, located at the core of nation and globalisation. This is to say that instead of approaching identity and community as already given entities that are principally antithetical to modernity, this cluster explores communities and identities as wide-ranging processes of formations of subjects, expressing collective groupings and particular personhoods. Defined within social relationships of production and reproduction, appropriation and approbation, and power and difference, emergent identities, cultural communities, and their mutations appear now as essential elements in the quotidian constitution, expressions, and transformations of modern subjects.

Series editor’s foreword xi

The book Over the last two decades, there has been a critical rethinking of that staple of sociological (and political) studies, the elites.2 Such shifts in sociology have been accompanied by connected efforts in related disciplines. These have turned, for instance, on anthropologies of elites.3 They have extended to new histories of capitalism.4 Further, such developments have been shored up, at large, by contemporary reportage accounts, themselves based on authorial observation and the ongoing archive of public and private transactions.5 None of this should be surprising, especially in the wake of the raging rampages of the 1%, and the prurient and critical interest in them, across the world. Parul Bhandari’s Money, Culture, Class: Elite Women as Modern Subjects draws on some of these terrains of the study of elites, and itself intervenes in the formidable force-fields of the lives of elites. Beginning with a minimalist definition of elites as those who bear enormously disproportionate access or control over resources of different description, the book focuses on elite housewives and their articulations of the resourceful properties – and recursive propensities – of money in the heart of India’s capital, Delhi (old and new). Here, the lives of such elite women are approached ‘not through ready optics of unbound opulence, conspicuous consumption, and reproduction of inequality, important as these are, but as [involving] protagonists and players shaping elite-ness, class, and culture’. This is to say that at stake are much more than pre-scripted actors who readily reproduce already-established rules surrounding class-fractions, and easily replicate always-given expectations turning on boundarymaintenance. Instead, we are in the face of women subjects who bring their own effects and affects to dynamics of gender and elite-ness, class and culture – as ‘shaped by seductions and enticements of the modern (fashion, travel)’ and reworkings of ‘the processes and meanings of modernity (consumption, spirituality)’. It only follows that Bhandari explores such processes as not all of a piece, but as necessarily contradictory and contested ones. This is crucially registered by her acute attention to the discrete expressions and distinct meanings ‘attached to the different uses of money by elite housewives, including buying property, consuming culture, and organising religious practices’. All of this should establish the clear fit between this series and Bhandari’s book. Yet, there is more to the tie-in between the work’s nature and the mandate of Routledge Focus on Modern Subjects. The book is based on 18 months of imaginative and sensitive ethnographic fieldwork. If this showcases Parul Bhandari’s capacities as a fieldworker and ethnographer,

xii  Series editor’s foreword at large, it also decidedly dovetails with the desire that this cluster of titles should reflect methodological diversity. Here, the author’s strengths in fieldresearch and the series’ desire for methodological multiplicity each emerge as grounded at once in heterogeneous social worlds and the requirements of critically articulating these terrains. Moreover, Bhandari’s enquiries acquire shape and assume substance in her actual telling of stories. Such stories and their implications rest upon the terms and textures of description, the requirements and registers of writing. Here routine practices are to be explored, yet telling tales of entitlement and privilege, their enactments and enticements, their making and unmaking. All these involve matrices of the spatial and the sensuous, commodification and consumption, the magical and the modern, turning on processes of luxury and lifestyles, travel and vacations, sexuality and spirituality, variously played out among the gendered subjects of the study. This registers, too, the spirit of plurality that inheres in the soul of the series, now in terms of techniques of narration and devices of description that shore up the titles in the cluster. Finally, taken together, Money, Culture, Class speaks and sasses back at academic mandarins who claim, explicitly and implicitly, that the object of research inherently determines the quality of scholarship. The further corollary to such propositions is the projection that a study of elite women simply cannot be sociologically significant because of the apparently easy access that the scholar has to the subject, understood as actor and theme, matter and enquiry. Are such routine subjects, then, not only self-evident but equally trivial to boot? Against such knee-jerk contentions, Parul Bhandari highlights that at stake in critical scholarship are subjects of enquiry and their properties that are not simply given, assumed as innate to the object of study. Rather, she unravels with grace and insight that such subjects are saliently shaped by the questions we ask and the ways we write, such that social actors are turned from objects of an adjudicatory reason into subjects of different reasons, further putting a question mark on our notions of familiarity and strangeness. All of this registered, I would like to turn now to three sets of questions that push the emphases of the work in distinct directions. They are offered here in the manner of a spirited conversation.6 To begin with, the focus of the work on gender itself queries the presumption that the ‘elites’ connote a unified, a priori category as well as a constituency possessed of innate agency. Yet, I wonder about what else might have been unravelled if Bhandari had more explicitly articulated the term ‘elite’ as an open-ended critical optic-analytic and a multiply-hued narrative resource-technique? Would this have allowed her to more frontally address key questions of

Series editor’s foreword xiii variations among elites, their internal contentions, their key divisions, and the difference that gender and caste introduce into these formations? Would such emphases have added a further edge to Money, Culture, Class as an imaginative ethnography of entitlement and privilege, their context-bound and ever-gendered performances and persuasions, as constitutive of elites and elite-ness, which are shot through with critical difference, especially the phantasms of domestic-labour and the spectres of caste? The second set of questions follows from the first, turning on reconfigurations of class in recent scenarios in neoliberal India where an older elite and political capital find new expressions of money and power quite as formidable subjects of novel wealth – derived from multinational corporations and capital, banking and industry, real estate and power-brokerage – announce their presence. What would have been the consequences of Bhandari focusing more on such reconfigurations of elites and classes in India today? Would a greater interest in such issues have made possible a critical questioning of ready distinctions between ‘old’ and ‘new’ elites? Would this have allowed Bhandari to further explore the gendered articulations of entitlement and elite-ness, class and capital, power and politics, culture and consumption? Would we have found out more about how earlier ‘indigenous’ matrices and newer ‘cosmopolitan’ templates of being elite can be conjoined in such practices? Finally, would we have learned something else about performances of privilege as containing hidden anxieties of class and caste, as shaped by gender and sexuality? The final set of questions likewise emerge from the already imaginative pathways charted by Money, Culture, Class. As announced at its beginning, the study seeks to stay with affective and corporeal dimensions of subjects and worlds. Here are to be found the terms of the ‘affective turn’ in scholarship.7 My question concerns the manner in which we are to embed such affective attributes in the textures of our narratives. How is this to be done in ways that query pervasive presumptions of fully-fabricated human agents – possessed of an already-intimated reason – such that apprehensions of social life, in the words of William Mazzarella, eschew as their starting point the ‘bounded, intentional subject while at the same foregrounding embodiment and sensuous life’ that are, in themselves, not pre-social at all?8 What are the affective complicities of Bhandari’s elite women subjects in the pervasive shaping today of entitled India through the interplay between privilege and patronage, commodity and consumption, hierarchy and hubris, and domination and dispossession? It is the very strengths of Money, Culture, Class that allow me to raise such questions, to foreground these queries. Bhandari’s engagement with her subjects and their worlds is far from the familiar, omniscient business-as-usual

xiv  Series editor’s foreword of academic enquiry. Instead, her attempt is to enter these arenas in order to understand herself and ourselves, pointing toward such habitations of the modern as themselves bearing corporeal, sensuous, and embodied attributes – in India, and across the globe. To my mind, all this not only gives the lie but also shows the finger to that immaculate gaze of the preening scholar, those a priori verities of intellectual conceit. For, an imaginative ethnography of elite women in India’s capital acutely reminds us of the haunting of contemporary terrains by scandals of privilege – including our own complicities in these outrages of entitlement – as not mere errors of understanding, but as bearing dark affects and ominous effects of a dense, worldly provenance.

Notes 1 The discussion in this foreword of different understandings of modernity (and the modern) draws upon a wide range of scholarship. Instead of cluttering the short piece with numerous references, let me only indicate a few of my works that have addressed these themes – in dialogue with relevant literatures – and that back my claims here. Needless to say, I am cryptically condensing and radically rearranging my prior arguments and emphases for the present purposes. Saurabh Dube, Subjects of Modernity: Time/Space, Disciplines, Margins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017); Saurabh Dube, Stitches on Time: Colonial Textures and Postcolonial Tangles (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004); and Saurabh Dube, After Conversion: Cultural Histories of Modern India (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2010). Consider also, Saurabh Dube (ed.), Enchantments of Modernity: Empire, Nation, Globalization (New Delhi: Routledge, 2009); and Saurabh Dube (ed.), Handbook of Modernity in South Asia: Modern Makeovers (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011). 2 For example, Bruno Cousin, Shamus Khan, and Ashley Mears, “Theoretical and Methodological Pathways for Research on Elites”, Socio-Economic Review, 16 (2018): 225–49; Shamus Khan, Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Ashley Mears, Pricing Beauty: the Making of a Fashion Model (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011); Rachel Sherman, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); Iain Hay, Geographies of the Super-Rich (London: Edward Elgar, 2013); Surinder S. Jodhka and Jules Naudet (eds.), Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege, and Inequality in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019); Shamus Khan, “The Sociology of Elites”, Annual Review of Sociology, 38 (2012): 361–77; Aeron Davis and Karel Williams, “Introduction: Elites and Power After Financialization”, Theory, Culture and Society, 34 (2017): 3–26. 3 Jon Abbink and Tijo Salverda (eds.), The Anthropology of Elites: Power, Culture and the Complexities of Distinction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Cris Shore and Stephen Nugent (eds.), Elite Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); see also, Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009).

Series editor’s foreword xv 4 Sven Beckert and Christine A. Desan (eds.), American Capitalism: New Histories (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Jonathan Levy, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and WalMart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (Cambridge: Harvard U ­ niversity Press, 2010); Jeffrey Sklansky, “The Elusive Sovereign: New Intellectual and Social Histories of Capitalism”, Modern Intellectual History, 9 (2012): 233– 48; see also, Louis Hyman, Borrow: The American Way of Debt (New York: Vintage Books, 2012); Stephen Mihm, A Nation of Counterfeiters: Capitalists, Con Men, and the Making of the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). 5 In the case of India, such writings have included: James Crabtree, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age (New York: OneWorld, 2018); Rana Dasgupta, Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century (New Delhi: Penguin, 2014); Hamish McDonald, The Polyester Prince: The Rise of Dhirubhai Ambani (St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1998); and Paranjoy Guha Thukurta et al., Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis (New Delhi: Authors UpFront, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, 2014). I submit that such works are better read together with critical stories on internet and mainstream media, on the one hand, and scholarly accounts on the other. The latter include Akhil Gupta, “Changing Forms of Corruption in India”, Modern Asian Studies, 51 (2017): 1862–90. 6 These questions derive from my own interest in the study of the elites. See, for instance, Saurabh Dube, “Issues of Entitlement”, in Surinder Jodhka and Jules Naudet (eds.), Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege, and Inequality in Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019). 7 On the affective turn see, for instance, Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004); Jean Clough and Patricia Halley (eds.), The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007); Kathleen Stewart, Ordinary Affects (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007). See also, Saba Mahmood, The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); and William J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 8 William Mazzarella, “Affect: What Is It Good for?” in Saurabh Dube (ed.), Enchantments of Modernity: Empire, Nation, Globalization (London: Routledge, 2010), 291.

Acknowledgments

During the course of the three years, in which I undertook this research, I have accumulated scholarly and everyday debts to several people and institutions. I want to begin by thanking my key informants and ‘gate­keepers’, who provided access to an otherwise impenetrable world, and most importantly the interviewees who allowed me a glimpse into their lives. I am grateful to the Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), New Delhi, for recruiting me as a post-doctoral fellow at a time when the study of elites – and more specifically housewives – was not considered particularly interesting or worthy of research. A greater part of the writing for this book was undertaken at the University of Cambridge, in my capacity as a Visiting Scholar. I am indebted to the academic and administrative staff at St. Edmund’s College and the Centre of South Asian Studies (CSAS) at Cambridge, who provided a friendly and intellectually invigorating environment. I presented parts of this work to South Asia experts at the University of Oxford, and to scholars researching development and inequality at King’s College London. I gained valuable insights from these presentations, which indeed helped to better contexualise the material presented in this book. My deepest and most heart-felt gratitude to Saurabh Dube, who found this world of elite housewives important enough for it to be a part of his book series. We had several conversations – during walks at Lodhi gardens, over nutritious lunches, and tea and atta biscuits at the India International Centre (IIC) – on the banal yet unique, evident yet secretive, lives of the rich housewives. He and Ishita-Banerjee-Dube encouraged me to write about the lives of these women as it is, and as I saw it. I want to thank the team at Routledge, particularly Aafreen Ayub, who has shown immense patience and support throughout the entire process. Many thanks to the peer-reviewers, particularly the one who displayed confidence in my writing style, which meanders across academic and nonacademic territories.

Acknowledgments xvii This book could not have been possible without the support of my friends and family, who encouraged me to work on this topic and kept the fun alive with their incisive remarks, humour, and critical renditions of this world of the privileged. A special thanks to Raphael Susewind and Iris Pissaride who patiently engaged with this book, reading drafts and organising events to discuss my research. Finally, I owe so much to my parents, who have provided me endless love and care. This book is dedicated to them.

1 Introduction

In 2007, three shopping malls were constructed on Nelson Mandela Marg, in South Delhi. One of them, the DLF Emporio, is India’s first high-end luxury mall. It houses showrooms of many international brands as well as Indian luxury designer houses. One afternoon, as I stood at its grand entrance, comprising of a large porch with glistening stone flooring, and an expensive valet parking service, I witnessed the arrival of several women, one after the other. As they stepped down from luxurious cars, it was both the idea of such a mall and the specific kind of Indian elite inhabiting this space that intrigued me. Though open to public, DLF Emporio communicates strong exclusionary boundaries. This is also obvious in the number of times my friends and colleagues have declined the invitation to accompany me to this mall. They feel awkward and ‘out of place’, they have said. This is not to say that only the super-rich visit this mall, but that the elites have an air of ease and entitlement in occupying this space.1 Witnessing the performances of elite status in the DLF Emporio mall posed several questions for me: what are these women shopping for? Are they following or setting trends in fashion, leisure, and forms of sociability? What can be made of their all-female friendships and bonding: are they supportive, competitive, or cathartic? What do they discuss in their luncheons with friends? Are they aware of both the elite and non-elite gaze on them? What of their familial lives? Some months later, I visited an exhibition of the works of Edgar Degas at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Degas is famously known for his ballerinas, and this exhibition surely had a vast collection of his paintings and sculptors of ballerinas, but the curators also wanted to bring attention to Degas’ lesser talked about works, specifically ones that depict bourgeois women. The curators therefore dedicated a section at the exhibition to paintings of bourgeois women and entitled this section as ‘The Chattering Women’. Degas did something unconventional for his times: instead of capturing bourgeois women only in portraits, he depicted their lives as

2  Introduction occupants of public spaces such as museums, exhibitions, and cafés.2 They had been freed from their essence and importance as restricted to their homes. Instead of static portrayals, he painted these women in action, as it were: talking with friends, admiring art, visiting cafés, and so on. I find much to learn from Degas’ depiction of bourgeois women in Paris of late 19th and early 20th century in my bid to understand the super-rich housewives of contemporary Delhi. Put simply, I approach these women as not merely occupying the domestic realm, tethered to strict role expectations. Instead, I seek to delineate their lives in order to showcase their significant role in creating elite-ness: its cultures, subjectivities, and class dynamics. In this book, I explore the gendered performances of being and becoming modern and elite, focusing on the wives of business tycoons in Delhi. Scholarship and general discourse has debated at length the different perspectives with which elite status can be defined – economic, social, political.3 I find Shamus Khan’s (2012) definition most appropriate, as he defines the elites as those who have a ‘vastly disproportionate control or access over resources’. The resource in question for this book (and my research) is money, begotten from business-related activities. This is not to say that the elites that form the focus of this book occupy a privileged position only with regard to money, for they do in fact convert their economically elite status to other forms of capital, including social, cultural, and political.4 Notwithstanding these nuanced realities of being elite, I direct my attention to the wives of business elites. I approach the lives of elite women not through ready optics of unbound opulence, conspicuous consumption, and reproduction of inequality, important as these are, but as protagonists and players shaping elite-ness, class, and culture. Based on ethnographic research conducted over a period of 18 months, which involved spending considerable periods of time with the women at social and more private events, as well as in-depth one-to-one interviews, I argue that elite housewives are not merely status enhancers and reproducers of class.5 Rather, they embody the spirit and substance of this class. This is to say these women are not secondary/subordinate actors that enact already established rules and expectations of class fractions and boundary maintenance. Rather they bring their own intents and energies to internal and external class dynamics. They are not passive conduits of elite cultures (styles of life, modes of behaviour, tastes and other such social and cultural insignia that define being elite) but significantly make these cultures. In taking up these tasks, I articulate the ways in which lives of elite housewives are shaped by seductions and enticements of the modern (fashion, travel), and also the manner in which they rework the processes and meanings of modernity (consumption, spirituality). These dynamics of being elite and modern do not follow a definite direction. Rather, they are contradictory and contested. In order to capture

Introduction 3 such contradictions, I  suggest that it is not sufficient to simply trace the role of money in guaranteeing and procuring an elite status. Instead, the emphasis should be on the meanings attached to the different uses of money by elite housewives, including buying property, consuming culture, and organising religious practices.6 Here is to be found the constant interplay between interest and affect. I find the use of affect more befitting for this work (popularly beset by an ‘affective turn’ in Sociology) as it explains the social, historical, political, and institutional significance and context of emotions, attitudes, and impulses, and to that extent constitutes something ‘more’ than emotions (Clough and Halley 2007; White 2017).7 It explains the experiences of feelings or emotions, and in doing so combines the study of ‘body and mind’ and ‘reasons and passions’ (Clough and Halley 2007). As Mazzarella (2009) explains, affect carries ‘tactile, sensuous, and perhaps involuntary connotations’, and hence is neither about the unconscious (it is too corporeal a concept for that, he explains) nor purely about the cultural. Affect is as much about preconscious feelings as about interactions between bodies, things, and mind, which heighten or diminish through interactions and associations (Clough and Halley 2007: chapter 1). In this way, affect helps bring together the material and the immaterial, and thus, I find it most useful for understanding the lives of elite housewives: affect enables an explanation of the qualitative conditions of social interactions and relations in the elite lifeworld. In other words, my focus in this book is not so much on describing the feelings or emotions of happiness, contentment, sadness, defeat, arrogance, or pride, as it is on explaining these emotions and attitudes in their social context; one that comprises interpersonal dynamics between elites and their relations with ‘objects’ or ‘things’. This is to say, the affective world of the elites consists of money, non-money, intellectual and emotional reasonings, and corporeal reality of their existence and status, as well as desires and ambitions. I find these dynamics are best unravelled through the framework of affect and by delineating the meanings that women attach to objects of luxury, rather than simplistically explaining their world as an unmitigated pursuit of such objects. I highlight the disjuncture of this world of privilege that is marred by contradictory emotions, rationalising behaviours, and unfulfiled desires, which make, and to a certain degree unmake, the world of elites.

The elite housewives of Delhi Whilst the category of rich housewives is in itself heterogeneous, I specifically focus on the super-rich business families of New Delhi, primarily belonging to the Punjabi community, and some from the Marwari and Sindhi community. As with every ethnographic study, it is difficult to abide by

4  Introduction a strict definition of ‘sample population’. As such, I identified the super-rich business families as those who hold properties in posh residential areas of Delhi, have a thriving business with a large turnover, and display a penchant for lavish lifestyle involving many cars, frequent foreign travel, and hosting grand and opulent social parties. These criteria risk the exclusion of those families that might live a ‘low profile’ life or have undergone either a quick rise or sharp decline in their financial status. As a result, the financial status and capital investment of the business elites might differ, nonetheless by and large they occupy a similar economic standing. The super-rich are not as accessible as other classes of the population and fortunately my access was enabled by a few elites themselves who are either distantly related to me or attended the same high school as I did. This both had an advantage and disadvantage, as whilst I found it difficult to adhere to strict criteria of selection, I ended up interacting with a range of elites, self-identifying as ‘old’, ‘new’, ‘cultural’, or ‘moneyed’, which enabled me to highlight the importance of class fractions and shifting elite boundaries. It is also to be noted that my work focuses mainly on married women, as in fact most elite women I met were either married or were being groomed to marry. I did not encounter many single women, especially those who belonged to the ‘never married’ category. There were a few who were divorced or separated, and they too were in the processes of remarriage. This certainly reiterated the importance of marriage both in the construction of elite lifeworlds and appropriate elite femininity. My first point of contact with the elite women was through ‘kitty parties’. A kitty party is a women’s social group – popular in India especially amongst the middle and upper classes – where a specific number of women meet regularly to partake in social and leisure activities and also to engage in chit fund savings of sorts.8 This is to say that each member of the group regularly contributes to a common ‘kitty’ (fund) and each month a lot is drawn, won by one kitty party member. This member can either use this money as her ‘savings’ or to organise a party or social activity for other kitty party members. A kitty party, therefore, serves multiple purposes, as of enabling female-only friendships, engaging in leisure cultures, and serving as a cathartic space where women discuss their struggles and anxieties and also as a fertile ground for competition and one-upmanship in performances of privilege and taste. I managed to make my way into four different groups of elite kitty parties. While two of these groups were of young women, aged 25–35, all married, with at least one child, the other two groups were of older women, aged 55–63, who were all grandmothers. Whilst these four groups formed my main locus of interaction, with their recommendation and in attendance to social gatherings organised by them, I also met other elite women.

Introduction 5 Most of the elite women I interacted with self-identified themselves as ‘old’ elites. Whilst some were born and brought up in Delhi, others moved to Delhi upon marriage. Some women proudly claimed that their parents too were born and brought up in Delhi, making their families old ‘Dilliwallas’, whereas some explained that their parents migrated to Delhi in the late 1970s or early 1980s to establish businesses. They clarified that their parents belonged to landowning classes and moved to Delhi in order to change their main mode of occupation and income from agriculture to business. So, though they were new to Delhi, they too – much like the old Delhi elites – had a lineage of privilege and money, and thus considered themselves as the ‘old’ elites. The segment that claimed a Delhi lineage for several generations (particularly from the pre-partition of India era), though, labelled these migrant families as the ‘new’ rich. There was little contestation regarding status of some other women who were definitely viewed as the ‘new’ or nouveaux riche. This was so because their parents, previously small businessmen or from high professional backgrounds, had in a short time amassed much wealth due to fortuitous real estate investments or through corrupt machinations in business. Whether ‘old’ or ‘new’ elites, these women’s networks regularly overlap. One important way in which these overlaps are achieved is by building marriage alliances. Irrespective of whether they were from first- or second-generation wealth, and whether their parents were from Delhi or not, these elite women born into rich families always marry into rich families, ensuring the practice of class homogamous marriages. I also came across a few marriage alliances where the groom-to-be was not as wealthy as the bride-to-be, yet the marriage proposal was accepted because the father of the bride saw potential in the groom-to-be to elevate himself as one of the leading business houses of the country. Therefore, elite class seems to allow some level of class hypogamy (marriage of a so-called lower status man with a higher status woman) insofar as there is serious potential of the groom to translate his cultural, social, and educational capital into economic capital higher than that of the bride’s father. At times, the bride’s father also decides to nurture the groom’s career using his own networks. In that regard, the class status of a husband and his wife may not be considerably different, though their positioning within the elite class might vary. What is more given, however, is the kind of capital that the husband and the wife seek to develop – with the husband focusing more on the economical capital and the wife on the cultural and social capital, performing a division of labour, as it were, which in fact is common across all classes. In this regard, this research can also serve as a reference point to ascertain similarities and differences across classes, especially on constructions of femininity. Though this theme is not addressed extensively in the

6  Introduction book, there appear strong similarities across classes as, for example, elite housewives, perhaps similar to women of other classes (particularly middle class), are expected to be the locus of the domestic sphere.9 At the same time, there are also certain significant dissimilarities, especially with middle class women who prefer to work outside the home. Whereas elite housewives are not professionally employed, and often claim to be satisfied in their decision to not work. During our conversations they even expressed disdain towards women who decided to work outside the home, claiming that this decision was motivated by selfish interests, whereas in fact, taking care of family members is a far more demanding and difficult task.10 Still, interestingly, especially in our one-to-one interactions, these housewives – all of whom had a Bachelor’s degree and many had a Master’s degree often from a foreign university – expressed their desire to work in the family business, either of their father’s or husband’s. Some shared with me that whilst they did not get a chance to work before marriage, they will contribute to the family business once they have fewer responsibilities, especially after the marriage of their children. As such their expression towards work was rarely about a definite denouncement or endorsement, instead it oscillated between the two. Some elite housewives are attached to philanthropic works, as of education and health services, often as an extension of their family business. In this research, though, the elite housewives that I interacted with did not partake in any such philanthropic or charitable works.

Conducting research Sociological or social anthropological research is almost impossible to conduct without some form of bias – bias of the researcher (gender, ethnicity, religion, class), of the topic (its popularity or lack of it), of the ‘data’ itself or of access to it. Founding fathers of Sociology, in particular Max Weber, explained the need for subjectivity when conducting sociological research. This particularly applies to in-depth, qualitative ethnographic research, where the researcher brings her/his subjectivity and positionality in class, religion, or ideology in not only analysing but presenting the data. One of the important ways of eliminating biases then, is to acknowledge one’s own subjectivity as a researcher, which may or may not have influenced the data. In this section, I briefly lay out my own background details and the ways in which these might have affected my understanding of the lives of elite housewives. Another way in which I ‘flag’ my bias is by adopting a conversational approach in writing this book. Every now and then, I invoke my surprise, fascination, and perplexity towards certain practices, opinions, or desire of elite housewives. The reader may or may not relate to

Introduction 7 my emotions, yet the purpose is not to impose my analyses but in fact to lay bare my own subjectivity in assessing elite women’s lives. Let me then explain my first foray into the world of the super-rich, which started in high school. I spent my high-school years in a Roman Catholic all girls’ school in Delhi, which quite apart from being popular for its educational excellence was also known to be the favoured school for elites (business, political, royal), who hoped that a ‘good convent education’ would transform their young girls into ‘good ladies and homemakers’. As in most pedagogic cultures, pupils at this respectable convent school managed to draw boundaries amongst themselves on the basis of class status, religion, hobbies, and interests. Yet these were not always strict boundaries, and there were occasional overlaps when girls from non-elite backgrounds (such as myself) found themselves in friendship groups (however temporary) comprising of girls from largely elite backgrounds. A few of us who belonged to upper-/middle-class backgrounds spent some time with the ‘rich girls’, either organising school events (plays, dance performances) or going to their homes for birthday parties. In addition to this form of interaction in school, some of my extended family belongs to the business elite strata of Delhi. Not originally from Delhi, but Punjab, some of them converted their ‘feudal status’ – as one-time owners of vast agricultural lands – into that of a ‘neoliberal economic elite’ status through entrepreneurship. Some others migrated to Delhi more recently (in the late 1990s/early 2000s) and reaped the benefits of an economic boom, upgrading their status from middle class to ‘upper class’. With these networks of friends and family, from my early years I was exposed to the world of elites, as I attended Diwali parties, dinners, birthdays, and weddings hosted by these vast networks of elites. It was not just attending these social events but building friendships and engaging in gossip (both familial and school-based) that enabled me to engage and interact with this section of the Indian upper class. These interactions helped me see the fractures and exhaustions of being an elite woman, as much as the privilege, pride, and entitlement. I went to the United Kingdom to pursue Master’s and doctoral degrees, and lost touch with several of my schoolmates. Yet, through the power of social media (Facebook) and regular family celebrations, I lurked in their lives, as they did in mine. Post the financial crisis of 2008 (the Lehman Brothers debacle), the world was shifting its attention to the lives of elites. At the same time, India’s tryst with neoliberalism and its romance with the idea of a ‘changing India’ was gripping the nation’s psyche, as of course was the rise in income inequality. Scholarship was soon to catch on, as the study of elites became a substantively important topic. Beginning in US and UK academia, scholars started to explore the reasons for elites’ disproportionate wealth and their insipid networks of politics, money, and identity (caste, religion, nationality). It

8  Introduction was in these debates and discourses that I found that the ‘voice’ of women was missing, particularly the voice of those who ‘stay at home’. My spirit of enquiry thus moved me on to this path, in a bid to recognise and acknowledge the lives and narratives of elite women, and to help explain the ways in which they might create, reiterate, or challenge inequalities. With the help of my school and family connections, I was able to establish contact with a few groups of elite women. Though not a part of the same economic or social class, I was nonetheless welcomed because of a shared past (same school), as well as specific familial ties. This is, of course, not to say that I was allowed into their lives whenever and however I wanted. In fact, despite our shared past, they were cautious in allowing me into their world. My previous research was on the professional middle class, and I found it much easier to access their lives, perhaps because they viewed me as belonging to the same class and status, and therefore were not as sceptical of my motivations to study them. However, this was certainly not the case with the elite women, despite the long-established contact I had with some of them. My first foray into their world, as mentioned before, was attending kitty parties, yet it should be clarified here that I was not invited to all of these gatherings, but was invited for a few, or saw them right after their routine meetings. In other words, the elite women guarded their lives well, and though they were mostly polite and welcoming, they also set the boundaries on when and for what occasions I could enter their world. Another difference between conducting research ‘up’ and doing so within my own class and status is that, in the latter case, I was able to insist (though not always) on my preferences for ‘capturing’ data. For example, I requested to use pen and paper in one-to-one interviews and expressed my preferences over the time of our meetings. I had little or no such flexibility with elite housewives. Whilst it seemed sensible not to use a pen and paper to make notes whilst attending elites’ social events, for one-to-one interviews, I was specifically asked by elite housewives not to jot down points on paper, and to keep the interaction more ‘flowy’ by simply ‘listening’ to them rather than recording their words. I therefore had to rely on memory and note down all the points from interviews and interactions when I returned home. As a consequence, many of the quotes used in the book are not verbatim. Some requested that I do not reveal any aspect of their identity. Therefore, I have used pseudonyms throughout the book, and have generally provided limited information about their residential abodes, family business, schools that their children attend and others such.. Whilst my first points of contact were former schoolmates and extended family, I also expanded my networks by getting to know more elite housewives through their networks. I met them at kitty parties, at leisurely luncheons, celebrations of festivals and anniversaries hosted by them, and also

Introduction 9 met them for one-to-one interviews at cafés or their homes. They were mostly polite and congenial, though some more cautious than others. Upon first meeting me, they always enquired as to the purpose of my research, and I would respond simply and truthfully that I wanted to better understand their lives. In that spirit, I want to clarify that I approach this work not with an agenda of criticising these women or their lives, nor to present a narrative of victimhood. This is a sincere endeavour to describe and understand their lives as they are – marred with competition, pride, deceit, love, affection, duty, and longing – viewed through the lens of a researcher who was trained in the field of Sociology (in India and the UK), belonging not to this class nonetheless a class of privilege (the middle class), with her own takes on tastes, religion (a practising and sceptic Hindu), and gender subjectivities.

Money, affect, and gender When I started my research on elites, a popular response of friends and colleagues was that of astonishment and at times disdain, as to why I care to know about the lives of the rich. Around this time, Thomas Piketty published his comprehensive work ‘Capital in the twenty first century’, and several reports from government and non-government organisations brought attention to the stark inequalities that mark contemporary societies. General audience and academia slowly seemed to warm up to the study of elites. At the same time, responses to my specific topic of research continued to be of astonishment and perplexity. They wondered why I was possibly interested in something that was pretty straightforward. Some said, ‘Why do we care about these women? Isn’t it all simple: money and parties?’ Some immediately labelled them as ‘bling’; ‘Oh, so you are working on the “bling” women, with their bags and makeup’. Then there was another kind of reaction, one which seemed to speak from a position of intimate knowledge of the elite class habitus yet a different class positioning, albeit of those who consider themselves as elite  – cultural or financial, but of a ‘lineage’ of elites. To them the category of elite women I was interested in studying, embodied a ‘new’ rich class, and almost disdainfully they would say, ‘What’s there to know about them? They are the social climbers with vulgar money’. Another commented, ‘Shouldn’t you perhaps also look at other elite women; like the royalty or landed class from outside Delhi, or the political elite? They will have more interesting histories and many more things to tell than these Delhi socialites’. There were still others who thought it to be more sociologically interesting to trace ‘bigger’ and more pressing questions as the of history of capital and urged that these narratives be seen as histories and lives of the nouveaux riche. As genuine as these interventions in my work were, they made me feel that there

10  Introduction was little interest in hearing about the lives of these women, engaging with and beyond their material lifeworld, as though these explorations were less worthy especially in relation to bigger questions of purported sociological importance. These reactions made me aware of the general stereotype about rich housewives of the business class, who were seen essentially as perfect emblems of Veblen’s conspicuous consumption, perhaps as morally vacuous and certainly as proudly entitled.11 It was these reactions that propelled me to unpack the seemingly simplistic, materially dominated elite lifeworld and delve into the meanings of different uses of money, the affections that contextualise these uses, and the ways in which women create elite cultures and gender identities. I want to clarify here that my intention is not to present these women as victims or salvage their image and popular understanding of being privileged and entitled. Instead, my aim is to explicate and understand elite subjectivities and trajectories of the modern, and in doing so, I bring out five themes or analytical frameworks that speak to larger questions and explorations in the fields of Sociology and Anthropology of elites. Firstly, I focus on the role of money in shaping elite worlds. Whilst popularly the possession of money in itself, albeit in abundance, is seen as selfexplanatory to understand the lives of elites, I explain that it is important to trace the different uses of money, for each use renders different meanings in elite lifeworld. Here, I am influenced by works of Zelizer (1994, 2000), Dodd (1994, 2014), Simmel (1907), and Hart (1986, 2005) who look at social meanings of money.12 According to Zelizer, money makes sense only as part of specific social identities. She explains the multiple ways in which money creates, defines, and challenges social ties. Following this body of work, I do not view money as a strict variable, the possession of which immediately makes someone elite. Instead, I am interested in exploring the ways in which it becomes a language of articulation of status, a renegotiation of class boundaries, and an assertion of ‘self’ as well as the collective. I look at money as providing a symbolic order to the internal dynamics of being elite, which in turn not only shapes the cultural processes of being elite but also constructs and articulates appropriate femininity and also enables escape, though short lived, from elite lifeworld. Secondly, an understanding of elite terms of distinctions and appropriations through the use of money, has lead me to unpack the range of affections of being elite: the fear and anxiety of loss of status and money, envy, vulnerabilities, developing and performing a sense of ‘self’, pride, entitlement, snubs and appeasements. Affect, as also explained in the first few pages, is more than emotions, in that it is about state of mind and body; it is consciousness, action, preconscious thought, habitus, and collective identities. It is about explaining the experiences, the ability of self-reflection,

Introduction 11 and bringing together the context and intent. Following this, my emphasis is not simply in delineating the presence of money, but unravelling why it is used in the way that it is, and what range of affections does possessing and spending money allude to? In other words, how are pride and entitlement articulated in elite lives? Do the elites also experience vulnerabilities and anxieties? If so, in what form and how do they overcome these? What do the elite housewives make of their privileged relationship with money? By providing answers to these questions, I explain that it is precisely the intricate relationships between money, status, and affect that makes elites as modern subjects, as these elite lifeworlds are full of contestations and contradictions, bringing together seemingly disparate worlds and also pulling them apart – aspects that all define being and becoming modern. That is to say, the elite’s lives are determined by pride, entitlement, greed, and ‘vulgar’ use of money as much as they are about vulnerabilities, anxieties, and fear. Therefore, by focusing on these affections of elite lifeworlds, I explain that the world of elites is not a neat category determined by possession of money and expressions of certain lifestyles and tastes. Instead, it is constantly being remade, challenged, and asserted, and by analysing the affections of being elite, we get a better grasp of this dynamicity of elite-ness. Thirdly, this research encourages assessing class both in its vertical dynamics and horizontal dimension, that is, as ‘class fractions’ as Bourdieu lays out.13 Witnessing the elite social worlds made me aware that an individual understands class performance and class position in relation to actions of others, and so, following Marx and Weber’s theorisations, I too noted the articulations of class as being relational.14 This ethnographic work most starkly brought out the importance of focusing on class fractions and therefore runs the caution of not viewing elites as a homogeneous category. Bourdieu explained the different strategies that fragments of the dominant class, especially those that are not high on economic capital, use to dominate over other fragments of a dominant class, mostly in the form of use of cultural capital. Following suit, whilst this research focuses on a very specific category of the elites, it will also lay bare the class fractions within this sub-section of elites (old, new, religious, non-religious, tasteful, tasteless), and the ways in which these boundaries are also constantly shifting. Here, Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction’ (1984) also becomes important, for it explains the discernments of class expressions, and in this book too I untangle the several layers in which elite distinctions are performed. At times, discernments regarding wedding preparations enable elites to adjudge each other as with ‘good’ or ‘bad’ taste, and at other times something as simple as buying a handbag reveals the underlying politics of discernments, networks, and money, as the elite women quiz each other on how and when they procured specific bags. Most starkly, they also draw boundaries with other ‘types’

12  Introduction of elites – ‘old’, nouveaux riche, and other categories, as it were, as that of Bollywood, political, or royal elites. In this book I focus more on ingroup dynamics and politics of discernments, as these dynamics and power struggles over distinctions, differentiations, and hierarchies governs much of their social and personal lives. The most significant aspect of this book is that it explains the relationship between elites and gender.15 Usually research on upper-class women focuses on the realm of the domestic, and how women make an important contribution in reproducing class and becoming significant status enhancers. Real and important as this is, such an analytical framework promotes an understanding of gender as a static category, wherein women are told to do things and behave in certain ways. However, in this book, I bring focus to women as primary actors in discerning elite cultures, and therefore, argue that gender is indeed a relational category, wherein women are not ancillaries of male projects but equally, in tandem and in conversation with men, define elite lifeworlds. This work lays out that elite housewives bring their own intents in shaping class dynamics, defining morality, and encouraging and producing elite cultures. It thus argues that the role of women, especially housewives, should not be restricted to an understanding that projects them as reproducers of class and symbols of status. In fact, they should be recognised as constituting class and as being the substance of symbols and status. This is not to say that a significant aspect of the role and position of elite housewives is not in reproducing class boundaries, for that is indeed an important aspect of elite cultures. This is best exemplified in women’s involvement in suggesting marriage alliances. Whilst scholarship has extensively noted this role performance by women, more recently popular media too has turned its attention to it, as the recent Bollywood film, Dil Dhadakne Do (2016), directed by Zoya Akhtar.16 In this film, Neelam Mehra (Shefali Shah), wife of Kamal Mehra (Anil Kapoor), a rich Punjabi businessman, suggests a marital alliance for their son, Kabir Mehra (Ranveer Singh), with the daughter of another big business family, the Suds. The motivation for this alliance is that the Mehras’ business is suffering heavy losses and the grapevine has it that the Suds are interested in buying their business. So, in order to ensure that their business remains in the family, Neelam Mehra suggests that her son marry the only daughter of the Suds. The film of course revolves around Kabir’s rebellion to this alliance, which ultimately does not go through, but the fact that Akhtar was able to capture the important role of housewives in deciding on marriage alliances remains significant because it enables us to trace the ways in which housewives link the domestic and the non-domestic. Another sphere in which the elite housewives actively reproduce class boundaries

Introduction 13 is the dynamics with their supporting staff and engagement in the public sphere, as that of charity. I  briefly note these themes whilst discussing the spiritual and religious leanings of elite housewives, wherein I explain that their sentiments of charity or ‘giving back’ are restricted to their own class. In other words, whilst philanthropy forms a significant part of an elite habitus, it is remarkably absent in the lives of wives of business tycoons of Delhi. Their religious and spiritual activities mainly involve their own family, friends, work networks, and rarely extend to a larger population of the lesser privileged. In fact, they also seem to not take much responsibility towards their supporting staff beyond giving them salaries.17 A focus on these aspects of performing and experiencing eliteness and class dynamics also explains the lived realities of inequality. In other words, I approach inequality not only as an economic variable but as lived realities, affections, and moralities of being and becoming elite. Finally, another crucial though less explored theme that this book brings attention to is the transnational dynamics of being elite.18 Through the several ‘thick descriptions’ provided in the book, we see that the elite housewives position themselves at times as Indian icons and at other times display a desire to be recognised as part of a global, international group of elites. This is particularly evident, for example, in their use of social media, as of Facebook and Instagram, where they regularly share pictures of themselves. At times these images exude a certain ‘Indianness’, as it were, through choice of clothes, celebrations of Indian festivals, and supporting Indian teams in sports, for example. At other times, they display pictures of themselves carrying international brands, celebrating non-Indian occasions as Halloween or organising theme parties as of English Tea, French Riviera picnics, or Moroccan nights. They also put up pictures of their foreign holidays like skiing in St. Moritz, perhaps in a desire to display that their leisure activities are akin to the international super-rich. In these ways, the elite housewives desire to be links between Indian and global ways of being elite.

Structure of the book Interacting principally with small groups of elite housewives, I do not claim to speak to all specialisms and idiosyncrasies of being elite. At the same time, the perspectives I provide in the following pages are emblematic and exemplary to a set of elite practices. These practices are of the everydayness of being elite – of hierarchies, social snubs, renegotiations of status, claims to privilege, and expressions of entitlements. Bourdieu noted that social sciences should focus on analysing the social spaces in which classes can be demarcated, and so in this book, I focus on three aspects of elite lives – fashion and travel, weddings, and spirituality and religion – in order

14  Introduction to explain the everydayness of being elite marked by hierarchies and friendships, performances and practices, and materials and affects. In presenting these narrations, my aim is not to define the lives of elite housewives in binary outlooks of ‘either’ and ‘or’, for example, split between capitalism and monetisation of their lives and the burden of traditional living and gendered role expectations. Instead, I show that these elite housewives, in their specific ways, engage with processes and enticements of modernisation – of fashion, travel, food – as they also actively shape the modern. It is also not my intent to claim that these descriptions are the only definite way of being elite. Instead, these are my ruminations and wanderings in elite worlds and the ways I see class as being articulated and fractured at the same time; seamlessly flowing and also contesting with each other. In the first chapter, Fashion and travels, I discuss an important feature that defines elite housewives both in public discourse and their selffashioning, namely, their physical appearance. These elite housewives invest much time, energy, and thought in curating an appearance that is pleasing and appropriate for specific times (of the day, year, and more meta-themes as of ‘modern’ times) and spaces. With a heightened and sensitive perspective towards the importance of their bodies as carriers of status and language of exclusivity, these women embody the modern in specific ways. They appropriate processes of modernisation in the form of bodily treatments, for example, to possess certain ideals of globally popular standards of beauty as they also invoke a morality of being simple and not spending too much on their hair and makeup. In these selfpresentations, the elite housewives tread between a comfort with glamour and prudence with money and appeal of the ‘simple’, which also forms an irresistible ground of competition amongst them. Another sphere in which competition takes a conspicuous presence is of buying handbags. Procuring exclusive, expensive, and tasteful bags, I explain, is not only a way to display wealth but a testimony to one’s global networks, knowledge, and appreciation of international fashion – aspects that reiterate one’s exclusive and powerful elite status. Displaying similar choice in handbags, as that of the Hermès Birkin, for example, further helps mark out internal fractions within the elites, as a division is enabled between those with taste and those without. I then turn my attention to travel. Whilst in their childhood, these elite housewives spent holidays in hill stations of India, such as Shimla and Mussorie, they now look for more exotic and less travelled places across the globe. The competition to find ‘different’ locations for travel is abounding, and with this further in-group boundaries are drawn. Most interestingly, I found that elite housewives also opt for women-only travels, which alludes to certain unexplored aspects of elite

Introduction 15 women’s subjectivities as of unfulfiled desires, celebrations of non-kinship and familial networks, and female friendships, and desire to break away from the domestic role expectations, even momentarily. Travels, therefore, consolidate elite housewives’ claims to global knowledge and experience of cultures of food, fashion, and leisure, whilst they also enable them to create elite-ness and elite cultures. In the second chapter, I focus on that social space which is not only the most significant practice amongst the elites but has also put the Indian elites on an enviable global pedestal of extravagance, namely, weddings. Weddings are crucial sites of understanding performances and processes of the modern, which recent scholarship has ignored being more in favour of studying marriages (and marriage alliances). However, I find weddings equally appealing to analyse, for they provide a comprehensive view of claims, contestations, and negotiations of being modern, as individuals play out their different identities of class and gender conspicuously in the limited time and space of wedding-related ceremonies. Significantly, it is in this space that elites compete with each other most starkly in order to claim a higher rank in status, taste, and possession of wealth. In this chapter, I not only bring attention to the strategies of class fractions but also highlight interventions of the modern. In other words, I explain the ways in which the modern is experienced and defined by, for example, focusing on the charade of bespoke services (clothes, decorations, invitations), the uninhibited presence of a professional wedding planner, and the tiring procedure of curating an image of a ‘modern Indian’ bride and family. I also discuss the popular phenomenon of ‘destination weddings’, and how it is a breeding ground for performance of one-upmanship. This competition is not only about the material aspects of organising spectacular wedding celebrations but also of exhibiting affections of hospitality and generosity by the host families, which are also seen as important markers of being elite. In these ways, I thus explain that weddings are not only articulations of wealth, social networks, and taste for elite families but are also expressions of morality and humility, which too crucially construct elite cultures and subjectivities. The themes of moralities and humilities also follows to the third chapter on religious and spiritual aspects of the elite worlds. In this chapter, I explain the specific ways in which these elite housewives constitute their class, culture, and gender through spiritual and religious practices. A focus on the dimension of religion and spirituality to explain modern subjectivities is crucial, since the lives of elite housewives is often explained away by the ‘new’ cultures and expressions of money, as of bags, travels, jewelry, and designer clothes. But as my research indicates, these elite housewives are also embedded in expectations, persuasions, and realisations of

16  Introduction religious practices and rituals, and are driven by affections of guilt and anxieties, which they hope are overcome in their spiritual journeys. In fact, I did not come across any self-proclaimed atheist or agnostic, and all elite housewives took pride in being religious or spiritual. This religious or spiritual leaning can surely be inferred as a way of fulfiling their gender role expectation, as women across classes are expected to be custodians of the domestic and the religious. However, my explanation is also that elite housewives are not merely following role expectations but are defining moralities for the elite class by ensuring a place of piety in performances of being elite. Furthermore, these practices also indicate a range of affections of being privileged and entitled, as it lays bare the anxieties, apprehensions, and fears of loss of status and money. These leanings of spirituality therefore also reveal the vulnerabilities and anxieties of these elites related to occupying a position of power and privilege. Whilst the experiences of the religious and spiritual are vast and varied, I focus mainly on the growing cult of gurus (Godmen) and extravagant celebration of religious festivals. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, I note that these spaces too reaffirm class boundaries, as the satsangs (gatherings for chanting and hearing sermons) and the acts of sewa (service) are all performed and organised for and within one’s class. Though neatly divided into three chapters, there emerge certain overlapping themes, which allow for a cross-reading of these chapters. For example, money is described as being used in opulent ways as well as ways that indicate more prudence and caution. Elite housewives surely use money to demonstrate high taste (in weddings, travels, consumption), but also discuss the ways to ‘save’ money (especially in their purchases). They also, for example, spend money to look the ‘right’ part by wearing expensive clothes and jewelry and at other times, claim to spend less on themselves and use that money for hospitality. Furthermore, all three chapters allude to the importance of global knowledge of cultures, including fashion, travel, spiritual awakenings, and religious and wedding celebrations to construct elite-ness. Thus, though divided into three chapters, these ethnographic accounts are not disconnected from each other but are mutually imbricated, bringing forth themes of being and living as elites. These themes, moreover, demonstrate that the elite worlds are not seamless, and though they might seem coalescent they also fall apart. The sentiments and motivations of the spiritual and religious bent of mind, for example, might be in contradiction to those of fashion, travel, and weddings, but are also connected to one another as, for example, religious and spiritual paths are also discovered in international shores and by following gurus with international appeal. These three spaces, as it were, are in conversation with each other as they also pull each other apart. It

Introduction 17 is precisely in this, the contradictions, contestations, and continuities not dictated by an ‘or’ and ‘either’, but by ‘and’, that I locate the world of elite housewives.

Recent works on elites In the past few years, there has been a revival of interest in the study of elites, both in scholarship and popular books. In the context of India this interest has only just begun. One of the classics, as it were, in this field – though the research and book itself never claimed to speak to the field of Sociology of elites – is Sanjay Srivastava’s ‘Constructing Post-colonial India: National Character and the Doon School’ (1998). A comprehensive ethnography of an elite boy’s boarding school, this book unpacks the privileged education at Doon School, which provided a citizenship education that enabled makings of future generation of professionals and bureaucrats par excellence; a much-needed endeavour for the development of post-colonial India. Srivastava explicates the intrinsic relationship of pedagogy, citizenship education, and secularism in producing post-colonial citizens and ‘governing’ elites, as it were.19 Another category of elites that gained attention is that of economic elites (business and professional elites), whose stories of success are regularly captured in newspapers and magazines. Recently, scholarship too has turned a new look at them with the publication of a special journal issue ‘Sociology of India’s Economic Elites’ (2017). This collection of research papers addresses several aspects of being an economic elite in India, including the intricate relationship between family and business, social profiles of senior professionals in companies (caste, economic background), the importance of educational degrees in becoming top professionals in multinational companies, the role of croynism and systematic corruption in fostering certain businesses, the role of women in reproducing privilege in business communities of India (as of the Marwaris), and the ways in which economic capital is converted to cultural capital by procurement of art. Building on this work, the editors also published a book, ‘Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege, and Inequality in contemporary India’ (2018), which is a collection of eight contributions providing different perspectives and dynamics of elite processes in business and politics. Whilst these works have significantly analysed and presented elites in the context of education, nation building, business networks, and professional qualifications, they have lamentably ignored the narratives of elite housewives, with the exception of Ponniah (2018), who traces the role of women belonging to the Marwari community. Apart from this scholarship, in popular writings Rana Dasgupta’s ‘Capital’ (2014) forms one of the few contributions that notes the lives of elite

18  Introduction housewives as it delivers a peek into contemporary Delhi made of upper and lower classes, ‘new’ and ‘old’ elites, highlighting the perversions and privileges of the wealthy. Appreciatively, it includes perspectives of the rich housewives, though only briefly and limited in the framework of familial duties, patriarchal structures, or unhappy marriages. It is in this lacuna on works on elite women that I place my book, which ensures that narrations of contemporary Indian elites will include the lives of housewives, and in a way that does not explain them simply as symbols of status, conspicuous consumption, and means of reproduction of elite status. Rather, I argue that elite housewives curate and create elite identities of culture, class, and gender. A similar endeavour is evident in two recently published books on the super-rich housewives of New York: Wednesday Martin’s ‘Primates of Fifth Avenue’ (2015), and Rachel Sherman’s ‘Uneasy Street: Anxieties of Affluence’ (2017). Martin’s account traces the elite housewives’ obsession with physical fitness, clothes, retreats, exercises, hand bags, and education and upbringing of children. Its analysis, however, remains short of scholastic imagination and dialogue and seems more akin to a glossy read. I place my work more in conversation with Sherman’s ethnography on elite housewives in Manhattan in which she claims that contrary to popular opinion, elite women are not complacent about their privilege but are in fact concerned about appearing too rich. Sherman explains that in order to show that they are worthy of their privileged status, these elite housewives present themselves as ‘good’ people, as hard workers and prudent customers. My work, like Sherman’s research, focuses on affects, however it takes a different position as I do not explain the elite housewives of Delhi in strict categories of morality, prudence, or extravagance. Rather, I argue that their worlds are not about ‘this’ or ‘that’, but of both. Their lives are about considerations of doubt and confusions, as well as about sureties and strategies of reproduction of status through both established and new ways of class performance. Furthermore, unlike the housewives that Sherman spent time with, the elite housewives of Delhi did not shy away from discussing their wealth – though of course not in great detail. Nor did they always attach a moral and ethical agenda to their use of money. Instead, they traversed the morality and ethics of use of money, at times invoking an unabashed pride in glamour and extravagance and possession of global knowledge of taste and at other times demonstrating, performing, and even believing in the goodness of humility and modesty with regard to money. It is, therefore, not about being proudly privileged or concerned moral actors but being both – it is about the ‘vulgar’ as well as prudent use of money; glamour and ‘savings’, enticements of the modern and a retreat to the spiritual, about anxiety and

Introduction 19 privilege. It is these disjunctures and contestations, I argue, that constitute elite subjectivities. In this book, I highlight the strategies and practices of juxtapositions, continuities, and contradictions that construct the class, gender, and cultures of being elite.

Notes 1 In some ways this mall might have parallels with big stores as Selfridges and Harrods in London, but in significant ways it is also different: firstly, in terms of its size, which is much smaller than the London stores, and secondly the number of brands that are also fewer. But more significantly, whilst Harrods or Selfridges also attracts a significant number of non-elites the DLF Emporio mall has much fewer visits from the non-elite classes and is not yet seen as an icon of luxury that is almost like a tourist destination, as in the case of Harrods and Selfridges. 2 Some of these paintings include, At the Café, Woman on the Café Terrace, Two Women Leaning on a Gate, and Mary Cassat at the Louvre I. 3 For further discussion on classic elite theories and works see C. Wright Mills ‘The Power Elite’ 1956; Vilfredo Pareto ‘The Rise and Fall of the Elites: An Application of Theoretical Sociology’ [(1901)1968]; Gareto Mosca ‘The Ruling Class’ [(1896) 1939], T.B. Bottomore ‘Elites and Society’ (1964). 4 For further discussion on elites and conversion of one form of capital to another see Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction’ (1984). 5 In recent times, scholarship (as well as public opinion) prefers to use the term ‘homemaker’ rather than ‘housewife’, for the latter is seen to communicate a more pejorative and disempowering status to women. In this book, however, I use the term ‘housewife’, for the elite women, happily and proudly, referred to themselves as ‘housewives’. Perhaps this could also indicate a re-appropriation of this term that now signifies a more respectable and socially laudable status to housewives. Or it could indicate their unawareness to the pejorative sense of this term. In either case, I found it more prudent to use the term that they assign to themselves. 6 An important theme in the study of money is to analyse the meanings (social and cultural) attached to its use, so as to explain the significance of money beyond simply being a medium of exchange. See works by Viviana Zelizer ‘The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor relief and Other Currencies’ (1994); Nigel Dodd ‘The Sociology of Money’ (1994) and ‘The Social Life of Money’ (2014). 7 A few years ago, there was an ‘affective turn’ in Sociology, where, as Clough and Halley (2007) explain, the emphasis was on analysing and understanding the social and historical contexts of emotions, impulses, and attitudes (ibid). Following this turn, as it were, affect is understood as being about ‘body and mind’ and ‘passions and reasons’, encouraging us to pose questions on the relations between actions and passions and between reasons and emotions (Clough and Halley 2007: x). Several debates and discussions on what constitute affects try to explain whether it is about the personal or impersonal, or preconscious or cultural, and how can it be used to explain the social or the political. In this book, however, my focus is not so much to explain the conceptual and theoretical

20  Introduction standing of ‘affect’ as it is to simply explain its relevance as something ‘more’ than emotions – something that helps understand at once contested and at other, seamless lives of elite women, involving a constant interplay between money and non-money, sensual and corporeal, spiritual and material. 8 For further information on kitty parties see Ann Waldrop “Kitty Parties and Middle-Class Femininity in New Delhi” (2011), and newspapers articles by Pooja Birla “The New Revised Kitty Party” in Hindustan Times (2011) and Parul Bhandari’s “Inside India's Elite Kitty Parties” Quartz (2016). 9 See works by Henrike Donner ‘Domestic Goddesses: Maternity, Globalization and Middle-class Identity in Contemporary India’ (2008); Parul Bhandari ‘Premarital Relationships and the Family in Modern India’ (2017c). 10 Selected works on middle class women and ‘work’ include, Smitha Radhakrishnan’s ‘Appropriately Indian: Gender and Culture in a New Transnational Class’ (2011a), ‘Gender, the IT Revolution and the Making of a Middle-class India’ (2011b); Beliappa’s ‘Gender, Class and Reflexive Modernity in India’ (2013); Ravinder Kaur and Rajni Palriwala’s ‘Marrying in South Asia’ (2014). 11 Thorstein Veblen’s ‘Theory of Leisure Class’ (1899). 12 See Viviana Zelizer’s ‘The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor relief an Other Currencies’ (1994), ‘Monetization and Social Life’ (2000); Nigel Dodd’s ‘The Sociology of Money’ (1994), ‘The Social Life of Money’ (2014); George Simmel’s ‘The Philosophy of Money’ (1907); Hart’s ‘Head or Tail: Two Sides of the Coin’ (1986). 13 See ‘Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste’ (1984). 14 Karl Marx’s ‘Capital: Volume III’ (1894) and Max Weber’s ‘Classes, Status Groups, and Parties’ in Economy and Society (1922). 15 In a recent journal article, Cousin, Khan, and Meyers (2018) note that scholarship on elites does not adequately address gender relations. They particularly point to a lack of Black and Hispanic women in literature on elite scholarship, and I note a conspicuous absence of South Asian elite women in discussions on elite, which this book aims to address. 16 For commentary on Zoya Akhtar’s latest film on elite women Dil Dhadakne Do see Bhandari’s ‘Towards a Sociology of Indian Elites: Marriage Alliances, Vulnerabilities, and Resistance in Bollywood’ (2017). 17 There is a growing interest in understanding the relational aspects of class and inequality, and recent scholarship, including works by Qayum and Ray (2009 and 2011), has focussed its attention to the relationship between middle class and elites with their domestic workers, for example. 18 This question has been less explored by scholarship, though its importance has been flagged by Cousin, Khan, and Mears (2018), and forms one of the main fields of enquiry at the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics. 19 The field of education has always proved an insightful space to trace class articulations and reproduction. A recent insightful study, though in the context of the United States, is Shamus Rehman Khan’s ‘Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School’ (2010).

2 Fashion and travels

Clothes and jewelry have always formed an important aspect of the expected role performance of elites and has been well-documented in the protocols of dressing-up of the royal and political elites. The contemporary housewives of Delhi too are aware of the importance of ‘looking their part’, and actively reify and create the appropriate class and status expectations of appearance. Whilst the ‘rule book’, as it were, of appropriate appearances, leisure, and hobbies that construct elite-ness is detailed and extensive, in this chapter, I focus on two aspects: handbags and travels. By tracing these indulgences, I explain the ways in which elite status is articulated and in due process boundaries within the elites are drawn and reiterated. In doing so, the construction and articulations of appropriate elite femininity are also brought out, which I argue, concerns with both extravagance and high taste as well as prudence and ‘simplicity’. Furthermore, as evident especially in the discussion of travels, this elite femininity positions the family at the centre of women’s identity and also allows for realisations of non-familial and more ‘self’ centred identities.

Picture perfect look: bags and make-up A visit to the DLF Emporio mall, where these elite housewives routinely congregate for shopping, catching-up over lunch, coffee, or snacks, and hosting kitty parties, immediately highlights the homogeneity of their appearance: hair coloured in light brown hues, manicured hands with painted nails, perfectly made up faces using many beauty products, wearing jeans and top or knee-length dresses and walking on tall heels. I was invited to join a group of eight women for lunch at the café in the atrium, and I noted how they all appeared strikingly similar. I commented on how glamorous they looked but my compliment, it seemed, was also interpreted as a critical comment on their appearances because immediately, Ruby Mehta, aged 28, and mother of two, remarked,

22  Fashion and travels It [the make up] is not all that much. You are not used to it, so you think it is [a lot]. It is pretty basic. We are not like those [women] who hire stylists to dress up every time they step out of the house. Everyone at the table, including me, laughed out loud, though I wondered who these women were who hire stylists for their everyday dressing up. More than the reality of the existence of this cohort of elite women, what was striking was that Ruby had easily brushed aside the question on her make-up, and to displace attention from her appearance had shifted attention to discussing other elite women. Her claims of doing ‘basic’ make-up seemed a bit far-fetched, perhaps to her as well, which compelled her to introduce a comparative situation with other elite women who use professional services for their make-up even for everyday outings of luncheons and coffee. It was in this moment that Ruby had performed her particular class position within the elites. She evaded an acknowledgement of the time and money that she spent on her looks by comparing herself with those women who spend far more time and money to look glamorous. These women were ‘othered’ because of their extravagant indulgence in looking good, which was seen as a not-so-good way of spending money. With this comparative approach to their self-presentations, Ruby and her group of friends also earmarked themselves, at least in the space of everyday appearances, as different than other elite women. Rani Malhotra, aged 32, mother of two, explained more about these ‘other’ women. She said, There is a trend nowadays for [rich] women to hire stylists – clothes, make-up, etc., like film stars, who make them look picture perfect all the time, like they can be ready for a photo shoot. It is all a bit too much I feel. I mean, for weddings or special occasions, I understand, but getting ready like this every day is a bit over the top. [. . .] We all also like to dress up, but we mostly do everything on our own and have a salon where we go for touch-ups and make-up, but we don’t have personal stylists. In this invocation and clarification of special and everyday, of working with generic services as opposed to bespoke services, these elite women laid bare the fractions within the elite class. Furthermore, in doing so, they also invoked a morality, as it were, of what constitutes a ‘good’, self-reliant, elite femininity. From hairstyle and make-up, the conversation shifted to diamonds, as Sheila explained that unlike these other elite women, they are careful in wearing appropriate jewelry for different occasions and not taking out all the diamonds in one go. ‘There has to be some subtlety in your taste’, said Rani.

Fashion and travels 23 We all have enough jewelry but we know that if we are going out to meet our friends we don’t have to deck up with diamonds. But some of these ladies take out their entire collection of rubies, emeralds, diamonds; they wear diamond necklaces, many rings, or huge solitaires on the ears. I don’t understand who they are trying to impress [. . .] we don’t overdo it. The women who sat at this table were indeed wearing huge solitaires; in fact, all of these women wore a wedding ring with a big diamond that would be at least Rs. 1 crore (£1 million). Apart from that, some of them had other rings on their fingers, small solitaires as earrings, and a pendant around their necks. It was remarkable to note, however, that these women were hiding their made-up selves behind the overindulgent practices of other super-rich women, in due process claiming to be more reasonable and less opulent than them. Whilst this form of comparison certainly helped trace the ways of drawing boundaries within the seemingly homogeneous group of elite women, it also alluded to the anxieties and apprehensions of articulating an elite status. These women have to carry themselves appropriately to communicate their class status and taste, yet at the same time, they are anxious of either over-performing their elite status or being associated with the more frivolous and idle groups of elite women. Contrarily, it could also be an attempt of reconciliation with their rejection of not being a part of the other group of elite women. The stakes of these affective involvements in performing an elite status were raised the most in the field of an accessory which is indeed much like an extension of their physical self: handbags. Bagwati1 In the past decade, there has been a sharp increase in the presence of international designer brands in India that have opened showrooms especially in Delhi and Mumbai. Whilst the elites always had access to international brands due to their frequent foreign travels, the opening of DLF Emporio mall in Delhi, which houses more than 70 international brands, has altered the dynamics of consumption for the elites. They now have quick and easy access to international fashion and can easily partake in a global culture of being elite through commodity procurement. The elite women I spent time with recalled their holidays in the late 1980s and 1990s, when they shopped in New York or London and brought back many goods, especially handbags. With India’s new economic policies of the 1990s, however, they no longer had to wait for the annual or bi-annual foreign trips as international brands were within an easy reach. This certainly has had an effect on the performance of being elite and drawing exclusionary

24  Fashion and travels boundaries within an elite group, as owning products from international brands no longer signifies an exclusive taste but has become a mandatory class performance. For example, owning Louis Vuitton bags is no longer a marker of a super-elite status, one that combines travel, money, taste, and exclusivity. Rather, it is now an extension or part of the everyday reality of being elite, for it is a given that elite women will own not one but several products from Louis Vuitton. In fact, in my interactions with not only elite women but also the showroom managers of Louis Vuitton and CEOs of companies that sell and buy used (second-hand) luxury bags, I was informed that Louis Vuitton is increasingly within the reach of an upper-middle-class category, and the super-rich prefer to purchase the more expensive collections of Louis Vuitton. Therefore, the big brands too cater to and perhaps even promote a politics of distinction with their own products, by introducing a wide range of priced products, which can cater to the aspiring upper middle classes as well as the super-rich. The elite housewives of Delhi are well attuned to these politics and ensure to purchase the most exclusive of bags. Amidst this world of easy access to luxury, one brand that continues to be very high on the list of elites and a definite marker of being elite is that of Hermès: a must-have in the world of the super-rich is the Hermès Birkin bag. The appeal and status symbol of this bag has been captured in many forms of public media, including the American television series, Sex and the City; in Martin’s book, Primates of Park Avenue; and in the Indian context in a recent Bollywood film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), directed by Zoya Akhtar. In this film, Natasha (Kaleki Kolchin), a rich spoilt girl, is engaged to her boyfriend, Kabir (Abhay Deol). When Kabir travels on a pre-wedding vacation with his two best friends to Spain, she demands that he bring her back a Hermès Birkin. Kabir, the dutiful boyfriend, buys the bag and is constantly worried that it will be damaged, earning him the wrath of Natasha. His concern and care towards the bag, leads his friends to banter that the bag is as important to him as a human being, and therefore the bag deserves a name, akin to a human name. And so they begin to address it as bagwati, phonetically resembling an Indian female name. Akhtar’s decision to capture this level of importance of a bag in an elite woman’s life in her film reflects on her astute ability and sharpness to understand the nuances of elite lives marked with desire and competition. This was starkly evident in the lives of elite housewives of Delhi, who went to great lengths to procure a Hermès Birkin and spent considerable time and money in maintaining their handbags. For example, in five-star hotel restaurants and the atrium café at DLF Emporio mall, I have often seen elite women request a special stool to place their bag on, for they do not want to squash it on the seat as they are sitting on or put it on the floor.

Fashion and travels 25 The Hermès Birkin occupies a special place in the world of elite housewives and is a guarantee of elite-ness, although, one’s status is further hierarchised depending on where the bag is procured from (India or abroad) and what leather it is made of.2 I was invited for dinner by Mallika Bhasin at her large mansion-like home in the outskirts of Delhi in Chattarpur Farms, which is en route to Gurugram. Spread over two acres, a long driveway approaches her house, which opens into a palatial living room. Mallika Bhasin’s father is one of the most respected real estate tycoons of Delhi, and she is married into a family that is also in the real estate business. She is always very expressive of the fact that her in-laws, with whom she resides, pamper her, and her husband loves her dearly, as they ensure to fulfil her every need and desire. As I sat with Mallika, who had recently returned from a holiday in Europe, and her guests, the conversation turned to her new bag: a rouge (red) Hermès Birkin. Mallika’s friends enquired as to how she managed to procure this bag in a relatively short span of time, as the bag usually has a waiting list of over a year. Mallika narrated her story with great pride and excitement. She said, I told Ashok [her husband] that I really want a Birkin and that too in colour red. But you know how it is in Delhi, they [the Hermès store] only keep the classics, so they had the regular Birkin in the classic [brown] colour. Ashok said that he will check the New York store when he travels there for work. But you won’t believe this, they had a waiting period of 18 months there! I was hell bent on getting it for my 35th birthday [which was a few days ago]. So, Ashok called one of his business partners in Germany and requested him to go to the showroom in Frankfurt to find if the Rouge Birkin was available there. And it turned out that there was a much shorter waiting period there – six months. In fact, we got it slightly before that, in close to five months. I was just lucky that Ashok happened to know someone in Germany, otherwise in the US and UK the waiting would have been too long! As Mallika was narrating her story, the women who were sitting on the edges of their seats seemed very impressed, and some others a bit envious, but all hailed Ashok’s dedication and Mallika’s luck to have a husband who was so attentive to her desires. Mallika blushed, and as Ashok passed by the group of women, she gently held his hand and smiled. Ashok instantly understood the cause of this smile and reciprocated with a bigger smile and an assuring tap on her hand. For Mallika, the process of procuring the bag, and in some ways the bag itself became a symbol of many affections: her sense of self, marital union, and class position. The bag was not simply a symbol of conspicuous consumption but exuded several meanings with

26  Fashion and travels which Mallika made sense of her elite self. It was an acknowledgment of her super-elite status and life of exclusivity that she could afford. It signalled her privilege and her husband’s professional success, who managed to procure her the bag in less stipulated time through his business networks. Most importantly, it demonstrated her fulfiling companionship with her husband, who would go to great lengths to keep her happy. Also, since the Hermès Birkin generated feelings of desire and aspiration in other elite women, for it is regarded as a potent symbol of modern living shaped by global knowledge, access, and privilege, Mallika could now comfortably also lay claim to a global elite status. At another dinner with another group of women, who also knew Mallika Bhasin, I brought up her recent accolade of the possession of the rouge Birkin, to which, Shweta, aged 38, who is married into a big business family, and is distantly related to Mallika commented, Oh yes, nowadays women are so mad about these expensive bags. I am not into them at all. I like a good bag but I won’t spend so much money on one bag. Though my sisters-in-law are even more conscious about their image. [. . .] They bought the highest of the Birkin versions, you know the one made of crocodile skin. I think it costs somewhere around £20,000. In this short conversation Shweta drew and re-drew elite boundaries and constructed hierarchies within her class. She first distanced herself from the super luxurious lifestyle exemplified by owning a particular bag by denouncing it as unnecessary. In another moment, she also claimed the same space (of buying expensive bags) by specifying that her family in fact has higher tastes than Mallika’s as they buy higher segment products of Hermès, and thus occupy a higher position in the hierarchy of elites. With this remark she also seemed to communicate that she was making a choice in not procuring expensive bags when she had the means to do so and is therefore prudent with money. In this way, even in not owning this particular bag, she claimed and appropriated an elite status emanating from owning it. The calculations of exclusivity Whilst the Birkin surely captured the imagination and aspirations of all elite women, I spotted another brand of handbag that many elite women carried, which did not have a showroom in India, namely, Le Maison Du Goyard. A relatively lesser-known brand to Indian elites, the Goyard (as it is more commonly referred to) has made its way to the posh alleys of Delhi and Mumbai. Though expensive, it is still priced in the same range as that of

Fashion and travels 27 Louis Vuitton products, however, its possession is not simply an indication of abundant money on the part of the buyer but crucially signifies a privileged knowledge of international fashion and ‘good’ and exclusive taste. This is enhanced by the fact that unlike other luxury brands, Goyard has a limited number of showrooms across the globe – with only four in Europe, eight in Southeast Asia, six in North America, and one in South America. In this sense, this brand becomes a symbol of exclusivity, for not only can you procure it only in a few selected cities of the world, but its limited public visibility also signals that the elites who are in possession of it are tuned in to international fashion. It was becoming obvious to me that those elite women who carried Goyard bags would claim membership to another sub-cohort of the elites, one that demonstrated a particular, albeit high and exclusive, taste in fashion. As I joined a group of women at the DLF Emporio café, two of them were carrying a particular style of a Goyard bag, which is high up in their hierarchy of bag types, priced at £2,500. After a few minutes, two other women also carrying Goyard bags walked past the table and smiled at the two ladies on our table who were carrying Goyards. This was quite an intriguing moment to observe for it seemed that the four women had communicated a mutual acknowledgment of their exclusive taste and therefore status. In this moment, they also appeared to have drawn boundaries with the other women present at the table, who, though also elite, did not possess the same taste and perhaps international knowledge of fashion, as they were not carrying Goyard bags. Upon noticing this exchange of smiles, I remarked that the brand Goyard was quite unique and different and that I had seen pictures of Bollywood celebrities carrying handbags from this brand, in fact one similar to what Maya Suri, at our table, was carrying. To this Maya responded, Thanks. Yea, I quite like Goyard. It does not scream ‘money’, like some other brands and very few people know about it, so I like that subtlety. I think Sonam Kapoor [Bollywood actress] has the same bag but in a different colour. I was hoping to get a reaction on my mention of a Bollywood celebrity owning a similar bag as Maya (and others), however, to no avail. It was not just in this moment, but on other instances too, I noted that elite housewives did not necessarily think of Bollywood movies or celebrities as trend-setters, especially trends that they would follow. Quite to the contrary, they considered themselves to be trend-setters and Bollywood to follow suit. During a conversation at a kitty party, women recalled that they have always owned bags from particular designers (going back to the late 1980s when they

28  Fashion and travels shopped from New York or London or Paris), but these bags are more in fashion now because Bollywood actresses have only recently too ventured into showcasing their ‘everyday’ or casual looks, of which these designer bags have become an important part. It seemed that they were trying to clarify that they do not follow Bollywood celebrities’ fashion looks, but in fact have previous knowledge and intimacy with high-street fashion. This is not to say that Bollywood does not serve as a reference point at all for elite women, for they did follow Bollywood gossip and fashion, but they also want to explicate that Bollywood is inspired much more by their lives.3 It seemed Maya too upheld this opinion for she did not engage with my observation that she owns the same bag as Bollywood celebrity. Noting her reticence, I changed the topic of conversation and enquired where she bought the bag from. She said, Paris. We were in London for our annual summer holiday and decided to take the train to Paris, and I thought I must visit their Goyard showroom because I wanted one particular bag. I found that it is cheaper to buy from there than in London so I immediately bought the bag! This exchange rate thing really works in our favour sometimes. The same bag would have cost me at least Rs. 30,000 (£320) more had I bought it in London. I am glad I went to Paris. Though it is a pity that they only have these two showrooms in Europe, and in a way good too that it is restricted and not everyone is carrying it. At this moment, Reena Roy interjected, Actually, they opened a store in Milan recently. I think I told you about it. When we went to Italy this summer, we visited the store in Milan and it had opened only three days ago! Like the London showroom, this one too is tucked away on the luxury street and you are sure to miss it! And it is also quite small. I bought my bag from there and saved so much on VAT returns! So, I got it for about £300 (Rs. 33,000) cheaper than it would have cost me in London. The striking aspect in the narratives of shopping for Goyard bags by Reena and Maya was their emphasis on saving money in purchasing the bag. Here was a group of super-rich women who were carrying bags that were priced at £1,400 to begin with, and yet their discussion was on VAT returns, advantages of fluctuating exchange rates, and the countries that can best offer them these benefits. This discussion on a form of ‘savings’, as it were, from large purchases was indicative of a desire to not be seen as rash and careless in spending. It seemed that the women wanted to invoke and communicate

Fashion and travels 29 elements of morality and prudence, which ironically went well with their luxurious lifestyle. The juxtaposition of their consumption tastes guided by acute desire of exclusivity on the one hand, and the jargon of saving money on the other hand, was a way of curating a specific elite status: one that is not only defined by lavish spending but also a consideration of the money spent. Crucially, these elite women used this display of prudence and sensibility with that of spending to demarcate themselves from the nouveaux riche, who, as they went on to discuss, had little regard for money. They were absolutely certain that the nouveaux riche would never opt for a Goyard for it is a less ‘visible’ brand. Maya said, Chanel as a brand is far more expensive than Goyard, and you see a lot of rich women carrying Chanel because it is better known. Goyard is not that expensive, maybe because it does not use leather and is more subtle. But you know how these nouveaux riche are – the moment they get money, they want to show off, and what better way than to buy Chanel or Louis Vuitton. The other women on the table vehemently agreed with Maya, further narrating their experiences with the nouveaux riche who have a ‘loud’ taste, they said. I found it fascinating and rather counterintuitive that these women claimed one of the most luxurious fashion brands as a symbol of subtlety and in doing so promoted a self-fashioning of prudence, morality, and concern for money. Reiterating the importance of taste, class, and status in the use of ‘subtle’ brands, Reema narrated her experience of shopping in Goyard’s Milan store. As I entered the showroom another Indian couple entered. I was looking at the Goyard tote bags and the couple, who must be in their late 40s or early 50s, was also looking at handbags. I couldn’t tell if the woman knew about Goyard already or if she spotted me and followed me in, but she did look rich. After about ten minutes her husband asks me if I was from Delhi. I said that I indeed was and with much surprise asked him how he was able to guess it correctly, to which he said, ‘It’s so obvious. Delhi people stand out’. Reena continued with much enthusiasm, I was later discussing this with my husband and said that some people really have subtle style and I suppose Delhi crowd is like that. I think he also saw me as the old rich because I am not loud in my choice of fashion. I was not over-dressed and was subtle and elegant with the

30  Fashion and travels brands I was using, and this is the image of Delhiites – we know how to dress well. Maya and Reena, thus, in consuming products from a high-end luxury brand not only laid claim to a global elite status but also drew boundaries with other categories of super-rich. Whilst these women also had products from other more famous high-end luxury brands as that of Louis Vuitton and Gucci, in preferring the non-popular high-end luxury products such as Goyard, they were marking out their exclusivity and presenting their privilege not as new but as defined by an old heritage – one that does not need to be constantly on display. In reiterating their ‘better’ and subtle taste in handbags, these women invoked boundaries of ‘old’ and ‘new’, authentic and superficial, loud and subtle.

Travelling across the world A common and popular elite practice is that of travelling, because of which the elites often buy holiday homes in different cities of the world. Whilst Indian elites have regularly travelled to their favoured destinations in India, especially during summer months, in contemporary times, more than ever, perhaps due to a burgeoning tourism industry, they have taken to foreign travel. Much like other elite practices, foreign travel too serves as a fertile ground of competition as the elites attempt to outdo each other in their choice of location and expenditure on a holiday. Sitting in the lounge area of Mrs. Shamita Khanna’s bungalow in North Delhi’s Civil Lines, I was in attendance of a post-summer get-together of her friends and family that includes a substantial list of Delhi’s ‘who’s who’ of the business circles. When Mrs. Khanna invited me for this dinner, I enquired if it was a special occasion and she clarified that she usually hosts a small dinner in the month of July or August, as during the summer months of May and June, ‘everyone in Delhi’, she said, ‘is away on holiday’. The post-holiday dinner, then, provides an opportunity for all to interact with each other after a hiatus. I was looking forward to attending this event as I was sure that this dinner would not only form a formidable space to share summer experiences but inevitably also lead to creating or recreating boundaries of exclusivity and elite-ness, and in due process, establishing snobbery. All the families in attendance of this event had travelled offshores for the summer – some for two weeks, others for four, and some for as long as two months. Those in the latter category of extended holidays stayed with their friends and family, mostly in the United States of America. Some families also had a flat in the country of holiday destination; most popularly London. There were also those who did not have many close relatives living

Fashion and travels 31 abroad, and it was primarily this cohort that travelled to locations including the Amalfi Coast in Italy, Santorini in Greece, and Monaco, which are not frequented by other elites or classes. In other words, these elites ensured to experience more exotic and less explored holiday destinations. Sat on one end of a large sofa, I was surrounded by four women and two men in their late 40s, who were discussing their summer vacations. One of them, a Mr. Vashisht, is a well-known real estate developer, who, with his wife and two children, visited Italy and England on a two-week holiday. When Mrs. Chaddha, related to the Vashishts by marriage, enquired whether they went to Rome or Venice, Mr. Vashisht replied, Oh no, we have done all these popular spots many years ago already. This time we wanted to explore the coastline. We went to the Amalfi Coast and stayed in Postinao for five nights and travelled to nearby places from there. Joining this conversation was Mrs. Chaddha’s 26-year-old daughter, who said, Oh, Amalfi is beautiful, and what is best is that barely any Indians go there! So you can get away from the Indian crowd for a while, otherwise they are everywhere – London, New York! I went there with my friends when I was in university [in England]. It is really beautiful. Mr. Vashisht added, Yes, it really is very nice and as you said not very high on the travel list of Indians. Also, did you know, this is where Raman proposed to his girlfriend, Aanya. Raman and Aanya were the talk of the business elite circle of Delhi that summer as Raman, the only son of a well-respected construction tycoon, was getting married to Aanya, who did not belong to as rich, successful, and well-known a family as that of Raman’s. They met through common friends and rumour had it that Raman instantly fell in love with Aanya, and, overlooking many alluring marriage proposals from the super-rich of Delhi, decided to marry her. Aanya belonged to the disdainfully looked upon ‘new’ rich: Aanya’s father had earned a lot of money in real estate business through many unscrupulous means, said the grapevine. Generating much shock and gossip, their wedding, held in the winter that year, was the talk of the town. Aanya’s father, with his newly earned money, put up a spectacle for a wedding, spending crores of rupees on decorations

32  Fashion and travels and performances by international artists. Their love story was a muchdiscussed topic at every elite gathering and not only were their wedding events subject to much analyses but the entire process of their courtship and pre- and post-wedding celebrations; from the where and how Raman proposed (Amalfi Coast), to his bachelor party (held in Istanbul), shopping for clothes (London), and honeymoon destination (Bora Bora islands). The lure of this wedding as a topic of gossip was surely in its narrative of ‘love’ and inter-class union, but also in its glamorous unfolding – not limited to the geographical bounded entity of India but trailing scenic locations outside of India, performing a taste of global travel and money. As the story of the Vashists’ travels to the Amalfi Coast was gaining popularity amongst the guests, Mrs. Dang, a few years older to Mr. Vashisht and twice removed sister-in-law, entered the conversation and said, ‘Oh yes, I remember we were traveling in Europe almost on the same dates. You were in Italy’, she said cautiously not mentioning Amalfi Coast, and continued ‘and we were in Monaco’. Much like the swing of a pendulum the attention of the gathered elites swiftly shifted to the coastline of South France. Mrs. Dang seemed very pleased. Monaco is viewed as the centre of fashion, style, gambling, and royalty for many of the Indian elites, and after a slump in its popularity, it seems to have come back to dominate their leisurely luxurious lifestyles, especially as it has been a popular Indian wedding destination recently. Many guests began to enquire of the Dang’s vacation in Monaco, to ask if they hired a yacht, if they lived in a palatial bungalow, what car they hired for everyday transportation, and so on. Mrs. Dang was thrilled to respond to these questions. She went on to provide exacting details on her trip: discussing the wine, praising Monaco’s fashion ambience, describing its natural beauty, and occasionally complaining of her husband’s gambling habits. She looked gleeful and satisfied, as though she had just secured her position of having had the most interesting and unique holiday from amongst her peers, and at least until the next summer, her position as one with good ‘taste’ and exquisite ‘choice’ was to remain. At the other end of the room were sat six young married women, aged 27–35, who too were discussing their vacations. Some visited the United States, others England or mainland Europe, but the centre of attention was Smita Sharma, who traveled to Santorini, Greece, for a ten-day long holiday, with her parents, siblings, and husband. Greece is indeed a popular destination with the Indian elites, as also with the upper middle class, and Smita was very careful in describing her experience as ‘exclusive’, perhaps to distinguish her holiday from the experiences of the upper middle class. She proudly informed us that they rented one of the most expensive villas

Fashion and travels 33 in Santorini, costing up to Rs. 1 lakh per night (£1,100). With a private pool, open baths, and a patio overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, as captured in the pictures she insistently showed to everyone, their villa certainly exuded luxury and exclusivity. She said, We had such a relaxing time in Santorini. We would wake up at leisure and make some breakfast, and then go walking or just soak the sun on the patios. In the evenings we would have a drink sitting on the terrace overlooking the sea, and then head to town to dine at the local restaurants. Almost as though to offset this grandeur, Smita started discussing the ‘cheap yet amazing’ clothes she bought from the local markets in Greece. She said, Things are actually cheap in Greece. I mean you don’t go there to shop for the big luxury brands, but the local stuff is so good. My sister and I picked up so many clothes, dresses, beachwear. It was really quite nice. Smita juxtaposed a luxurious indulgence with a concern for money, showcasing that her tastes were not only about purchasing the luxurious but also indulging in the ‘local’, ‘cheap’ products. This was a performance and perhaps realisation of prudence with money – of not always wanting the most expensive but of also possessing the flexibility and sensibility to engage with the ‘cheap’. As appealing as these journeys were for claims to being elite, they were also distinguished from the ‘old elite way’ of holidaying, which essentially involved a longer period of stay in one city, preferably in a house of the elite’s own. The old elites exuded an element of pride in not venturing to ‘unknown’ places but retreating to their holiday home, usually in the centre of a cosmopolitan hub such as that of London, from where, at times, shorter trips to neighbouring countries were made. A holiday home in London or New York signalled a longer legacy with an elite status, as it demonstrated a comfort and intimacy with a foreign land, and a promise of continued engagement at this holiday home could potentially be an abode for a future generation, who could study or work in that country. In fact, it was not uncommon for the elites to discuss the viability of buying property in London – a topic that was routinely brought up in parties. In a huge house in Maharani Bagh, one of the oldest elite neighbourhoods of Delhi where famous political and business elites reside, I was invited to dinner at the Tandons, who have been in the manufacturing business for the past three

34  Fashion and travels generations. As Mrs. Tandon, aged 58, introduced me to her other guests, her daughter-in-law’s brother, Sameer, aged 38, married with two children, struck a conversation on London property rates, once he was informed that I spent a few years in England. He said, I am sure you know London well enough. I have been thinking of buying a flat there. What area would you recommend? We want a flat in a central place so that when we visit everything is convenient and accessible and when the kids grow up and maybe go to university in London, it will be easier for them to live there, in their own house. I recommended a few central places to which he said, Yea, we are thinking of Knightsbridge and Marylebone area. I mean these are the most posh and nicest areas in London, but I think it is getting a bit tough to buy a flat there. Maybe we will buy somewhere else also. At this moment, his distant cousin and a dear friend, Mr. Surijeet, aged 44, interjected and said, Oh, c’mon Sameer, you have been telling us about buying a flat there for ages. Why don’t you simply get one!? It is not that difficult you know. We all either have a flat there or know someone close who does. Once you put your mind to it and have the money ready, I am sure someone will help you to get it as soon as possible. Sameer, slightly embarrassed at this direct call on his delayed approach to buying property abroad, smiled and assured all that he will in fact soon get a flat in the heart of London. At this point, Mr. Tandon, the host and patriarch of the house, remarked, This is truly the hallmark of being rich – to have a flat in London! As people discussed the benefits of owning property abroad, both in terms of convenience and reification of status, I thought of those elites who spend lengthy periods of time in homes of extended family settled abroad, and who choose not to buy property in these countries, and wondered what class connotations that would imbue? I brought this thought out in the pretext of discussing the economics of buying property especially in a city where one’s family, extended or close, resides. I wondered out loud that if one’s relatives who are settled abroad can stay with their family whilst visiting

Fashion and travels 35 India, why do the Indian relatives want to buy a flat abroad when they too can expect a reciprocity to their hospitality? Mrs. Tandon’s daughter-in-law, Rashmi, explained, I think it is very, I don’t know, middle class to go and stay in someone’s house for an extended period when you are on a holiday. When these relatives visit India it is not just for a holiday but also to meet other family members, and travel widely in India. They do not necessarily stay in Delhi for the entire time, so they have a different experience of holidaying than from ours. When we go abroad it is for a month, and I think it would be an imposition to expect someone to host you for the entire time. Also, it sort of indicates that either you don’t have money or you don’t want to spend money and you are saving by staying with them. Rashmi’s first cousin, Anusha, aged 34, married into a well-established and famous exporter family, was in complete agreement with Rashmi. She said, I agree. I think there is something a bit desperate about staying at someone’s house for long periods of time. I mean, a few days I would understand, but not for weeks! Also, there is something much more private and settled about having a place of your own in another city. You can get away at any time and not be dependent on a host. It is a lot more independent. Foreign travel, as I unveiled in my many interactions with the Delhi business elites, was far from a monolithic claim to being elite. The destination, venue, duration of stay, and purpose of the holiday were hierarchised to distinguish between ‘new’ and ‘old’ elites and between elites with taste and those without. The business elites of Delhi proactively and enthusiastically made use of this luxurious leisure practice to claim membership to one identity club or the other. In that sense, a summer getaway is never a simple experience and statement of travel, as in fact it is embedded in claims and articulations of elite status – old, new, revived, and distinct, as practised by the residents of Delhi. Women-only travels In these stories and narrations of holiday, I noted that holidaying as a claim to elite status was essentially a project that involves the family, and in that serves as a collective claim to being elite. However, there was also a recent trend of women-only travels, where elite women, belonging to either the

36  Fashion and travels same kitty party or extended family, travel together without men. The purpose of these short vacations, I was told, is usually shopping, the popular destinations for which are Dubai, Thailand, and occasionally sightseeing to neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka and Bhutan. The fact that these women-only travels are largely focussed on shopping might not seem surprising or in contradiction to the general image of elite housewives. However, as I spent time with these women, I realised that they strategically use this stereotypical gendered image of themselves as a garb to enjoy and experience a different kind of holiday. Let me explain further: as seen above, these women travel once or twice a year to foreign destinations with their families. However, if they make any further demands to travel, especially only with their girl friends, the family frowns upon it, wondering what a woman would do ‘alone’, leaving behind her family and putting a hold on her familial responsibilities. The women find it difficult to express their desire to just take a break from family responsibilities. Therefore, according to them, it is easier to convince their family to send them on a shopping vacation, which in any case would be of little interest to their husband. In other words, it is not necessary that these elite housewives desire to go for shopping holidays but that they find this cause more favourable for approval than a plea of ‘taking time off’ – which many find perplexing, particularly for a housewife. I was witness to one such discussion on ‘women-only shopping holidays’ whilst in attendance of a kitty party of young elite women, aged between 28 and 35. These women were looking forward to their four days, three nights holiday to Dubai. I enquired if there was a shopping festival that they were going to. The women laughed and said that Dubai has a perpetual shopping festival and that was not the only reason that they were headed there. Rather inquisitively I enquired further, and Bela, aged 31, said, Dubai is a great place to shop and sometimes you get great deals and the best lines of clothes and bags that you’d find nowhere else in the world. But we are not going simply for that. [she laughed] We are going to have a good time there. As she said this, Bela winked at other women on the table and together they laughed. Seeing my muddled look, Shireen, aged 28 – the youngest of the entrant who has two children and is the most physically fit of this group, said, Have you not seen Sex and the City 2? It’s [the holiday] going to be something like that! We did not choose Abu Dhabi because it is too risky. We wanted a more cosmopolitan place like Dubai. We have a

Fashion and travels 37 long list of other things to do, like go for night safaris, some belly dancing lessons, order lots of booze in our room, and who knows what else. Yet again everyone started laughing and discussing the details of this short trip, of places to visit, eat, and drink. I sat there thinking of the fabulous ways in which these women have appropriated their image of consumption and frivolity to their advantage: to find some freedom away from their family, duties, and responsibilities, and to enjoy themselves. My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden and a rather serious and unexpected outburst by Bela, who said, I mean, c’mon we deserve this. We are always working for our family, thinking of the members, managing the household, we deserve some ‘me’ time. We deserve to go for a holiday that is not with family, where we have to think of the kids, make sure everyone is happy and do all that work yet again! In that moment I realised that contrary to popular opinion, these elite women’s ‘me’ time was not only dictated by shopping or spending time at the spa. Instead, their desire was to indulge in leisure in unexpected and nonscripted ways. They were well aware that it would be more useful to express their desire to holiday as guided by an urge to shop, which they thought, quite rightly, would be more permissible. I also interacted with older elite women, aged 60 and above, some of whom were very warm and welcoming to me. One of them, Mrs. Lalwani, wife of a well-respected businessman, invited me for tea at her large house in Central Delhi. In our long conversation I broached on the phenomenon of women-only holidays and if she or her daughter or daughter-in-law had been on such a holiday. She smiled and said, Yes, I do go out with my friends. In fact, we laugh that our group is called the ‘mummy group’ as we are mothers and mothers-in-law. But I think younger women are still not given much freedom to go for holidays. I enquired on what the reason for that might be, and she replied, The thing is these girls are so young and to let them unchaperoned, who knows what they’d get up to. I mean some of them are also a bit wild. So, we [the older generation] don’t feel comfortable in letting them go on a holiday without the family.

38  Fashion and travels The clandestine purposes It turns out that Mrs. Lalwani’s concerns were not entirely unfounded, for the grapevine of Delhi elite circles had much information on certain womenonly holidays gone awry, which had brought shame to some families. One such infamous incident, which had become a topic of discussion in almost all elite gatherings was of a group of women aged 27–35, who claimed to attend a shopping festival in Dubai, but instead, as later was found out, had engaged in some extra-marital shenanigans. It was widely rumoured that on this particular holiday trip, at least two of the six women rekindled a romance with their ex-boyfriends with whom they were in a relationship before they married. Some of the others, it was speculated, made new male acquaintances there, leading to short-term romances. At one party, a group of women were discussing this big autumn gossip, and I enquired how the news had broken out. One of the ladies speculated that it must have been the wife of the ex-boyfriend, whereas another insisted that it was in fact one of the friends who leaked this information. I was told, I don’t think it really matters who leaked the information. The fact is that something did happen on this trip. We are sure that there was certainly an ex-lover involved. Imagine, how embarrassing this must have been for the Sharmas (whose daughter-in-law was allegedly involved in this extra-marital romance). To this, another older lady responded, People like to gossip. I am sure there are many more than Payal [the daughter-in-law] who have had these affairs, but I think when you go out like this on a holiday, it becomes more sensational. These grapevines remained largely unchecked by me, as I hesitated to bring these up and remained mostly passive when such discussions were taking place. Whilst it was interesting from a research point of view to analyse the motivations for these romantic or sexual encounters – rekindled and new – outside the framework of marriage, I was equally intrigued by the forum used to explore these encounters, namely that of holidays. It became apparent to me that a public activity, as of a holiday, which is usually used to bolster an elite class position was also a forum to express and assuage anxieties and desires of being an elite woman. In other words, on the one hand, a holiday reiterates a family solidarity and class position, and on the other, it is made use of by the same set of women to get away from their family and duties and indulge in their most private, intimate, and perhaps

Fashion and travels 39 unfulfiled desires. At once both public and private, foreign holidays offered various options to elite women to acquiesce and to resist; to comply to the demands of being an ideal daughter-in-law and wife and also to push these boundaries by inserting and realising a ‘self’ that is not determined by these expectations. Another type of clandestine affair that was more of an open secret was that related to beauty treatments. It is common knowledge that women in their 40s and 50s travel to the United States, at times annually or every few months, to get Botox treatment to ensure that they continue to look young. This is an open secret in the sense that though no woman ever agrees of going under the knife or an injection to look better, every woman is aware that someone else has undergone these treatments. Often, information on the surgeons and treatments is also exchanged amongst a trusted circle. This phenomenon of a ‘Botox holiday’, as some women jokingly termed it, was brought to my attention during a wedding where Mrs. Sareena, a good-looking married woman, aged 35, with two children aged 11 and 8, was incessantly complimented on her good looks and glamorous personality. She was the groom’s sister-in-law and apart from this wedding, she was one of the main guests at two other big society weddings. Everyone was marvelling at her flawless skin and good looks. As I  too commented on how beautiful she looked, Mrs. Parashar, aged 50, remarked, Well, we see that the summer holidays were put to good use. The group of women gathered around me laughed. Slightly confused I asked what her comment meant, and she clarified, I am not saying that she has done something serious [to her face] but I am sure she has done something to her lips and mouth, I think. She is looking more beautiful than ever. I am sure she did it for this wedding and the other weddings she is to attend [sic]. At this point, another elite woman, Mrs. Mehrotra, married to a successful garments exporter, commented, I think this is the right time to get things done. Her kids are in school now, I think one of them is 10 already, so they are not too young that you have to run after them, and this is the time to bring back the focus on yourself. It cannot always be about the children and the family. We need certain things for ourselves too and there is no harm in looking good and using some technology to do so. Also, this is the right age to get these things done so that you don’t age quickly. Some women end

40  Fashion and travels up doing a lot when they are in their 50s and it looks awful. I think she is proceeding with this smartly. Agreeing wholeheartedly, Mrs. Parashar further remarked that Sareena is able to undergo these treatments more easily than the others because her inlaws are based in the United States. This gives her an advantage, as she can travel to the US more frequently and have easy access to the best doctors there. Her status in the United States, not as a tourist but quasi-resident of sorts, explained Mrs. Parashar, allows greater level of trust with the doctor whom she can approach again easily if she is unhappy with the procedure. She said, I think it is a bit risky if you undergo these treatments as a tourist. But if you sort of live there then you have an added advantage [. . .] Sareena is lucky, she has a system set in place. Of course, Sareena never openly admitted to having undertaken any beauty treatment, even when Mrs. Kumar, a slightly older and equally popular elite housewife with a large social network, claimed to have confronted Sareena. She said, I complimented her and said ‘gosh, the summer sun of the US really suits you. Since you have been back you are looking all the more pretty. What’s the secret?’ She just smiled and said that she is taking care of her diet and is exercising regularly. See, how clever of her to not pass on to us any information on her treatments. The other women laughed, questioning why Mrs. Kumar would even think that Sareena would let her secret out to her, to which Mrs. Kumar responded, ‘for charity so that we all can also look better, after all we all are in the same boat’, and the women started laughing again. Humiliations of travels Quite apart from victories of reifying status and explorations of inner desires, traveling also makes the elite housewives anxious. They find themselves away from their terrain of power, recognition, and control, and fear experiences of humiliation caused by the colour of their skin, language, the way they carry themselves, and an inability to ‘fit in’ or be recognised as an international class of elites. It is perhaps in order to assuage such anxieties that the elites consume products from international luxury brands, demonstrating that they too have the knowledge and money to own these products.

Fashion and travels 41 This is evident in the preparations for travel, when the housewives bring out their best clothes, mainly Western apparel, from the top fashion brands including Burberry, Channel, Dior, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, and so on. They also make it a point to carry bags from international fashion houses. I was witness to one such lengthy preparation for travel when I visited Aarti Duggal in her palatial house in North Delhi’s Civil Lines residential area, before she was traveling for a three-week long holiday to Europe. Aarti took me into her daughter’s rooms where she and her maid laid out her children’s clothes, shoes, and bags. Aarti explained to me that she oversees packing of clothes and accessories for her daughters despite having a nanny in order to ensure that only the ‘best’ – in other words, branded – clothes, shoes, and bags are packed for the holiday. She said, You should always be well-dressed when you are abroad. People think that no one knows you there so you can be more relaxed but actually that is not the case. First of all, half of Delhi is in London during the summer! So there are high chances that you will run into your friends or family on Oxford Street or Knightsbridge. But also you need to stand out. There are so many Indians in these cities from all classes, and foreigners don’t understand who is a rich or a middle-class Indian. How would they know? So you have to act your class even when outside of India so that people don’t think of you as some regular middle-class Indian. She went on to narrate a few experiences of this form of class discrimination, as it were. She said that she felt most judged by salespersons of luxury brands, and in one such incident the salesperson was not polite to her, reluctantly showing her products, perhaps because he assumed that since she is Indian she will not be willing to spend a lot of money. So, in order to establish her elite status such that it cannot be questioned in a foreign land, she believes in carrying symbols of international elite status such as luxury brands; so that she is treated respectfully by the salespersons who should view her as a serious buyer, and not someone who is lurking and windowshopping. She said, If you just enter a shop with no branded bag or shoes or clothes, they [the sales people] don’t take you seriously. They think you are from a third-world country and don’t really know much about luxury shopping. But if you enter wearing all the latest products from high-end brands, they are so nice and polite because they know you have the money and are there to shop. [. . .] Of course, things have changed a bit now as people know that Indians love to spend so they are nicer to you but still you have to ensure that you are at your best.

42  Fashion and travels This anxiety of not being recognised as elite in foreign countries and the vulnerability that surfaces in such situations was evident in Reena Roy’s experience of shopping for a Goyard bag in Italy. It was only the third day that the store had opened, she said, and she was perhaps one of the first ten customers. Whilst Milan is the world’s top shopping destination, Reena suspected that it might not be the city of preference for many Indians, who would rather go to London or the United States for shopping. Her family, however, had planned a ten-day vacation in Italy and they were stopping over in Milan en route to London. Reena wanted to purchase a Goyard and a friend had informed her that Goyard was opening a showroom in Milan, so she planned her vacation in such a way that she would be in Milan right after the showroom opened. Once in Milan, she and her daughter headed for the showroom, whilst her husband and in-laws were sightseeing in the nearby Duomo area. She said, The Goyard showrooms don’t just allow everyone to enter at the same time. They only let in a few people at a time so that the people in the store can devote their full attention to the customer. This showroom [in Milan] was tucked away in a by-lane and I found myself outside this tiny door. I rang the bell but no one arrived for almost five minutes. I could see through the glass door that they were attending to one customer already. They saw me peeping and standing there but still did not come up to say anything. I was so annoyed. But I kept my calm. Then after about five minutes, they opened the door, and in a very rude manner said, ‘sorry to keep you waiting but we were serving a customer.’ I gave a half smile and entered. They were still not very welcoming, which is such a contrast from shopping in London. It is just the look they were giving, as though I didn’t know which showroom I was in simply because I am Indian. The couple before us was Chinese but I suppose they made a big purchase and the man was already carrying a folder by Goyard, so the store manager was more attentive to them, and maybe he thought I have no idea about this brand. After about two minutes, the man who had let us in asked me directly ‘So, do you know Goyard?’. I was so miffed at this question and I gave him a haughty reply and said ‘of course, I know Goyard, and I know exactly what I want to buy.’ As Reena narrated this experience, she grew agitated and disturbed. It was evident that her pride of class and nationality was hit by this experience of luxury shopping, and she was determined to fight back. So, she appropriated the knowledge of this relatively niche brand to (re)claim a position of being elite, global, exclusive, and tasteful. She continued,

Fashion and travels 43 It was then that the store manager became polite to me. He asked me what particular bag I was looking for and I said I want the St. Marquis or the Artois. He seemed so delighted that I knew what the bag names were and immediately brought out two sample bags. I chose the St. Marquis and specified that I want it in the grey colour with my initials and he suddenly started praising my choice of colour and style. Then he even started a polite conversation asking where I was from and so on. It was all so revealing that the moment he realised that I was in fact going to spend £2,500 on a bag and knew what their brand was, his attitude towards me changed. It was so racist of him and also humiliating for me in the beginning. These insights into preparations for travel and experiences whilst shopping explain the anxieties, vulnerabilities, and fears of the elites. There is a serious fear of loss or denial of belonging to an elite class and many strategies are used to ensure that their class is visible and manifest during travels. Beginning from booking tickets in the airplane’s first class, to reserving five-star hotels, and carrying high-end luxury products, these elite housewives want to ensure that their class is sufficiently articulated during their travels.

*** In this chapter, I have focused primarily on two prominent and essential ways of articulating an elite’s status, namely through fashion accessories as of handbags, and of travels. I have attempted to explain the self-fashionings that these indulgences allow. In providing various accounts of these indulgences, I explain the presentations and expressions of class. Equally, I have brought attention to the lateral discourses of class formations, that is, the ways in which elite women distinguish themselves from other elite women. These claims and nuances of these claims also express a desire to be associated with a larger category of the global elite. Further on, whilst my focus has mostly been on the material, it is not detached from the affective, as I have highlighted the specific ways in which these elite housewives invoke morality, especially with spending money. For example, in a single act of purchasing a high-end luxury bag they are able to articulate their privilege and also perform and invoke a morality of prudence and concern for saving money. Traveling abroad is also an important marker of an elite status with its own hierarchies that distinguish the old elite from the new, the spendthrift from the frugal, and tasteless from the suave. Foreign travels are not always a straightforward claim to elite class, but in fact enclose in them histories

44  Fashion and travels and aspirations of taste, status, and freedom. They are, therefore, significant to understanding elite women’s subjectivities because they not only symbolise abundant wealth but also enable elite housewives to overcome anxieties related to their elite and domestic status. At the same time, though travels might assuage anxieties related to personal freedom they also create further anxieties and fears, especially related to feelings of humiliation at not being recognised as being elite in a global setting. With this chapter, I have thus attempted to delineate the different registers of being elite with regard to fashion and travels. It might be simplistically inferred, on the basis of existing scholarship on conspicuous consumption, that these women’s purchases are mainly a means of status reproduction and maintenance. With this work, my aim is to highlight that the materiality and claims of elite-ness carry with them anxieties of performance of class, fears of being challenged or losing elite status even if temporarily, strategies of breaking away from family surveillance, and constant negotiations of establishing hierarchy within an elite group.

Notes 1 I borrow this term from the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, where the director and scriptwriters, in order to highlight the acute importance of bags in the lives of the rich, create a comical situation where the Hermès bag is referred to as a person, Bagwati. 2 The Hermès Birkin was recently in news (12 June 2018) as a vintage diamond crusted Birkin bag, made of Nile crocodile skin, was sold by Christie’s auction for a record price of £162,500 in London, making it the most expensive bag sold in an auction in Europe. 3 On several instances, the elite women explained that Bollywood emulates elite families’ cultures and traditions, not just with regard to purchases of handbags but also wedding decorations and trends. Most recently, a Bollywood couple got married in Italy, and the bride’s dupatta (head scarf), designed by a top fashion designer, had an Indian shloka inscribed on it. I was informed that this design was inspired by a royal (and political) elite woman’s bridal clothes. This anecdote remains unchecked by me, but more than the veracity of this claim, what I find interesting is the ways in which cultures of the elite class influence Bollywood celebrities, and in due course, percolate down to other classes. As we were talking about this ‘borrowing’ of styles, one of the elite housewives laughed and remarked ‘Now you will see all bridal shops selling bridal clothes with Sanskrit shlokas inscribed on them. It will become the new trend’.

3 Weddings, opulence, and hospitality

Mr. Sethi is one of three brothers in a family with thriving businesses of cement production and agricultural fertilizers. Whilst the three brothers previously lived in one house, two of them moved out to large farmhouses in Chattarpur, located south of Delhi, which is the new residential hub of Delhi elites. Mr. Sethi continues to live in the old house – a huge bungalow in New Friends Colony. Mr. Sethi has two children, Suhana (Soha, as she is fondly called) and Siddharth (Sid, as he demands to be called). Tall, slim, and pretty, Soha carries herself with glamour and style, and an ease of entitlement. I first met Mrs. Sethi on the recommendation of another elite housewife. It seemed that she allowed me into her world primarily because she was impressed by my foreign educational degrees and was keen to introduce me to Soha, who, she proudly informed me, had completed a Master’s degree from the University of Nottingham, UK. When I first met Mrs. Sethi, most of the conversation was geared towards Soha’s achievements. ‘She is a very talented and smart girl. You will see when you meet her’, she said. Mrs. Sethi was keen to explain to me that Soha was different than the other ‘rich kids’, as she was interested in higher education. In this first meeting itself, Mrs.Sethi had skilfully articulated divisions within an elite class, by positioning her family as those elites who value higher education, much like the middle class.1 As I spent more time with the Sethis, I noted the other spaces in which they actively drew and invoked boundaries from other elites, most conspicuously in preparations of weddings.

Ostentatious bespoke weddings Soha returned from the United Kingdom after completing a one-year Master’s degree, aged 23. It was immediately thereafter that her family hired a famous matrimonial broker to look for a suitable spouse for her. Two

46  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality years later, after rejecting many proposals, Soha finally ‘liked someone’, said her mother with content and happiness, all the while strongly drawing my attention to Soha’s ‘high standards’ in men and style of life. Soha was soon engaged to Akshay Anand, in a high-profile ceremony attended by a small yet powerful number of Delhi’s elite and the marriage date was fixed for the following spring. Rather generously, I was not only invited to the wedding but also to the preparations and events leading up to the wedding, including dance rehearsals and dress fittings. I was soon introduced to the myriad worlds of competition, performance of class, and construction of gender and international and national identity, as well as fears and anxieties of humiliation and loss of honour or status that even a minor glib in wedding celebrations can cause. Akshay is the younger of the two sons of Mr. Anand, a famous businessman who manufactures car parts. Mr. Anand owns many factories in Punjab and his two sons help him with his business. His wife, like Mrs. Sethi, is a housewife. Akshay, like Soha, was educated in Delhi and went abroad for a Master’s programme. Upon his return he joined his father’s business. The families were thrilled at this wedding union, I was told, as their status’ matched, and they were soon gearing up for a big fat Indian wedding. In the four months leading up to the wedding, I visited the Sethi’s residence several times, usually to attend small social gatherings, for dance rehearsals closer to the wedding, and at times accompanied them for trials and fittings of clothes at the showrooms of famous designers. In my first few visits, the major debate amongst the family members was on whether to opt for a ‘destination’ wedding or a Delhi wedding. A destination wedding is when the wedding rituals and pre- and post-wedding celebrations are hosted in a city that is not the city of residence of either the groom or the bride. The chosen destination city, furthermore, has a certain attraction as, for example, being the city of Lakes (Udaipur, Rajasthan) or Palaces (Jaipur), or can be an exciting beach location (Goa). Nearby foreign locations as of Bangkok and Oman, are also increasingly becoming popular amongst the elites. Destination weddings are a strong claim to an elite status, as they present themselves as symbols of wealth, taste, and generous hospitality. More recently, the middle class too has been lured to ‘budget’ destination weddings, and so the elites, in order to mark themselves out from the middle class, ensure to make their destination weddings more exclusive and luxurious by, for example, booking five-star hotels and offering their guests return air tickets to the destination. Despite being such potent symbols and experiences of status and wealth, at times the elites do not necessarily favour a destination wedding because it warrants a restricted guest list, ranging from 100 to 300 guests. The business elites desire to or are obliged to invite a far larger number of people, which makes it more logistically feasible to organise the

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 47 wedding in the city of their residence. The Sethis and the Anands found the idea of a destination wedding appealing but since they were keen to invite almost every person in their vast networks of friendship and work, they decided to opt for a Delhi wedding, and ensured that the celebrations were opulent and magnificent. Much like all elite families, the Sethis took assistance from a highly acclaimed wedding planner company, The Wedding Makers. The two heads of this company, Sunaina and Shekhar, were in charge of every detail, including decorations, arranging gifts and wedding invitations for the long list of guests, and most importantly for deciding on the number of events, or ‘functions’ as they are commonly referred to, of the wedding and their venues. Shekhar and Sunaina advised on a six-day celebration with clearly marked out ‘bride’ and ‘groom’ functions, in other words, functions that would be sponsored by the families of the bride and the groom. The beginning was a ‘welcome’ dinner, hosted by the bride’s family in their bungalow for a select guest list of 100 people. The next morning the groom’s family would organise a religious event, ‘Mata ki Chaukhi’, where the goddess Durga is prayed to for blessings to the new couple. This event was to be held at the groom’s palatial bungalow in South Delhi, with a guest list of about 200, and being a religious event only vegetarian food was to be served and no alcohol would be allowed on the premises. The next day the groom’s family would host a ‘Cocktail Party’ in a five-star hotel in central Delhi. With a guest list of over 700, this was the groom’s family’s main event, on which their status was most dependent. Therefore, they left no stone unturned for putting up a spectacle, including performances by a Bollywood singer and a foreign dance troupe, ice sculptures, and an exhaustive spread of food (which was covered by a popular TV programme on cuisines and celebrations in India). The day after would be the Mehendi (henna ceremony) function organised by the bride’s family. A more private affair, with a guest list of about 150 consisting mainly of the bride’s family and a few members of the groom’s family, this function was to be held at the bride’s paternal uncle’s farmhouse. The next day was the wedding, sponsored by the bride’s family, held at one of the other farmhouses of the Sethi family, with an expected 800 guests. Apart from the detailed organisation and long guest list, a striking aspect of the wedding was the juxtaposition, as it were, or combination of the style of decorations and celebrations, which catered to an international appeal as well as invoked a quintessentially Indian theme. For example, the cocktail party, with a cake-cutting ceremony, champagne toast, and a DJ playing both Indian and international songs, was appealing to a more cosmopolitan or international taste, whereas the mehendi celebrations included entertainment by folk artists and local Punjabi songs, invoking a more ‘Indian’ setting, as it were. A couple of weeks before these

48  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality celebrations, the young couple also hosted a lavish youngsters party for their friends and young cousins. This semblance of the Indian and the international was not restricted to the types of functions but also extended to decorations, preparations, and themes of the events. The professionalism of wedding planning: between being Indian and global A striking presence in most elite families for weddings is of the wedding planners. I was told that that the earlier times of wedding arrangements were much simpler, with most of the responsibilities being shared by the elders of the house, and the older women tailoring most clothes themselves and also making delicacies. It was far more manageable to arrange for everything, primarily because there were fewer options to choose. In contrast, in contemporary times, there is an abundance of choice for every aspect of the wedding. This makes it difficult for the family members to be in charge of all decisions and therefore it is more efficient to hire someone professional, who has prior experience of managing weddings. The Sethis’ wedding gave me the opportunity to interact with the heads of one such famous wedding planning company, and I soon realised that wedding planners were not simply responding to the needs of the elites but also curating elite-ness. Shekhar and Sunaina started their company seven years ago and their main distinctive quality, they said, was that each client is catered to with different ideas. Sitting in the large living room of the Sethis with their MacBooks, Shekhar and Sunaina proudly told me that providing ‘bespoke’ services is their main selling point. Ironically, their six-day wedding celebration is the most common template used by most elite families, and so cannot strictly be seen as a bespoke or unique organisation of the wedding. I was curious to know more and scheduled to meet with them in their office. At the meeting only Shekhar was present, as Sunaina was in Mumbai shopping for some specific decorations for the Sethi’s weddings. Their office looked nothing less spectacular than a wedding ambience itself, with bright coloured sofas, pictures of wedding themes hung on the walls, and a large spread of bridal magazines. Shekhar explained that they owe their success to their ability to pay attention to detail and understand elite tastes. He said, Sunaina and I both understand elite tastes and at times also help refine them. We have both studied abroad, travelled widely, and have seen the world. We keep up to date with the latest wedding trends all over the world. In fact, we were one of the first to introduce the chic European decoration theme to Indian weddings. For example, Indian weddings

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 49 mostly used marigold or lots of dark colours as red and maroon in their decorations. But we brought in the trend to use pastel shades as of peach and off-white, and use lilies and carnations. [. . .] The thing is that the elites are changing their tastes now. They travel abroad, they attend weddings in other parts of the world, and media too is shaping their opinion as they watch weddings of celebrities. So, they also want to be a part of global trends. Their tastes are not necessarily typically ‘Indian’ if you know what I mean. So, we need to cater to that. As I looked through the albums of Shekhar and Sunaina’s works, I noted their emphasis on international orientation in their decorations. From chic Parisian to English high tea, their decorations had many non-Indian themes, as it were, as well as certain novel takes on Indian themes including kitsch and pop, Bollywood, sophisticated twists on street culture and food, and so on. Having planned five high-profile weddings in the past year, they were hired by the Sethis on recommendation. The Sethis seemed very pleased with their services and Mrs. Sethi often praised them. She said, They are amazing with details, like things that I would forget like the colour of tablecloth or centrepieces or flowers at the entrance. They will ask me multiple times of what I like and present me with samples. They have many options on their computer and they send us various permutations and combinations of décor over email. It is all quite straightforward, as Soha and Sid and other children [their cousins] sit on the laptop and go through the options. After shortlisting, we then organise a meeting with them [Shekhar and Sunaina] to finalise our choices. The toughest challenge for them, said Shekhar, is to provide different themes for each wedding, as more often than not their clients belong to similar networks and therefore are most likely to attend each other’s wedding. So, they have to be careful in not repeating any decoration or theme, unless on special request. In catering to these demands of being ‘different’, Shekhar and Sunaina thus also curate and introduce different elite tastes as they suggest new and different palettes and sensibilities of design and decor. As the elites compete with each other in putting up a different or distinct wedding ambience, one aspect that cannot go unnoticed is the wedding invitations. The invitation is seen as an entry point to the spectacle that the weddings will be, and therefore, the theme of the wedding has to resonate in the invitations. Typically, a wedding invitation is accompanied by Indian sweets as of ladoos or barfi, but the elites have almost unanimously given up this tradition for the inclusion of non-Indian sweets as of cupcakes, cookies and nougats, sweetened cardamoms, or honey-glazed

50  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality almonds. Furthermore, the invitations are not restricted to a card but have elevated to a wedding box or briefcase, of sorts, made of leather or wood, with carvings and 3-D printings.2 For extended family and close kin, these wedding box invitations are accompanied by gifts such as expensive photo frames or cashmere scarves. The Sethis and Shekhar’s team had long discussions on the wedding invitations and Soha clarified that she desired something classy and chic and not elaborate, nor very ‘Indian’. After several days of brainstorming, the Sethis finalised a bespoke wedding invitation which resembled the popular luxury brand Hermès’s ethos and style of being simple and classy, using their colours: brown and orange. Soha insisted that she wanted her guests to also be able to use the wedding box-invitation afterwards, so they designed it like a jewelry box, covered with dark brown leather and orange trimmings, accompanied with fresh shortbreads, sweetened cardamoms, and rock candies (mishri, which have significance for Iranian and Indian cuisines). For the immediate kin this box was accompanied by scarves and leather diaries. This invitation, much like the wedding functions that were to follow, was an ode to the ‘new’ and the ‘old’; an appeal to an international and global sensibility of fashion – with the resonance to Hermès – as well as an invocation to the quintessentially Indian (South Asian) culture with, for example, the use of rock candy and cardamom (tracing routes to Persia). By modelling the wedding invitation on a super-luxury brand, Soha seemed to perform a snobbery by demonstrating that her tastes resonate with the subtle and luxurious tastes of global elites, and not the ‘loud’ or ‘over the top’ Indian tastes, as she explained. With almost every aspect of her wedding preparation her aim was to exude a subtle and suave taste, which was rooted in an Indian sensibility of tradition but also appealing to a global culture of taste, and this was most evident in her choice of bridal wear. The modern Indian elite bride One of the most deliberated upon aspect of a wedding, as has also routinely been noted in magazines, films, and television series is the wedding outfit of the bride.3 To the brides, this dress is a testimony of their personal style statement and also symbolises their status – real, imagined, and purported, as well as that of their family. Soha, the young elite bride, was excited about choosing her bridal dress, and had already thought of its exacting details. The language of high-end Indian designer labels is all too well-known to the elite housewives who frequent the DLF Emporio mall, which houses, on its second and third floor, some of India’s high-end fashion labels. In fact, it would not be a stretch to comment that shopping at this mall for an imminent wedding is like a rite de passage for an elite family. Soha, being a frequenter

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 51 of the mall, was well aware of the large number of designer options for her bridal lehenga (skirt blouse and long scarf), and had already decided to buy it from one of the most highly coveted designer duo of Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, who are famous for designing clothes for the crème de la crème of Bollywood and the business world. It was a ‘no-brainer’ to choose this designer duo, said Mrs. Sethi. A quick look at the designer’s Instagram page reveals their popularity amongst the rich and famous families of India, and also Hollywood stars and international artists.4 When I met Soha at her residence, I commented that I was astonished to know that she had decided on her bridal dress within such a short span of time. Soha laughed at my naïve understanding of bridal shopping, and said, See, you are missing the point. I have not decided my dress but [only] the designer. I really like Abu Sandeep’s work. They are a class apart. I follow them on Instagram. I always knew that they will design my bridal dress. She explained that several celebrities and rich families get their clothes designed by them and so she always knew that they would be a good choice. From her conversation, with me and others present in the room, it seemed that those who owned clothes from this designer saw themselves as belonging to another sub-group, if you will, of elites: those with high taste in design and fashion. By commissioning her bridal dress from this designer duo, Soha wanted to claim a strong membership to this elite sub-group, as she already owned clothes from them but getting a bridal dress was making a bigger statement, she elucidated, as the bridal clothes were priced much higher than occasion wear. Right after this discussion, almost as though to balance her desire to be recognised as a particular type of elite with a more stylish and glamorous taste in clothes, she started praising the designers’ work and craftsmanship. She opened their Instagram page and said, Look, their work is so distinct. They use Indian material like gota patti or mirror work or chicken work, but their appeal is also very international. They are not like the other designers like Sabyasachi [Sabyasachi Mukherjee is another high-end luxury fashion designer] who are so Indian in their design. Have you seen Sabyasachi’s works? He uses these colours combinations and patterns that are beautiful but very traditional. But Abu and Sandeep clothes bring together the Indian and the Western very well. I also love their colour palette. It is so different. They use lots of pastels, and the dark colours are also more monotone, not contrasted too much. I like that. It [their use of colours] is not only about the reds, maroons, and deep pinks, which is what most designers use when making a bridal dress for Indian women.

52  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality As Soha passionately discussed the motivation for her choice for these designers, her cousin, Mrs.Sethi’s younger brother’s daughter, aged 22, added, Yes, yes, all of that is true but you also want their clothes because many of your friends wear their clothes [she laughed]. Soha seemed slightly embarassed, and I pushed on this point to know if there was indeed a peer competition or pressure of sorts to buy from this designer, to which Soha responded, Yes, I mean, many of my friends do wear clothes by them [the designer duo]. My close friend got married a few months ago and she got her cocktail dress from them and even most of the guests had worn their clothes. But I don’t buy off the rack. I am going to their couture store from where you order your dress based on the samples that are on display. By differentiating herself from those who buy clothes from the same designer but off the rack, whereas she was commissioning their ‘special’ bespoke clothes, Soha was creating a boundary within her class position. In exercising this particular choice of shopping, Soha set a hierarchy of sorts, by positioning herself higher, and therefore claiming a superior status, from those who lack her taste even if they were buying from the same designer. A few days after this conversation I got a chance to accompany Mrs. Sethi, Soha, her aunt, and her cousin to the couture store of Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla. The front space of the showroom consisted of wracks of clothes, shimmering and glittering in a large palette of colours; some that might not be immediately associated with North Indian weddings, as that of pastel blue and green, baby pink, and off-white. This room lead into a special room, divided by majestic doors, furnished with luxurious sofas, also designed by the designer duo. Here on display were the priciest and choicest of the collection of the designers, beginning from Rs. 500,000 (£45,000) to up to Rs. 120,000 (£11,000). The store manager explained to me that this is a ‘special section’ for those who will make purchases of over Rs. 500,000 (£45,000). Much like the ‘special’ physical space set out for those who would spend this minimum amount, the services given to the customers in this space were also special, including offering tea, coffee, cookies, and canapes. Soha had made a few visits to the showroom earlier and was keen to see their new collection, which was specially flown from Mumbai a few days before after a big fashion show, explained the store manager – a lady in

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 53 her late 40s, dressed in Indian wear though not by the designer. Soha made several visits to this showroom earlier and conducted meetings with the senior designers of this fashion house, to explain that she did not want the traditional colour red for her bridal lehenga. After several deliberations, and after enquiring on other details of the wedding so as to match the dress with the theme of the wedding, the designers suggested a heavy intricate work of gold and off-white, priced at Rs. 900,000 (£8,000). Soha was very pleased with this choice. The exclusiveness of this bridal dress was apparent both in its colour, patterns, and the services that accompanied the choice of this dress. Soha felt proud, happy, and satisfied with this entire process. As I spent more time with Soha, I realised that she wanted to curate an image of the ‘modern Indian bride’, one that could fit the sensibility, taste, and status of an Indian elite, whilst also communicating a distinctiveness in style and taste, more akin to a global appeal of elite-ness. She spoke to the image of an Indian bride, bejeweled and dressed in fineries, whilst also appealing to a global sensibility (by, for example, using off-white in her bridal wear, which is not local to North Indian Punjabi traditions). The constant invocation of bespoke services – both in clothes and wedding planning –, the performance of new and ‘special’ knowledge as externalised in the ‘special room’ at the designer showroom, insistence of a ‘different’ colour for the bridal outfit, and the wedding invitation box were all claims and negotiations to create something ‘new’ and ‘Indian’, yet global and unabashedly elite. And at the centre of it all stood the woman, who not only performed but also devised these ways of being elite. In this way, Soha was not only the symbol or carrier of elite identities but was also creating desires of elite culture. The designs of competition Another space where I noticed competition and desire to mark one’s status as higher was that of clothes for gift-giving. At one gathering, Mrs. Sethi was excitingly discussing with her friends the options of designers that could make Soha’s trousseau, and the gifts that were to be given to the Anands. All the women agreed that the clothes not be ‘loud’ or ‘class-less’, as was the case with some other recent elite weddings, which they critiqued, concluding that ‘money can’t buy class’. Mrs. Verma, a close friend of the Sethis asked if the Sethis knew which designer the Anands were commissioning for their clothes. She said, Do you know what Chinni [Soha’s mother-in-law to-be] is giving to Soha and who she is hiring for the gift-giving?

54  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality Mrs. Sethi responded that she had no information on who the Anands have hired but that she could enquire from Mrs. Anand. Aghast at this suggestion, Mrs Verma cried out loud, No! You must not phone her. It will seem desperate; as though you want to compete with her or have some money-complex that you want to know how much she is spending and decide how much you will spend accordingly. You have to show them that wearing expensive clothes is something you always do and are not doing only for this wedding. You should maintain your standard irrespective of what they give. [. . .] The wedding should be an extension of your style and status. She continued with a short pause, I have some idea about the Anands. They will hire a good designer but not necessarily the best, because Chinni doesn’t have a daughter or daughter-in-law to keep her updated with latest fashions, and she herself is not very aware of fashion [she giggled]. I mean she has the money, but she doesn’t really quite know how to spend it. So, I think they would either go for some boutique tailor or just buy off the shelf of a designer, but you should get your clothes from a proper designer. Mrs. Sethi laughed off Mrs. Verma’s remarks as being overly competitive, however, she recognised that Mrs. Verma was in fact relating a harsh reality of weddings: the competition between the bride-takers and bridegivers. Mrs. Sethi, while not openly agreeing with Mrs. Verma’s comments, nonetheless commissioned a leading fashion designer, Ashneet Arora, to design clothes for Soha and those that were to be gifted to the Anands.5 A few days later, some of us were gathered for tea and a discussion on shopping, when Mrs. Anand decided to phone Mrs Sethi for a general catch-up on the wedding preparations. She asked if they had hired a wedding decorator and how their shopping for clothes was coming along. After a short discussion, with repressed pride and feigned humility, Mrs. Sethi said, Chinni jee, we know that you have simple tastes and you have already told us that you don’t want anything grand for yourself. But even we have certain duties and desires being the girl’s parents. We will not impose anything on you, but we have arranged for the gift-giving (lenden) clothes to be made by the designer Ashneet Arora, who has his showroom at DLF Emporio. Whenever you get the time, let us know,

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 55 and we will go there together and you can select what you want. He said that he has designed some nice simple saris and a few heavy ones especially for the groom’s mother [she said with a loud laugh]. Chinni Anand, it seemed, was very pleased with this offer and preceded her acceptance with a long discussion of the unnecessary taqleef (trouble) that the Sethis were undertaking. When Mrs. Sethi put the phone down, she looked triumphant and satisfied, as though her honour and status were not only intact but also increased. She said, Chinni jee is very nice. She kept saying that we didn’t have to do this. But she was also very excited. After all, it is Ashneet Arora clothes. Who doesn’t want to wear his clothes? As Mrs. Sethi narrated this conversation to other members of the family, they all looked pleased, for they knew that soon their networks would be discussing these details of gift-giving, and this would assure their status as the family that cut no corners to put on a ‘good’ wedding. I also noted that whilst Ashneet Arora was chosen for designing the gift-giving clothes, the Sethis got their own clothes from Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla. This decision to choose different designers highlighted their desire to distinguish themselves from the groom’s family and establish an assymmetrical hierarchy wherein they have a higher status and taste, as they commissioned a more expensive and reputable designer for their own clothes. The wedding celebrations of the Sethis followed as expected, though with a few glitches, but overall with success and much praise. Soha looked splendid in her clothes and everyone commented on her unique bridal outfit. All the guests were full of praises about the classy and elegant wedding decorations and the generous spending, especially on gift-giving. The Sethis avoided the tag of a ‘loud Indian traditional’ wedding and claimed an elite-ness that was based on being globally informed and tasteful, whilst also engaging with Indian rituals and traditions.

The politics of destination weddings The Guptas are a large Marwari family – two brothers and their respective families living together in a large bungalow in South Delhi. They are very particular in not using any markers of differentiation within the two families and so instead of referring to each other as ‘uncle’, ‘aunt’, or cousins, the Gupta brothers are referred to by the younger generation as ‘elder/younger father’ (and not uncle) and the aunts as ‘elder/younger mother’. This policy, as it were, of equal respect and recognition is applied to shopping as well,

56  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality where if one female member desires to buy a new handbag, all the women of the family get a handbag so that no one feels left out. The feeling and performance of togetherness is a significant part of their weddings, as I observed during their youngest son Niketan’s wedding. Niketan was marrying Ankita, the only daughter of another famous Marwari businessman, and the alliance was suggested by a well-respected matrimonial broker of the Marwari community. This wedding, in some ways, was a contrast to the wedding of the Sethis, particularly with regard to the elite taste and elite-ness displayed and curated at the wedding. The Guptas, unlike the Sethis, chose a destination wedding with a guest list of 300, and in order to invite their large networks of friends and work they decided to host a grand reception in Delhi with about 500 guests after the wedding. Like the Sethis, the Guptas also hired a professional wedding planner. Whilst the Sethis’ main expectation from the wedding planners was to design an exclusive and distinctive wedding with elements of international appeal, the Guptas’ main concern, as they repeatedly told me, was to ensure a comfortable and luxurious stay for their guests. In other words, the Guptas were not particularly concerned with the colour of tablecloths or flower arrangements or ensuring an internationally appealing yet Indian ambience and theme, but their focus was on booking air tickets, arranging good hotel rooms, and conveyance for their guests. They did not use the language of ‘exclusivity’ or ‘good’ taste to perform their elite status and articulate their elite subjectivity. Rather, they aimed to achieve ideals of hospitality, care, and comfort for their guests. In some ways, a destination wedding in itself is a grand gesture of hospitality, for the appeal of these types of wedding celebrations is not so much in the details of decorations and glamour but on arrangements for stay, sightseeing, and leisure. In other words, destination weddings promise a combination of a holiday and celebration to the guest, and so, the logistics of how the wedding is planned is as important, if not more, as the grandeur of the celebrations. For example, a destination wedding in Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir), most definitely includes Shikara (boat) rides in the Dal Lake for the guests, whilst weddings in Rajasthan included visits to Palaces, and the beach destinations inevitably include water sports. Therefore, for the Gupta’s too, the main concern was to ensure that their guests have a comfortable and entertaining stay. Moreover, as opposed to the Sethi’s exacting demands on an internationally appealing ambience, the Guptas were keen to exude a more ‘Indian’ and rooted ambience and vibe. They, therefore, chose the wedding destination in the Indian state of Rajasthan, which advertises itself as the place of grandeur and hospitality in India. The choice of Rajasthan was moreover befitting for the Guptas because they trace back their family roots to the Marwar region of Rajasthan. Combining their personal history

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 57 with the values of hospitality as espoused by the culture of the city, the Guptas chose the City of Lakes, Udaipur, as their wedding destination. They ensured that everything from colour, cuisine, and folk music exuberated a quintessentially Indian setting. In this way, the elite snobbery and subjectivity of the Guptas did not rest on designer clothes, knowledge of international brands, and exclusivity, but on an ‘Indian’ setting – with invocations of traditions, ‘grassroot’ experiences. Most importantly, they ensured to follow the famous Indian adage of ‘Guest is like God’, by providing the best hospitality to their guests. The above description might make it seem that a destination wedding is a direct and easy claim on elite-ness. However, I noted that a destination wedding need not necessarily always symbolise opulence and generosity, and in fact, the hosts might still be seen as miserly and stingy. A popular reason for this is that since fewer number of guests are invited for a destination wedding, the cost is expected to be far less than that of an in-residence wedding. Moreover, it is usually the case that most or even all wedding events are held at one hotel, which in turn offers heavy discounts for bulk booking of rooms and using the hotel premises for wedding events. In this way, the cost of a destination wedding can be much less than that of a grand in-house wedding. Furthermore, if the destination is not a popular one, then the cost of hotel and food is further reduced. In order to make sure that the elite families that opt for a destination wedding are not labelled as stingy, the hosts ensure that all aspects of the wedding (air tickets, conveyance to airports, food, and sightseeing facilities) are arranged by them. The ways in which these details are worked on become bases of marking out differences of status and economic standing. For example, some elite families book a fivestar hotel whereas some other book an exclusive resort; some arrange for sedans and SUVs for conveyance of guests whereas others organise minibuses. The Guptas were well-versed with these strategies of differentiation and one-upmanship and made sure to present their destination wedding as unrivalled, especially in terms of hospitality. Duties of hospitality I visited the Guptas’ house a few times for pre-wedding celebrations, and each time was struck by their hospitality and generosity. During my conversation with the elder Mr. Gupta’s wife, Mrs. Shashi, aged 60, I praised their organisational skills, which never fall short of glamorous evenings irrespective of the number of guests. ‘We just need an excuse to celebrate’, she said. As she was explaining to me the different kinds of occasions that they have celebrated in the past year, Mr. Gupta joined the conversation and said that the real meaning of celebrations only makes sense when all friends

58  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality and family are included. He then introduced a rather significant element in the construction of elite status and humility, that of ‘giving’. He said that for them, celebrations are not about showing off their wealth or status but is a good ‘excuse’, as it were, to serve people and ‘give’ them presents. His wife excitedly affirmed this sentiment and added that it is their family’s rule that no guest goes home empty-handed, and that they consider ‘daan’, or giving, as the highest form of privilege and duty. This sentiment, of a morality associated with hospitality, was at the heart of Niketan’s wedding celebrations. The Guptas were able to seamlessly combine their age-old tradition of hospitality with the modern demands of opulence. Regrettably, their desire to make every guest happy was not fulfiled as some guests, in particular one group of friends, remained perpetually dissatisfied. Demanding guests Mr. and Mrs. Gupta, and their entire family looked gleeful and joyous at this pre-wedding celebration at their house. I complimented them on the decorations and the vibe and expressions of happiness, wondering whether hiring wedding planners was a compelling reason for their looking relaxed and happy. Mr Gupta responded, Not really. I mean, the planners help a lot, but you know that there will be problems; but we are prepared for it because we have a prior experience. I probed him a bit more on this ‘prior experience’, and he explained that organising a wedding can be a harrowing experience, especially if the host is not well-versed with the ‘rules’ of hospitality. The primary rule, he said, was that some guests will always expect to be treated better than the others, and the hosts have to be ready to cater to the demands of ‘special care’. I was quite surprised to know that though a destination wedding mostly comprises of an exclusive guest list, there still remains a pecking order for the guests. The Guptas learnt of these expectations the hard way during their eldest son’s destination wedding held at Goa a few years ago. At this wedding, the Guptas did not provide air tickets to their guests, and not all were put up in a luxurious suite. This was a source of disappointment to some guests and adversely affected the friendship with Mr. Gupta. After this experience, the Guptas said that they were very careful to not repeat these mistakes at Niketan’s wedding. In order to do so, they divided their guest list into three tiers: the top tier was of the ‘special’ guests who were given better rooms, flight tickets, and personal conveyance for sightseeing in Udaipur; those in the second tier did not receive air tickets but were

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 59 provided with conveyance for sightseeing and deluxe rooms in the hotels; and the third tier was comprised of those who were invited for a shorter stay (not all the three days and six events) and were not provided with air tickets. It seemed that such meticulous planning would not warrant any further disappointments, but Mr. Gupta said he was well-prepared for criticisms from guests, some of whom, he said, were sure to complain. He said, I am aware that I cannot please everyone and those who want to criticise, will criticise [me] no matter what I do for them. But I have to ensure that I put my best foot forward and organise the wedding with the best of intentions. At the end, that is what matters. I asked if it was possible for him to avoid inviting guests whom he thought would be ungrateful and always complaining and he said, I know the people who will be the first to find faults in what I have done, but they have been important in my life and helped my family in some way or another, at some time. [. . .] You have to maintain relationships and sometimes you have no choice but to invite them. And you know they have big egos so they will expect only the best treatment from you, so there is no way out. [. . .] Look, my aim is to make my guests happy and the rest I cannot control. Let people talk if they have to. [Do] You know the Hindi saying ‘karam kar phal kichinta mat kar’ [keep doing good and do not worry about the rewards], I just follow that. Mr. Gupta yet again implored the ideals of dharma and karma, and in this way, invoked the importance of moral codes in his expressions, understandings, and experiences of elite-ness. His belief – and not just suspicion – that not all guests would be satisfied with his arrangements was indeed spot on, as I later witnessed at the wedding. The Guptas’ wedding was my first experience of an elite destination wedding. I had previously travelled to other cities for what can be referred to as middle-class weddings, where usually the guests arrange for their own travel to the destination of the wedding and are provided accommodation in three- or four-star hotels or guest houses by the host family. An elite destination wedding, however, is remarkably different, as usually everything is provided by the hosts, beginning from food in the airplane. On the flight to Udaipur, I took my wallet out to pay for tea and a sandwich, to which the airhostess smiled and said, ‘It’s all paid for’. As we landed in Udaipur, about 15 people in T-shirts with the names of the bride and groom greeted and ushered us towards an entourage of vehicles, including SUVs and an air-conditioned bus, to transport us to the hotel. I was in an SUV

60  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality with friends of one of Mr. Gupta’s daughters-in-law’s, and each of us was given a small goodie bag containing chilled lemonade, a packet of chips, and chocolates. As we arrived at the majestic entrance of the five-star hotel, which was also the venue for the wedding of a Bollywood actor held a few days before the Guptas’ wedding, we were greeted with dhols (drums) and offered cooling juices. At the welcome desk we received our room keys and an elaborate itinerary of the three-day wedding celebration. In the hotel room, there was another large welcome basket containing crisps, chocolates, juices, candies, and biscuits. This was the third food basket given to guests within a span of four hours and stood testimony to Mr. and Mrs. Gupta’s ideals of hospitality. Excited to know more about what the wedding planner had put together for this strictly vegetarian Marwari wedding, I opened the itinerary and found four individually crafted invitations for each of the functions that comprised the wedding celebrations. The first function was of mehendi (henna) to take place during lunch, which woefully I missed due to a delay in flight. The next was the engagement party in the evening. The following day a celebratory lunch was to take place with some fun activities, and the evening was scheduled for the grand wedding. Along with these invitations were free coupons for spa, hair, and make-up services, which could be availed at the hotel. After reading these bits of information, I went to attend the afternoon tea organised for all the guests, which consisted of a lavish spread of dishes including traditional Rajasthani snacks as of kachori and mirchi ke pakode, other Indian snacks as of dosa and chhole kulche, and also sandwiches, cookies, and cakes, with options of ‘Indian’ tea (with spices and milk) and English Breakfast tea (in the form of tea bags). At tea, I happened to sit at the table of ‘special guests’, and it was here that my analysis of this wedding as being well-organised was unsettled, as these special guests began to criticise the wedding preparations. In that moment, for the first time in the journey of this wedding, I noted the bare sentiments of competition and constant appeasements that mark elite weddings. It all began when I marvelled at the abundance and tastefulness of the food spread that was offered to us just in the first four hours of entering the wedding space. To this, Mrs. Mittal, wife of another successful Marwari businessman replied, Yes, but it wasn’t that well organised [. . .] you know what happened to us? The usher first took us to the bus! [she said loudly] I mean do we look like the people who will travel in a bus with all their [Gupta’s] relatives. I put my foot down and said surely you can arrange a car for us. The organiser immediately realised that we are no regular guests but VIPs [Very Important Person], and so he arranged for an Innova (the

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 61 SUV). [. . .] The organisation was so bad that they didn’t even know who the special guests were! We should have been whisked away from the airport without having to look for cars ourselves! Agreeing vehemently was Mrs. Kaushik, who, though from a Punjabi business family, is close friends with this largely Marwari group of businessmen. She added, They have clearly spent money, but the hotel is not five star. It is four star. The service is also not that good. It is okay. Initially they gave us this regular room, and my husband just threw a fit! I mean how do you expect us to stay in your ‘deluxe’ room or whatever. We need a proper suite. So we told the wedding planners that surely our name is for the suites. At first he said no, and my husband went to Vaibhav [younger Mr.Gupta’s son] and he apologised for the mistake and told the organisers to give us a suite. Mrs. Mittal replied, You are lucky. We have the regular room. But also it is just me and Mr. Mittal, whereas you are here with your children, so you need a bigger room. We are fine with our room. I  mean it is no comparison to the hotel we booked for our son’s wedding where each room was large and beautiful, but it is okay, we are not that fussy. Mrs. Kaushik nodded in agreement and they started discussing the grand wedding of the Mittal’s son, which took place a year ago in Jaipur, a destination wedding as well. Curious to know more about the Mittal’s wedding of the previous year, I talked about it with other guests who were in the same circle of friends and had attended the Mittal’s wedding. One of them, Mrs. Lekhi, said, Yes, the wedding venue of the Mittals was surely better than this one. But let us not forget they did not give air tickets to their guests as Jaipur is accessible by road. So we all went in our own cars. They surely would have saved a lot of money on that! In this short exchange, I noted several negotiations of elite status. Mrs. Mittal, for example, had complained about the regular size of the room, comparing it with the arrangements she made for her son’s wedding where she ensured that each guest stayed in a large room. Yet, in the same moment, she also distinguished herself from Mrs. Kaushik, by emphasising that

62  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality unlike her, she is not fussy about the size of her hotel room and could well ‘adjust’. Whilst Mrs. Mittal basked in the glory of her son’s well-organised wedding, others commented that the Mittal’s saved on transportation costs since their destination of the wedding was close to Delhi. Therefore, for these guests, both the Mittals and Guptas had about the same budget for the wedding, and, in that sense, there was no clear higher claimant to taste or elite-ness. After these conversations, I went back to my room to get some rest and get ready for the engagement party in the evening. This party was quite a grand affair, with a magic act and a troupe of foreign dancers. Notably, there was no dance performance by family members (usually on Bollywood numbers), which has become a trend, so to speak, for most weddings – elites and middle class. During the evening, I brought this up in casual conversations with other guests and they explained to me that in several traditional Marwari families, the women of the house are not allowed to perform on stage, even at family events. They speculated that it was perhaps in order to compensate for this that they had hired the services of a dancing troupe. This made me think of the elite subjectivity of the Guptas, which was surely in contrast to that of the Sethis. The Guptas were concerned about carrying on with their traditions, whilst articulating their elite-ness. In this process, they were also reifying certain ideals of femininity. Whereas the Sethis were creating new traditions, as it were, with their choice of colour for themes, the functions, and bridal dress. As I looked around, I noted that Mrs. Mittal, Mrs. Kaushik, and their husbands arrived rather late for this party. I made a facetious remark on their delay, asking whether they had taken this long to dress up, to which Mrs. Mittal responded, We wish. Was the opposite reason! We were waiting for our clothes that we had given to be ironed since 5 pm but they arrived only at 10 pm. Mr. Mittal was so furious and shouted at the management. Mrs. Kaushik added, I was telling you in the morning that their organisation is very poor. I tried to defend the Guptas and said that maybe there was a sudden demand for ironing clothes and they did not have adequate staff, to which Mrs. Kaushik said, Well, if you are hosting a wedding it is only natural that people would want their clothes to be ironed! They should hire extra staff then!

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 63 I mean this is really basic stuff. How can you not pay attention to all these details!? After some time, to my surprise, I realised that one of the reasons for their delay in arriving at the party, and one which they conveniently did not mention, was that they had visited another five-star hotel for pre-drinks and snacks, using the conveyance offered by Mr. Gupta. They also skipped the afternoon gala of the following day, I suspect for more sightseeing, and my suspicions were shared by more guests. I was sitting with a group of women at the lunch gala the following day, and one of them noted that she could not spot Mrs. Mittal and Mrs. Kaushik, to which Mrs. Lekhi replied, They must have taken off for sightseeing again. I don’t know how they can do this? Mr. Gupta has paid for everything – air tickets, conveyance, accommodation. The least you can do is attend his functions. You can sightsee but organise it in a way that you don’t miss his functions. I mean, we managed it well. This is our first time to Udaipur, and we really wanted to see the City Palace, so we woke up early, had an early breakfast and were out by 11 am and back by 2 pm to be in time for this afternoon function. As Mrs. Lekhi was discussing this, Shashi Gupta and her younger sister-­ in-law, Rani Gupta, smilingly arrived at our table. They took out a small pouch and handed it to Mrs. Lekhi and two other women on the table. Mrs. Lekhi and the other women thanked them profusely, paid them compliments on their clothes and jewelry, and marvelled at the well-organised functions. Once Mrs. Shashi and Mrs. Rani Gupta left, they opened the bag to find three silver coins in each of the bags. Thereafter, they did not stop praising the Guptas for their generosity. These gifts seemed to be only for special guests, as Mrs. Shashi and Rani Gupta did not proceed to every table but to select ones. I wondered if Mrs. Mittal and Mrs. Kaushil also receive these gifts or whether their desire to sightsee cost them some silver coins or whether they would demand these silver coins from the Guptas later in order to be not left out from a special treatment? Ideals of simplicity, prudence, and hospitality Every woman I interacted with at the wedding availed the complimentary hair and make-up service. I too went to the salon on the wedding day and after waiting in queue for 45 minutes I got a chance to enter the room. As the hair stylist was working on my hair he made it clear that he will only be able to do a ‘basic’ look. He was exhausted he said, as he along with his team of

64  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality six hair stylists had been working non-stop from noon till 8 pm. All of the seven makeup artists were grumpy, and at times irritable with the clients. I overheard some of them discuss that they did not anticipate such a rush of women. Some guests, whilst waiting to avail their free services, were complaining of the ‘sub-standard’ skills of these artists, and other remarked that the organisation was poor, as they arranged for only seven artists for more than hundred women. Some others joked that all women at the wedding that evening would look alike, for these artists have at best, three ways of hairstyling. From these long conversations and chatterings of critique, I made my way to the adjoining room, which was set aside for dressing the women from the host family. Here, the scene was starkly different as about seven or eight women patiently waited for to get their hair and make-up done. As the eldest daughter-in-law, Kritika, was draping a sari with the help of her best friend and I complimented her exquisite and beautiful sari, to which she responded, It is not a designer sari. One of my mother’s friend has a boutique and she makes really good saris. You can also show her what you want in a picture and she can replicate it. So, this [the sari] is not hi-fi, but I think it looks good, especially for its cost [she said with a smile]. Though from a wealthy family, the women of the Gupta family did not purchase saris from big designer houses, even when there was no financial restriction put on them by the male members of the household. The women thought of an unabashed spending on clothes as a waste, they explained to me, and instead preferred to get their clothes tailored at reasonable prices. It seemed that by ‘saving’ money and not making extravagant expenditures, these women also wanted to reiterate and perhaps create ideals of good femininity. Mrs. Rani Gupta said, As hosts we barely have time to take care of how we look. Our main attention is on the guests. Especially with destination weddings you have to be more hands-on, ensuring all guests have arrived and are comfortable. Now you tell me in all this where do we have time to do elaborate makeup and be fashionable? This attitude of restraint from spending on designer clothes and performing a ‘simplicity’ in style and make-up, indicates a specific sort of relationship that these housewives have towards money, wherein the purpose of money is not simply to display wealth but also realise, perform, and emphasise affections as of humility. In other words, the Guptas, much like other elite families, were interested in organising a lavish wedding but equally they

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 65 were concerned with the appeasement and comfort of their guests, and less focus on ‘self’. In this way the elite women were redefining and reiterating a sort of elite culture and performance as well as appropriate elite femininity by incorporating the ideals of ‘savings’ and spending less, which often runs counter to the widely held perception of the elites. Mrs. Rani Gupta told me that she was recycling an old sari by putting a new border on it. This was a creative way of using old clothes and saving money, as she did not spend on new clothes. In this way, at least in the context of this wedding, the women of the Gupta family attached a different meaning to money: it was not to be spent unabashedly but made use of ‘sensibly’. They emphasised several times that there were no restrictions from their families on their expenditures, but they realise that not all ‘good’ things are supposed to be expensive. In a resident-city wedding there is little confusion regarding whether a particular wedding function is sponsored by the groom or bride’s family as the functions are widely addressed as ‘boy’s’ or ‘girl’s’, making it self-explanatory. However, with destination weddings these boundaries are less clear and with the Guptas, even more so. One of the main conversations at this wedding was on who sponsored the destination wedding. Some exclaimed that since the Guptas are nice people they would not have asked for the destination wedding as dowry. However, some others said that amongst Marwari families, dowry is paid as lump-sum, and so it is highly likely that the destination wedding was sponsored entirely by the bride’s family. In fact, to them, this seemed the main reason as to why the Guptas decided to host a grand reception in Delhi following the wedding. This was a way for the Guptas to finally contribute to the wedding, I was told. The real financial dynamics of this wedding were unclear to me, as I found it difficult to probe this topic. It is in fact this lack of clarity that allows to view elite lives critically and with caution, explaining that an ostentatious destination wedding symbolises grandeur and opulence and hospitality and can also ascertain asymmetrical relationships between bride-givers and bride-takers. In that sense, there is no neatly defined, singular approach to understanding destination weddings – a frequent folly of popular culture, for in this space are imbued sentiments of competition, pride (of the host, guests, and bridetakers), construction and invocation of femininity, humility, and morality.

*** The motivation and aim of a big fat elite Indian wedding are often simplistically explained as being related to displays of wealth. Real as that is, in this chapter, I have scratched below the surface to argue that weddings provide a far greater insight into the worlds of the elites than the general stereotype

66  Weddings, opulence, and hospitality allows us to see. In describing the preparations, deliberations, and anxieties of two elite weddings, I have highlighted that elite subjectivities can significantly differ, and are in fact not restricted to displays of wealth or spending money in expected ways. Instead, with each wedding, I have traced the different motivations to spend money. For example, in the case of Soha Sethi’s wedding, her aim was to present herself in internationally appealing aesthetics. Her mother was guided by competition to appear more tasteful than her daughter’s in-laws, and so she chose to spend her money in ways that exudes a better taste. The women of the Gupta family, on the other hand, were cautious in not spending on expensive designer clothes but saving on this lavish expenditure by re-using old clothes. They saw more merit, as it were, on spending money on hospitality. In other words, whilst the Sethis ensured that their exclusivity is expressed in every ‘self’ dimension as of their clothes, appearances, décor, and wedding invitations, the Guptas seemed more concerned on pleasing the ‘other’, that is the guests. Furthermore, the Sethis’ sense and performance of being elite significantly rested on being viewed as internationally oriented (specifically with a ‘Western’ taste of luxury), as evident in their choice of wedding invitations, the types of functions, and Soha’s bridal wear, whereas the Guptas displayed a more ‘rooted’ Indian sensibility with strong themes of Hindu subjectivity, invoking ideals of daan (giving) and service of guests. Here, I want to reiterate that it is not that the Guptas did not pamper themselves with enticements of a modern elite lifestyle including fashion, bags, accessories, and travels, but that their self-presentation as well as elite snobbery was based less on exclusivity and international appeal, and more on display of generosity and hospitality. Indian weddings have become a symbol of sorts for grandeur, opulence, and merriment. In that, weddings of the top 0.01% serve as an interesting space of analysis and emulation. With this chapter, I have teased out the politics of exclusivity, desire for a particular self-presentation, constant distinctions, and hierarchisations that determine the social space of weddings. Weddings are certainly about a lot more – reiterating caste boundaries, reviving or reminiscing forgotten traditions and rituals, establishing and reinforcing community ties, engaging in norms of reciprocity, validating one’s self-worth and class positioning, and so on.6 These are important themes of consideration in a study of elite weddings, notwithstanding which, the central purpose of this chapter has been to bring out the women’s (elite housewives’) role in curating, articulating, and reifying elite status and subjectivities across these different registers and affections of being elite. The above ‘thick description’ enables us to see that women’s contribution are not merely of enhancing status or parading themselves as symbols of wealth and opulence. Rather they bring their own energies in creating

Weddings, opulence, and hospitality 67 class dynamics and exclusionary boundaries, by, for example, hiring different designers to make clothes for their own family than for their in-laws’, and in this way challenging asymmetrical relationships between bridegivers and bride-takers, whilst also drawing in-group hierarchies of taste. They also create spaces of articulating narratives of morality in an otherwise opulent ambience of glamour. In these significant ways, elite housewives become links or bridges to different and at times opposing meanings and affections of privilege, inequality, and money. They engage in the ostentatious whilst also invoking the simple; they are makers of the ideas of an elite history and carriers of cultures of elite past as much as they are the anchors of future elite cultures.

Notes 1 For further information on middle class and education see Nita Kumar’s ‘The Middle-class Child: Ruminations on Failure’ (2011); Geert de Neeve’s ‘ “Keeping it in the Family”: Work, Education and Gender Hierarchies among Tiruppur’s Industrial Capitalists’ (2011); Carol Upadhyay’s ‘Rewriting the code: software professionals and the reconstitution of Indian middle class identity’ (2008). 2 A recent buzz in India is the wedding invitation of Akash Ambani, son of Mukesh Ambani (Chairman Reliance Industries). Mr. Ambani has been declared the richest man in India (according to Forbes list 2018) for the 11th year in a row, with a net worth of $40.1 billion. The wedding invitation of his son consists of a silver shrine for Lord Ganesha placed in a box embellished with gold design. 3 I could not help but wonder about the impact of the fashion industry in curating this desire, for magazines, reality television shows, and wedding blogs all display and promote designer clothing, and in fact, some designers’ rise to fame is based exclusively on providing bespoke Indian bridal wear, often also with the assistance of reality television shows. 4 Including Dame Judi Dench, Chris Martin, and Beyoncé. 5 The name of the designer has been changed so that the elite family is not immediately recognised to some readers. 6 See Bhandari’s ‘Inside the Big Fat Indian Wedding: Conservatism, Competition, and Networks’ (2017a).

4 Hindu glamour Of invitations, hierarchies, and snubs

Apart from luncheons, social gatherings, and lavish dinners, elite housewives are often seen spending time at beauty salons. Following recommendations, I started to visit a beauty salon that is popular with the elite housewives I was spending time with. On one of my visits, quite unexpectedly I witnessed an unusual site at the parlour; I saw an elite woman who was getting a hair treatment done, sitting on a chair, with her legs crossed, chanting softly with a rudraksha mala (beaded necklace, held in hand). It was a striking site: a religious and spiritual practice in a space that is dedicated to curating an appropriate material and physical embodiment of privilege. This unexpected juxtaposition of the glamorous and the simple, the profane and the sacred, made me further dwell on the role of religion in the modern self-fashioning of these women. It pushed me to further analyse, understand, and explain the power of ‘and’ and not ‘either’, ‘or’ between religion and the modern. The sighting of this incident made me recognise that in fulfiling their roles and responsibilities with glamour, ostentation, and glitz, these elite housewives also find space to articulate or perform their spiritual selves – which in turn also constitutes their gender and culture identity. As I also explain further, this ‘bent’ towards the spiritual or religious is not necessarily solely borne from a duty towards performing their gender identity. Rather, imbued in these leanings are several expressions and desires of being elite, for example, it refers to their desire to emulate certain traditions of ‘old’ elites as giving patronage to temple arts and theatre. Equally, it alludes to the fear of loss of anxiety and status, and vulnerabilities of not being able to perform their privileged status appropriately. Furthermore, these performances are also not free from sentiments of competition and ostentations, and in this way are a means to define and shape in-group dynamics and assert ways of being elite. In this chapter, I  explain the myriad affections of being elite and ways in which different elite subjectivities are constituted by focusing primarily on two strands of spiritual and religious engagements – following gurus (Godmen) and extravagant celebrations of religious festivals.

Hindu glamour 69

The guru-spell A number of the elite housewives in Delhi are arduous followers of gurus. Whilst most of these women were brought up in Hindu families that worship in temples, many of them chose to pledge their religious and spiritual affiliations to specific gurus, giving a second order of preference, as it were, to temple worship and following rituals to pray to Gods. The ritual expectations around ‘guru worship’ mainly involves following the Guru’s sermons, organising events where his sermons are remembered, and visiting his ashram regularly. These gurus do not follow Hindu scriptures or texts in their strict sense but interpret these in order to enlighten their followers. In doing so, they prescribe a way of life, as it were, guided by religious texts mainly of Hinduism and Sikhism. Whilst there are a few specific gurus who have a large following amongst the Delhi elites, I noted the immense popularity of a particular one – Gurusaab, who was from Punjab, and fluent in Punjabi, which was also the primary language of many of the elite housewives I spent time with.1 I became aware of his large following during one of my early encounters with these women when I was attending the tenth birthday celebration of a rich housewife’s son; a party that was nothing short of a gala with games, different kinds of cuisines, and puppet and dance drama for over 40 children and the nannies accompanying them. I was sat with a group of six women, who were discussing the time and location of their next kitty party. Meena, aged 32, mother of two children aged 4 and 6, said, Any time after 2 pm would be perfect because I have to go to Gurusaab’s ashram in the morning to do sewa. All the women nodded in agreement and some informed that they too were visiting the ashram that Sunday, so it would indeed be more convenient to change the timing of their kitty party for later in the evening. As this was the first time that I encountered any reference to religious and ritual practices amongst this group of women, my interest was piqued. Whilst I had some idea of the practices of sewa (a Hindi word that roughly translates to ‘service’, and carries with it values of humility, charity, and selflessness), in pursuit of clarification and desire to probe further, I enquired more about the ashram and doing ‘sewa’. Meena responded, Many of us follow Gurusaab, the generous and powerful guru. We all seek his blessings and he blesses his followers with happiness and prosperity. We visit his ashram at least twice a month or every Sunday to do sewa.

70  Hindu glamour I asked what she meant by sewa, and slightly reluctantly she said, We help cook, clean utensils, sweep floors, serve food to the people who are there to listen to sermons. All the women gathered at the table then began to narrate the chores they perform at the ashram and how these acts make them feel satisfied and content. It was striking to note that much of the rhetoric and discussion around visiting the ashram was not about donations that these families also make, as I was later told, but on explaining how they perform sewa. There was something, it seemed to me, redeeming and cathartic about physical labour for the rich women that was different and more special than monetary donations. The irony here could not be ignored: at home these women refrained from doing direct manual labour, perhaps as part of their class expectation, and were instead involved in managing the household with the help of staff, but for their spiritual and religious awakening they insisted on performing the same kind of physical labour outside their homes. Moreover, they used the term sewa and not ‘work’, thereby associating emotions of service to these acts of physical labour. It is also noteworthy that these women did not immediately explain what constituted sewa but it took much cajoling on my part and eventually, reluctantly they elucidated on their tasks of sewa. This hesitation, I think, was not necessarily borne out of an embarrassment of admitting to washing utensils or sweeping floors. Quite to the contrary, it seemed to be a symptom of humility – performed or real, perhaps advocated by the guru himself, that acts of sewa truly matter when they do not invoke sentiments of arrogance or bragging but are performed with humility and modesty. In this way, a task which was immediately associated as lower-class responsibility in one setting was uplifted as service to God or spiritual experience in another setting, by the same set of women. I was amazed at these women’s dedication towards sewa and following Gurusaab; not because I saw them as irreligious or devoid of any ritual, spiritual or religious leanings but because, thus far, I had mainly been interacting with them in the context of social gatherings, discussions on marital and familial problems, and shopping. It was indeed an unanticipated foray into their world of spirituality, and I was particularly taken on why they had chosen to follow this guru, whose presence I soon began to notice in the public spaces of Delhi – usually his smiling face on huge billboards and shops, and his name printed on the backscreens of cars. The women explained that the news of Gurusaab’s powerful blessings and positivity spread like fire in their friend circles. Many families started following him, for his inspirational words helped these families overcome their difficult

Hindu glamour 71 times. This encouraged the elite housewives to participate in the Guru’s lifeworld, as it were, and they did so by regularly visiting his ashram and organising ways to spread his sermons. Meena further explained the life at the ashram and Gurusaab’s philosophy, It is easy to give donations and money but Gurusaab has taught us the value of doing actual work for others, which is in simple tasks like cooking and cleaning. [. . .] The ashram is huge, but neat and clean, because all his bhakts (followers) take care of it. Sonia, aged 37, mother of two sons, said, For me, it [following Gurusaab] happened more than a decade ago. I was going through some family troubles and was very sad and depressed. It was then that my mother got to know about Gurusaab, as her kitty party friends had begun to follow him. We decided to go to him and seek his blessings and you will not believe it, when I met him I did not even have to tell him what my problems were, he looked at me, and he knew it. He said I should have faith and everything will be alright and the property issue will be solved and my son’s health will improve. Within the next week things at home became better. Our financial problems and family feuds, everything started to resolve. I was intrigued and amazed, and perhaps there was a sense of scepticism in my body language and facial expression, to clarify which Sonia said, It is hard to explain unless you experience it yourself. I believe in him and his blessings are very dear to me. He took mahasamadhi a few years ago but I still know he is around. We all know that. Mahasamadhi, as Sonia later clarified, meant that the guru had willingly left his body to embrace death, but his spirit still remains and blesses his followers. His followers never use the word ‘death’ and believe that he is still around watching over them. They still, as much as when he was alive, visit his ashram for sewa and conduct regular satsangs (chanting of hymns and collective prayers) with other fellow followers. Seeing my interest in this topic Sonia invited me to a satsang at her bungalow in South Delhi so I could see for myself the dedication, respect, attachment, and love that the Guru’s followers have for him. On a Sunday afternoon then, I  had my first encounter with the large following of Gurusaab. Sonia’s house is in one of the posh residential areas of Delhi and right from the huge gates a large red carpet was laid out leading up to the

72  Hindu glamour main hall where the satsang was taking place. As I walked closer to the hall there were a few men handing out small bags to put my footwear in, for the satsang is to be attended barefoot, much like visits to temples. On the sides of the red carpet were laid bright yellow flowers and candles, reminding of a wedding ambience. There was a huge gathering of close to 150 people, mostly women dressed in the most exquisite Indian wear. At the centre of the hall was a large framed picture of the Guru with a picture of a Hindu god on the right and of a Sikh guru on the left. There was a small stage close to these pictures, where a group of singers had set up their instruments and were preparing to sing hymns to commence the satsang. As the satsang began at Sonia’s house, some women got up and began to dance to the hymns, as though in trance. After this, another ‘ritual’ took place, which I did not expect in the least – women took a microphone to narrate their experiences of personal struggles, which they overcame with Gurusaab’s blessings and teachings. As I spent more time attending satsangs and talking to other followers about these rituals, I began to see the importance of this ritual of sharing narratives. I realised that this ritual not only served as a personal and individual way of catharsis but also helped create a shared sense of belonging and a feeling of community amongst the followers. At Sonia’s event that day, there were about five or six women who shared their personal struggles, beginning from her mother-in-law who thanked Gurusaab’s blessings to help them through a financially challenging time in their life, followed by a young girl of 16 discussing her tumultuous time with school examinations, followed by a woman aged 45, who successfully battled cancer, and another woman aged 60, who was worried of her daughter’s health and inability to bear children. Mrs. Mehra, aged 60, and grandmother to six young kids, said, He [Gurusaab] always wanted us to be patient and kind. He says that things will get better and all we have to do is stop worrying and just meditate, be in touch with our spiritual side. As a Hindu myself, I had never really encountered this kind of expression of religiosity or spirituality where a group of people gather and discuss their anxieties and lay bare their vulnerabilities. I had a different ritual repertoire, as it were, which was limited to going to temples and performing rituals, and most importantly, not talking out loud but quietly asking for forgiveness, and making requests to God (of material and spiritual gains). Whilst of course, I too attended and partook in ‘group activities’ of religion including singing hymns and having meals together, yet I never encountered a space or ritual where one was encouraged to discuss their struggles and anxieties. To then witness such a ritual, especially amongst the super-rich

Hindu glamour 73 of Delhi who are known for their privacy and exclusivity, was exciting, perplexing, and revealing. There was certainly something very powerful and intimate about this gathering, as I was witnessing some of the most successful families of India discussing their personal struggles. It was a fascinating experience at another level, for it exposed a range of anxieties and vulnerabilities that mar the lives of the rich and powerful, and their need to discuss these issues not with professional therapists, which might be the case with non-Indian elites, but in a setting that invokes certain Indian traditions, cultures, and paths of spirituality. It perhaps indicated their desire to be rooted in certain traditions and also showcased their ability to re-invent certain other traditions. It reiterated that elites, in their modern lives, are not detached from the spiritual and other-worldly but in fact are guided by and seek paths of the spiritual and the religious, of course adding elements of power, wealth, and privilege to these experiences. What I also found most fascinating was the candour and honesty with which these elite housewives discussed their struggles and problems without necessarily fearing that someone could take advantage. To me, this demonstrated a deep sense of trust and bond with each other, a sort of shared class culture or habitus regarding the affections that mark elite lives, for they knew that each elite family sitting in that space had similar struggles and anxieties relating to business, marriage alliances, and desiring for male heirs. In this sense, this religious or spiritual practice reiterated class and therefore exclusionary boundaries for it cultivated a space of expression of similar class position related anxieties and the unsaid rule of keeping it all within themselves, that is, their particular class fraction. A conspicuous aspect of the cult of the guru, which was evident during the satsang was the global reach and international character of the guru himself. One of the ladies who narrated her experience with cancer was an Indian settled in the United States, who first heard about the guru in the US and attended his sermon in New York. In narrations by other followers too it was clear that Gurusaab was well-travelled and in fact had a large following in the US.2 A lady follower also claimed that Gurusaab was very fond of wearing designer shoes and clothes, and encouraged his followers to be well-dressed and spend their money ‘well’. As this lady went on to further explicate the likes and habits of Gurusaab, and how she enjoyed gifting him latest collections of expensive designer wear, it became evident that the bond between Gurusaab and his followers was also borne out of a shared appreciation of an international orientation to lifestyle, penchant for travel, fondness for good clothes and shoes. In other words, it seemed that his teachings and blessings were not contingent on a renunciation, of sorts, or scrupulousness with money and consumption. His way of life and philosophy allowed the rich to guiltlessly continue to occupy their position

74  Hindu glamour of privilege and power. The guru wished them to live well and aim for a better material life as well. His followers, therefore, are able to occupy both spaces of spirituality and materiality, charity and extravagance, without having to choose between the two; a form of teaching which is certainly conducive and appealing to their elite lifeworlds. Opulence meets spirituality Whilst this event was certainly an ode to the elites’ spiritual experiences, it was hard to miss the elements of glamour and ostentation. Through the duration of the satsang, we were served good quality sherbet and bottled mineral water. As the satsang ended, we were ushered into the other part of the house where one of Delhi’s best catering agency had laid out a large spread of Indian vegetarian snacks. Tables and chairs were covered with beautiful cloths, the space decorated with roses and sunflowers and lit by candles as the sunset. The scene was nothing short of a glamorous wedding. Most guests admired and appreciated Sonia and her mother-in-law’s organisational skills, whilst there were also a few who were complaining, mainly about being served snacks and not proper food, which they thought was a strategy to save on money. As a lady commented, The organisation is fine, but they could serve proper food! All they have offered us is street food, and how much does that cost really? They could have easily changed the time for the satsang to after lunch so that they serve us proper lunch but I suppose they did not want to spend money. There were few others who criticised that there were not enough tables and chairs for all guests to be seated as many were standing whilst eating. Some others commented that their return gift, which was a box containing Indian sweets and some prasad (offering), was not fancy enough. The hosts, however, were happy and proud of the event. Surely, the motivation for this event was to show gratitude to Gurusaab and his philosophies, strengthen bonds with fellow-followers and also celebrate his teachings. However, not missing was also a spirit of competition, envy, and display of wealth and status. In organising this event then, the twin expectations of elite women of being the spiritual anchor of a family and beacon of class and status was ingeniously achieved. In this way, Sonia and her family, and I suspect other housewives who also follow Gurusaab, were able to weave together the enchantments of the modern with the practices of the religious in their narratives of being elite.

Hindu glamour 75

Glamour, invitations, and snubs Beginning from the month of October until January, Delhi is jubilant with celebrations of numerous festivals including Durga Puja, Dusshera, Diwali, Christmas, and Lohri. For the elites, these are opportune occasions to display wealth and engage in competition with peers, create and challenge social hierarchies, and undertake strategies for higher status amongst their cohort – aspects that crucially register the everydayness of being elite. The religious festival that attracts the most attention for the display and reiteration of elite identity in Delhi is Diwali. A common way of determining a family’s elite status is by judging the gifts that they distribute to their kin, peers, and staff on Diwali. The recipients of gifts are ranked in order of closeness to the family and level of importance in work and social networks. The expense on gifts depends on the rank or position of the recipient in this hierarchy. Typically, a gift of the highest category includes all or some of the following items: fruit baskets, expensive dry fruits, silverware, watches (ranging from £3,000 to £5,000), designer clothes, and gold coins. This category of gift is distributed to the close social and business circles of the family, and those with whom the family wants to foster relationships, primarily for the smooth functioning of their business, including bureaucrats. However, bureaucrats, at times, are reluctant to accept lavish gifts for fear of being reported for corruption, and so the elite families devise other ways to please them, as by inviting them to exclusive dinners or events or organising holidays or getaways for them. The second rank of recipients broadly consists of extended family by marriage and blood, and their gift package includes two or three of the above-mentioned items. The lowest rung in the hierarchy includes basic gifts like sweets or kitchenware, priced approximately between £20 and £50, and are given to employees or acquaintances who do not belong to the same class position but are of assistance to the elites in the everyday functioning of their life as clerical workers, chauffeurs, maids, and so on. Some of these elite families are also known to arrange big celebrations for their employees and factory workers in the form of lunch or dinner and/or give them a salary bonus. The hierarchisation of recipients remains more or less the same through the years and the women of the house, especially the older generation, maintain this list. The younger women – recently married – are also involved in these decision makings as the older women are grooming them to take charge in the future, but whilst still young their responsibilities are more limited to perhaps packing of gifts or delivering them. An important aspect of gift-giving is to keep records of what category of gift was distributed to which friend, family, and network, lest someone is offended at receiving a lesser-status gift. Here, yet again the elite housewives play an important

76  Hindu glamour role, for it is they who maintain a log of sorts. Often these logs come in handy to snub a relative or business network, when the family decides to send a lower category gift to express the recipient’s now fallen status. In other words, if, for example, an elite family has to express its dissatisfaction towards another family, either due to a business deal gone wrong or a social gaffe, it does so by dropping the level of gift given to them on Diwali. This decision to lower someone’s status in gift-giving is not always neat and often involves disagreements amongst family members, even between husband and wife. Since the elite women’s circles are well connected any such snub becomes a topic of discussion. I happened to witness one such incident. At a kitty party of women in their late 20s and early 30s, they were discussing a recent infamous incident when the wife of a big businessman sent a lower category gift to their recently estranged friends, who are also a leading business family. This snub became talk of the town, and one of the women at this kitty party began discussing it. She said, Apparently, Sheila sent them a big basket of fruits and some silverware for like Rs. 10,000 [£100], and Kiran [the recipient of the gift] suspected that it was actually a pass-on. Kiran was so mad, she phoned me and said ‘Does she [Sheila] think we are beggars! We don’t want cheap passed over [recycled] gifts. I was so mad at my husband, and told him that this is the kind of company he kept for so many years. He just couldn’t believe it. He said Ramesh [Sheila’s husband] could never humiliate us by sending us a cheap gift. I actually agree with him. I think this is not Ramesh, but Sheila [Ramesh’s wife] and her cheap tactics. From this particular discussion it seemed that Sheila, more than her husband, was adamant in snubbing Kiran and her husband. Or it could be that Sheila’s husband wanted it to appear that this snub was not entirely at his behest. In either case, it was evident that it was the woman who came under greater scrutiny for this gift-giving snub. This shows that elite women, in crucial and subtle ways, are the locus to establish or shake professional and social networks, at times in disagreement with their husband. In this way, they bring together the sphere of the domestic and the professional, and establish themselves as a bridge between the two. As such, gift-giving and celebrations are pivotal for elite women to perform their gender roles and establish their power in renegotiating hierarchies of friendship and work. Apart from gift giving, elite families also maintain their status by hosting lavish Diwali parties, in which, once again, elite women have an important

Hindu glamour 77 role to play. Diwali celebrations ritually include performing puja and usually this is the more private celebrations restricted to the immediate family. A more public celebration of Diwali, especially for the elites, includes hosting lavish parties consisting of gambling, alcohol, and a large spread of food. Typically, these parties begin at 10 pm and go on till early morning. There is serious gambling involved, most popularly the game of poker. In one such elite Diwali party that I attended there were about four ‘tables’ or categories of poker groups divided on the basis of money used as ‘chaal’ or ‘move’ to begin the game. The lowest table, which comprised mainly of youngsters aged 16 onwards, was playing with stakes ranging from £1 to £10 and the next table, mostly of the elite housewives, played at slightly higher stakes of £10 to £100. The next two tables were dominated by men, with the exception of one or two women, and they were playing with very high stakes: one ranging from £200 to £1,000 and the other beginning at £500 and going up to £5,000. The status of a Diwali party, or ‘card party’ as they are famously called, is crucially determined by the high stakes of gambling. In fact, an invitation to a high stakes Diwali party indicates that the guests too occupy a high status as they have the money and taste for high gambling. Much like being gifted an inexpensive gift, not being invited to a high-stake Diwali party is seen as a serious social snub. Through their networks and acts of reciprocal invitations then, most elite families ensure that they are invited to Diwali parties of other important businessmen and boast about the invitations during and after the Diwali celebrations to establish or reiterate their status both within and outside the elite social circles. Competing for ‘new’ festival celebrations Festivals like Diwali or Durga Puja are part of a North Indian cultural and religious heritage and therefore, it is only expected that the Delhi elites will celebrate them with pomp and show. However, I noted, and some elite families also corroborated my observation, that in recent years some festivals associated with cultures of other parts of India have come to occupy an importance in the Delhi elite social and cultural life. One such religious celebration is that of Ganesha Puja. Ganesha Puja marks the birth of Lord Ganesha and lasts ten days; it is most avidly celebrated in Maharasthra. Maharshtrian families settled in Delhi surely celebrate this festival, but it was striking to note its rising popularity amongst the Delhi elites belonging to the Punjabi community. It was in early October that, at the invitation of some elite women, I attended an exhibition for designer clothes for children and babies at a five-star hotel. After shopping for a few hours, these elite women proceeded for coffee at the five-star hotel’s café and began to discuss their

78  Hindu glamour upcoming busy months of festivities, including the much-awaited Ganesha Puja hosted by the Kapoor family. I happened to meet Anjali Kapoor, one of the two daughters-in-law of the Kapoor family, at a previous occasion, and though Anjali did not invite me to this celebration, the other women assured me that she would be happy to have me attend. I expressed surprise that a ‘hard-core’, as they say, Punjabi family was celebrating Ganesha Puja. The women laughed out loud at my question and one of them responded, It is in vogue to celebrate Ganesh Puja in Delhi now. I mean think about it, ten years ago, who would do this? I think people are running out of excuses to celebrate and show their wealth, so now they do this [celebrate festivals from other communities]. Another woman, nodded in agreement and added, Whatever the reason of celebration, it is definitely worth going. The ‘who’s who’ of Delhi will be there and the Kapoors know how to celebrate! They usually host this puja at their farmhouse, though I think this time it is at their home. It is really quite beautiful, they make-to-order a huge idol of Ganesha and invite professional singers, and give really nice gifts to all guests. The food spread is also amazing. It is really a must-attend event and they do it with so much diligence and dedication that you feel nice to attend it. Another woman said, It is like a mini wedding! These observations were indeed not far from reality, as when I attended the event it surely was nothing short of a lavish wedding, and the attention to detail on the décor and hospitality was impressive. The entrance to their home, where the puja celebrations were being held, felt like a grand wedding reception with guests disembarking from expensive cars and an entourage of ushers and valet parking staff attending to them. The entire venue was decorated with flowers, candles, and bells, and every member of the household was dressed in the choicest of clothes and heavy jewelry, especially the women. There was a huge idol of Lord Ganesha and five priests were chanting prayers, and after the puja, special singers were summoned to sing hymns in the background as the guests mingled with each other. At the party, I was introduced to other members of the Delhi elite, and I remarked on how beautiful and well-organised the prayer ceremony was; especially from a family that until a few years ago did not follow Lord Ganesha and

Hindu glamour 79 nor is culturally associated to the celebration of Ganesha. To this, a wellestablished builder, in his late 40s, said, This is how you set trends. You choose something that others don’t do and just begin to do it, and you become famous. He laughed and added, I am not complaining, though, it is good to mix cultures and celebrate things from other parts of India. It is quite nice! I accosted Anjali Kapoor to congratulate her on the beautiful event and displayed amazement at their celebration of Ganesha Puja, being a Punjabi family, and she said, We worship all Gods and Goddesses. But my in-laws really believe in Lord Ganesha. Religious celebrations are about bringing people together and sharing blessings with everyone. Previously, this [the celebrations] was only a family affair but then my father-in-law suggested that we should invite our friends and extended family to pray with us. Plus, it is nice to meet people at one big event that is not about alcohol and dancing. Anjali was quite correct in her explanation, for this event did get all her friends and family together. But another significant aspect, and one which she skipped telling me about, was that they had invited several work networks to this event too. In fact, in attendance were certain businessmen who are known to not attend social events like parties and weddings, but never turn down a religious celebration. Therefore, by organising a grand scale religious event, the Kapoors wanted to display, and even strengthen, their networks. Such grand celebration of festivals certainly makes for a strong claim to an elite status, but equally it demonstrates the importance of piety in the construction and articulation of being elite. It is also an expression of certain kinds of affections associated with an elite status, namely of anxiety or fear of loss of status and money. These range of affections and desire to expand one’s network to remain ‘alive’ in Delhi circles, as it were, was best exemplified by the Bansal family, who chose to celebrate with ostentation the festival of Janmashtami. The Bansals are an industrialist family and belong to the Marwari community. Though always wealthy, only more recently have they expanded their business and are entering into the social world of the Delhi elites by establishing networks with other business

80  Hindu glamour families and bureaucrats. With their arrival in the ‘Delhi scene’, they hosted a few grand parties, including one for their anniversary, followed by an opulent destination wedding for their elder son. However, it seemed, in a bid to bolster their elite status, much like other well-known elite families as the Kapoors, they wanted to host an annual event, which could display their wealth, but more importantly, also articulate another significant affection that constitutes their sense of elite-ness and elite subjectivity, namely piety and gratitude. Perhaps because the celebration of Diwali was saturated in the Delhi circle and perhaps because they believed in Lord Krishna, the Bansals decided to celebrate the festival of Janmashtmi, which though popular in North India, especially the state of Uttar Pradesh, where Lord Krishna was born, is not very popular amongst the Delhi Punjabi elites. The Bansals organised a three-day celebration near the birth city of Krishna, which is about three hours’ drive from Delhi, and booked a hotel to host their guests. They hired the most popular hymn singers of the town and a theatre company to perform a dance-drama depicting the life of Lord Krishna. The invitation for this celebration was no less than a wedding invitation, consisting of a huge box filled with special sweets and small silver goods and a detailed itinerary of the events of the three days. The invitations were extended to the rich and famous in Delhi and many were looking forward to it, for the festival fell on a long weekend. The celebration was thus well timed, for many guests would certainly use it as an excuse for a short getaway from Delhi. At one kitty party, the women were discussing this event and a Mrs. Arora, aged 48, said, They [the Bansals] are such nice people. I mean this is a wonderful idea. There are barely any proper celebrations for Janmashtami. You know how Punjabis are; always wanting to party, so it is nice that we can see our friends at events that are not about partying and alcohol. [. . .] It is also such a good excuse to get away from Delhi, visit other religious places nearby and spend time with close friends. But I also know that many people might not want to attend it because there will be no alcohol. It is okay, each to their own, but my family and I are certainly attending and looking forward to it. Whilst this celebration certainly put the Bansals on the map of elite circles in Delhi, it was also indexical to their anxieties regarding status and money. After this event, I had a long chat with Mrs. Bansal who explained her belief in God and desire to celebrate Him. This conversation certainly indicated that she considered her position of elite-ness as precarious. She was aware that things could go awry any time, with an unforeseen slump in business.

Hindu glamour 81 In order to deal with these anxieties of loss of status and money, she perhaps considered it worthy to express their gratitude of privileged position to God in the hope that they can continue to receive his blessings. She said, It is good to remember God. People tend to forget but one should always be thankful to Him. It is He who has given us everything and can we not do this much for Him? God’s blessings also protect you from evil eye. There are so many people jealous of your success and progress, so it is important to be protected by Him. [. . .] It is important to not forget what He has done for us, and people often tend to do that when they get too much in life. We are indebted to Him and constantly remember Him, and this is our little way to show our gratitude. In my observations, interactions, and experiences of these elite women’s engagement with the religious and spiritual, the role of money was rather obvious – both as an expression of entitlement and privilege, and as a means of panacea to pains and anxieties emerging from this position of power and privilege. On the one hand, this money was used for lavish celebrations, thereby making a simple and direct claim of being wealthy and privileged. On the other hand, another set of meanings was attached to the use of money such that it enabled the elites to self-fashion and present themselves as also constituted of piety, gratitude, and humility. In another explanatory analyses, it could also be argued that with these grand celebrations these elite women were claiming a lineage of being elite. In other words, their motivation of these lavish celebrations could be to demonstrate a semblance and resemblance to an older way of being elite, wherein the elites – royalty, zamindars, and so on – patronised temples, as well as the arts and theatre. Though there is a significant difference in contemporary emulations of old ways of being elite, as whilst the previous forms of patronage were open to a larger public and to some extent even garnered for them, the contemporary elites have pushed ‘the public’ out of these celebrations, which are now restricted to and cater to their own class. In other words, the religious and spiritual celebrations of the Delhi elites I spent time with do not necessarily include people from other classes. In fact, I noted that the elites barely had any interactions with those belonging to the other class in their everyday living, and had successfully blocked them out; even their own staff. Whilst I never interacted at length with the assisting staff of the elites, mainly because I rarely saw them and even when I did I feared upsetting the elite women, who might think I am trying to destabilize their household dynamics, I did get a few opportunities to be alone with them. These were mainly when I was returning from late-night social gatherings from their house and they would offer to drop me home

82  Hindu glamour in their chauffeur driven cars. On one such drive back, the chauffeur told me that whilst the image of the family he is working for is that they are generous people in reality they are miserly and rarely provide any monetary support to their staff. He said, What’s the point of all this wealth? What are you going to do with it if you can’t keep the people who love you and work for you happy. But karma will come back, in one way or the other. Though, there were also some families who were known to make large charitable contributions, take care of their staff, particularly never refusing money to an employee who asked for monetary assistance for his daughter’s wedding. However, by and large, a discourse on charity was missing from the elite lifeworlds of the women I interacted with. Their religious celebrations and sewa, seemed to be geared towards the development of a certain sense of ‘self’, appeasement to friendship and work networks, and restricted to their class boundaries. In that sense, though the essence of religious celebrations and spiritual awakening might seem to be an appeasement or celebration of the non-material and flattening of hierarchies, it remained a significant way of drawing exclusionary boundaries, as it was catered to and by a particular class. Some elite housewives explained to me that their motivation for these religious and spiritual leanings was to appease the Gods and receive ‘positive spirits of the universe’, which in turn can ensure that their elite status, power, money, and good fortune continues. Therefore, the indulgence of the religious and spiritual was imbued with desire to perform and protect one’s class and status and in that sense, was restricted to their class.

Articulating femininity These spaces of the religious and spiritual are also significant for the construction of femininity and establishing the primary ways of being a ‘good’ woman. Central here is the value of piety, which the woman is expected to perform and inculcate in family members. This allows the family to then lay claim to values of humility, charity, and gratitude. The elite housewives took this responsibility of being a good and pious woman rather seriously, and often competed with each other in performances of being more pious. Such a sentiment of competition came out starkly in my conversation with Anjali Kapoor, who at first was reluctant to see me alone but then agreed for a ‘quick coffee’ in Khan market, before picking up her children from school. At coffee, I first congratulated her on a very well put together Ganesha Puja celebration and commented

Hindu glamour 83 that her guests were full of praises for her and her family. She was very pleased to hear this, and displayed utter humility by attributing the success to all her family members who worked hard to ensure that every guest was treated well and respectfully. I took the conversation further by probing the details of the organisation for this event and particularly her role in it. She explained that this event has come to mark an annual family gathering when her father-in-law brings all his children and brother’s children together. In that sense it is not simply a religious celebration but a family event and as the families have been expanding with marriages and children, her father-in-law is all the more particular that the entire family comes together to perform puja (prayers). Anjali’s insistence on presenting the Ganesh Puja celebration as a family event was rather interesting because rumours had it that the Kapoors were having troubles over inheritance and in fact, the family business was undergoing a division. It all started when the elder brother of Anjali’s husband demanded his share in property and business, and her father-in-law thought it sensible to divide the property and business amongst all heirs before the fight over claims became nasty. In some ways therefore, this religious celebration was also a show of strength and togetherness of the family, real or imagined, in order to keep the gossip over their internal fights in check. Amidst this budding family feud, the responsibility of putting up a united front fell more strongly on the women of the family, who were expected to work together to organise this event. She said, It is really not an easy event to organise. We all work very hard and start planning weeks in advance. For my father-in-law, how well the event goes and how happy the guests are, is a direct reflection on our family honour and status. So, we are all on our toes for this. There is no scope of any mistakes. At a previous occasion, some elite women told me that the daughters-in-law and daughters of the Kapoor family do not see eye to eye and are constantly competing with each other to prove themselves as the better wives or daughters-in-law, and thus use this religious celebration as a playing field for competition. Upon hearing of this gossip, I thought that it would certainly make it difficult for the females of Kapoor family to work together, and was curious to know how they managed to put this event together. Anjali explained that each member of the family received clearly marked out separate responsibilities. For example, one of her sisters-in-law (elder brother’s wife) was in charge of food and had hired one of the best caterers in Delhi, who are famous for preparing authentic Punjabi food. Another sister-in-law (husband’s sister) was given the responsibility of buying the

84  Hindu glamour ‘return’ gifts, and she was in charge of invitations. In jest, I asked if she fared best amongst them all and she laughed, Of course I am the best! [she said with a laugh]. And I am also the most educated female member of the family. [. . .] But no no, I am kidding. This time I was in charge of sending out invitations, and it might seem simple but I think it is one of the most difficult things to do! You have to ensure that the invitations are made nicely and accompanied with good quality sweets, and most importantly that the invitations arrive at the right time, and are followed up by telephonic invitations also. I mean you know how people get if they receive a belated invitation. They take it as a snub. God! The number of times I have had to calm the nerves of relatives because they were annoyed that someone else got an invitation before them or that I did not telephone them to confirm if they will attend. So, I think this is really quite an important responsibility, but of course my sisters-in-law also worked very hard. It really is a family effort. In order to further bolster her image as the one with genuine religious leanings, and in an attempt to mark herself as more pious than other female family members, Anjali explained that since her childhood she has participated in religious celebrations and helped organise them, as her mother is a very religious person. She said, My mother is very religious. She visits many temples across India so right from the beginning I have had a religious leaning. My in-laws know this, so I think they trust me quite a bit with the puja organisation. [. . .] I really enjoy it [the celebrations for puja] and look forward to it every year. Of course, it is super tiring and time consuming, especially when you have to take care of your kids at the same time but in the end it is worth it. It is to seek God’s blessings and it’s also a way in which your children will learn these values. I then remarked that she and her children looked every bit glamorous, and she replied with a proud smile, I am very particular about being well-dressed. I don’t necessarily shop from high-end designers always, like the sari I was wearing was designed by one of my friends and at a very reasonable price [. . .] I won’t be just throwing away money on unnecessarily expensive clothes. This friend also stitched clothes for my children. The polki (uncut diamonds) necklace I was wearing, was given to me by my

Hindu glamour 85 mother-in-law at my wedding. I am not like those women who buy new jewelry for every new event. It appeared that Anjali was referring to one of her sisters-in-law [husband’s sister] who is famous in several business elite circles for buying expensive jewelry at the drop of the hat. Anjali’s sister-in-law is married into one of the richest business families of India, who, as grapevine has it, never refuse any luxury to the women of their family. By comparing herself to her sister-in-law, it seemed that Anjali was invoking differences between those elite women who are careful with money and those who are not and categorizing herself to the former kind. This form of demarcation was akin to the kind of ingroup boundaries drawn on the use of make-up and diamonds by another group of elite housewives, as discussed in Chapter 2. Significant to note was also Anjali’s insistence on having always been inclined towards the religious, and in that sense, claiming a lineage or heritage, as it were, of piety. I noted this not only in Anjali’s narrative but also of other elite women who desired to present themselves as anchors of religiosity and spirituality for their family. This role expectation and performance was also affirmed by their husbands who, even if equally religious, attributed their family’s religious leanings to their wives. I met one such proud husband at a religious celebration of the Kumars, who had organised a three-day long recital of the Ramayana (paath). Chirag Kansal, aged 47, belongs to a well-established construction business family, and whilst discussing the Ramayana paath and its importance in today’s modern world, he said, My wife is also very religious. Earlier the kids were small so we couldn’t organise many religious events but now as they are in middle school and can take care of themselves so my wife has more time. We will also be organising a paath (recital of a holy book) next year. He further explained that his wife ensures that their children attend religious events, so that they can imbibe religious values from a young age. I give her full credit for this [the religious bent of mind of their family]. She is in-charge and she takes care of all of us and ensures we are not too swayed by the material [he said with a laughter]. Mr. Kansal had laid out an important path to understand the role of elite housewives in the elite lifeworlds. He acknowledged the fear or possibility of waning interest in the religious in modern times and considered it the responsibility of the woman to ensure that the religious continues to be

86  Hindu glamour in conversation with the processes and persuasions of the modern world. In that sense a woman, and in particular a wife, was viewed as a bridge between the religious and the modern, and also an upholder of appropriate elite-ness.

*** In this chapter, I have highlighted the specific ways in which elite lifeworlds significantly include spirituality and religiosity in order to express modernity. With these descriptions, I have demonstrated that an elite selfhood is not determined by an either/or approach to religion and modern elite life but rests precisely in bringing them together – and adding money, competition, and glamour to this combination. Religion and practices of religiosity, in the form of observances of festivals and performing sewa for a guru, I argue, are in fact crucial articulations of being modern and elite status. Furthermore, these performances are not simply about claiming ‘new’ ways of being elite, as one might ascertain in other practices as of travel or commodity consumption. On the contrary, they indicate the desire and practice of looking at the past, turning attention to ‘old’ ways of being elite, by providing patronage to festivals, temple arts, and invoking values of piety in the construction of modern elite-ness. At the same time, these performances and practices remain restricted or accessible only to circles of elites, and in this sense are unlike the old ways of being elite, when the patrons and princes also contributed towards public celebrations of festivals and religiosities. It will thus not be too far-fetched to suggest that the religious and spiritual also become the language of entitlement, privilege, and pride – for though espousing values of humility and charity, these events or celebrations cater only to one segment of the super-rich population. This spiritual and religious leaning, moreover, also emanates from a sense of anxiety about loss of power, position, and privilege, to assuage which these elite women seek blessings from God or Godmen. Most importantly, this space is significant for elite women to constitute a respectable femininity. Having spent much time and effort in curating their bodies and minds to a more internationally appealing template of elite woman – from emphasis on designer clothes, bags, physical looks, and penchant for international travel – they appropriate the space of the religious and spiritual to assert their femininity in a way that is more appealing to domestic traditions. They steer their family’s interest in the spiritual and religious by organising satsangs and encourage other elite women to perform sewa. They also seek advice and guidance from spiritual leaders, thereby placing the spiritual at the heart of their narrative of success. In other words, by seeking a Guru or God’s blessings they communicate that

Hindu glamour 87 though their life is ‘this-worldly’ and determined by money, fame, power, their success and progress is determined by the ‘other-worldly’. Furthermore, they help to create, reiterate, and unsettle networks of business and friendships with celebrations and festivities. In this way, their religious leanings significantly bring together the material and non-material worlds and also establishes their position of importance in both the domestic and the non-domestic spheres of elite life worlds.

Notes 1 I have changed the name of the Guru in order to not hurt the sentiments of the followers, as in fact, my intention is to explain the space of religiosity in elite lives and not undertake a critical analysis of this particular Guru’s followings. 2 As I write this book, a documentary, Wild Wild Country, on the Indian guru Rajneesh, or Osho as he was referred to, has become popular. This documentary captures the popularity of Osho in the United States and the line of events that follow afterwards leading to his deportation, but a continued following and dedication for him.

Epilogue

I write this book in a time during which an acute interest in knowing about elites has emerged, or indeed, reemerged. Every few days there are reports on the lifestyles of the 0.01% of the world – scoops on their hidden wealth (Panama papers), ways in which they exert influence over politics, their exclusive clubs, and the rampant patriarchy and misogyny that exist in the upper echelons of contemporary society. This story is no different in India. The Indian economy ‘opened up’ in the 1990s, with promises of more job opportunities and general progress within society. Three decades hence, the rewards of this economic policy are far more lopsided than was originally imagined. James Crabtree, in his recent book ‘The Billionaire Raj’ (2018), explains that India has mapped a journey from being under the British Raj (from the late 19th to mid-20th century), to being under a ‘License Raj’ (post-independence to the late 1980s). The latter is marked by the dominating control of state and bureaucracy in granting licenses to industries for production of goods and services. India now finds itself under the ‘Billionaire Raj’ (beginning mid-2000s), he argues, where the main power holders are (newly established) billionaires, who control the economy and cultural and social spaces in manifest and latent ways. It is quite true that contemporary India boasts a large number of billionaires, but the underbelly of this glamourous and ‘progressive’ image and story of India is acute inequality, environmental travesties to make way for ‘progress’ and industries, and disruptive social trends and practices. It is this bizarre interrelation between India’s super-rich and its high level of inequality that draws further attention towards the lives of elites. There is a curiosity to know, ‘see’, critique, and at times admire (especially when popularised by film and fashion industries), the world of the rich and the haves. My book is certainly not the first to plunge head-first into this world: (as detailed in the first chapter) several other scholars have recently explained the story of the rise of wealth and the interconnections between caste, community, education, and money, thereby bringing out the simultaneous existence of the haves and the have-nots. As

Epilogue 89 relevant and important as these themes of exploration are, this book is not an account of the rise of the super-rich or the expansion and role of business elites in furthering an unequal society. Instead, it is about the role of women (those not professionally employed) in drawing class boundaries and shaping the tastes and cultures of India’s .01%. Significantly, it also helps understand the ways in which they set the tone for those immediately below them, and in fact also influence Bollywood movies and celebrity lives. Though this book is specific to India, it resonates with narratives of wealth and consumption in other countries, especially the country’s Asian neighbours. This is partly due to similar trajectories of growth in income, ‘development’, and inequality within India and certain other Asian societies, and partly because the world of capitalist opulence (best exemplified in the popularity of fashion brands) has gripped the Asian world with a golden hand. There is something about the elites and modern consumption; their foray and obsession with opulence and luxury which has captured the imagination of writers, scholars, and the general public. This is of course not to say that the ‘East’ did not know the language of luxury, for these societies have always maintained a close association with opulence and grandeur. For example, Cartier made the famous five diamond string, 1,000-carat, ‘Patiala necklace’ for the Maharaja of Patiala, Yadavindra Singh, in 1928, and the Maharaja of Kapurthala (1972–1949), reportedly owned 60 Louis Vuitton trunks. In that sense, the Indian elite (royalty especially) have had established links with foreign luxury brands for at least a century, just as they have also revelled in their own indigenous forms and expressions of luxury. However, there is something even more griping about contemporary expressions of luxury and opulence, especially in Asia, as a result of which several designer brands have actually found it more profitable to locate their showrooms in Asian countries. Le Maison du Goyard, one of the most exclusive high-street fashion companies, has only three stores in Europe, and more than ten in Asia. This modern-day tryst between Asian societies and luxurious consumption is best captured by the recent Hollywood movie Crazy Rich Asians, whose success highlights the widespread desire to know more of Asian societies’ luxurious, unequal, and complex dynamics. Though the movie is set within a Singaporean-Chinese backdrop, it resonates with the lifestyle and opinions of Indian elites, insofar as it reveals their preoccupation with maintaining class boundaries, performing and embodying class, drawing boundaries of taste and distinction, and more, significantly, insofar as it showcases the role of women in driving all these aspects of elite lives. This is of course not to say that there are no differences between the narratives of Indian elites and those of other societies, for surely caste and regional differences would serve to uniquely shape the narratives of Indian

90  Epilogue elites. And in this regard, it has to be mentioned here that, unfortunately, I  did not delve into caste, community, linguistic, or religious differences while I spent time with elites belonging mainly to two communities (Punjabi and Sindhi) and primarily three castes (Khatris, Baniyas, and Brahmins). An added axis of differentiation is also history (of each society), which undoubtedly impacts the ways in which elites articulate their status. In other words, a country with a colonial past will perhaps have a different classification and heuristic model for elites than one with a monarchical past or present. I therefore do not claim that the Indian elite lifeworld necessarily speaks to that of other societies; nonetheless, there are certain similarities with regard to the position and role of elite women. To further elucidate this point, let me briefly describe the plot of the movie Crazy Rich Asians, which revolves around a young couple’s struggle to get their romantic union approved by the man’s wealthy parents. The story concerns a second-generation Chinese woman (Rachel Chu), who is a professor at New York University, of middle/upper-middle class origins, trying to win the affections and approval of her boyfriend’s (Nick Young) mother (Eleanor Sung-Young). Rachel Chu is unaware that Nick is the only son of Singapore’s richest family until she visits Singapore to attend his best friend’s wedding. Eleanor is cautious and sceptical of his son’s choice, with her primary objection being Rachel’s class background, as she believes that a woman from another class would not be able to maintain their family’s social reputation and fulfil all of its duties and obligations. Eleanor engages in various machinations in order to prove how unsuitable Rachel will be as an elite housewife. Rachel ‘fights back’ with dignity, prowess, and guile. At the end, Eleanor comes around and gives her approval for this inter-class union. In these struggles, engagements and battles, what stands out is the immense significance of women in shaping cultures, maintaining and creating traditions, and in this way, serving as insurmountable anchors for elite lives. Significantly, we are never introduced to Nick’s father (who is reportedly on a business trip). Instead it is his father’s mother who is shown to be the matriarch of the family, with a final seal of approval or disapproval at her disposal. Another important woman character in the movie is Nick’s cousin, Astrid Leong-Teo (Gemma Chan), who is depicted as fashionable and of high tastes, as well as a woman of immense warmth and compassion. Astrid falls in love and marries a man from a professional class background (breaking from the trend and expectation of marrying rich), who, despite Astrid’s attempts, feels ‘out of place’ in her elite life. Eventually, perhaps as a marker of resistance, he has an extra-marital relation, and Astrid, after a surprising show of support from her grandmother (the matriarch), decides to divorce him. Astrid’s character was rather popular and well-received, for it depicted

Epilogue 91 a super-rich woman’s ease with privilege, whilst also showcasing her vulnerabilities and struggles in marriage, business, and being herself. In a commendable way, this movie brought together the two worlds of ‘housewives’ and elite culture, as it chiselled out the important role of women beyond the lens of extravagance and opulence; instead focusing on their skills, manipulations, vulnerabilities, desires, and ambitions. As a consequence, it certainly speaks to the narrative that I have presented in this book on elite Indian women. The movie was criticised by those who saw it as a veneration of the lives of the rich. This criticism, I believe, stands, but by extension would apply to any work on elites, including this one. Whilst I see merit in critically appraising the status, power, and networks of elite, works such as this book (and movies such as Crazy Rich Asians and Bollywood’s Dil Dhadakne Do, discussed in the introduction) have managed to etch the role of women in the elite lifeworld, which is often simplistically explained via the tropes of conspicuous consumption and leisurely lifestyles. Instead, these cinematic and scholarly works explain that women play an integral part in creating and reiterating class boundaries, cultures, and shaping ideas and practices of modernity, as well as by invoking and recrafting traditions and their meanings and relevance in elite worlds. In discussing all these practices of class and culture, the book has also alluded to the different spectrum of identities that elite women assume and desire. I have explained their attempts to present themselves as bridges to a global elite culture, the significant ways in which they define being ‘Indian’ and ‘traditional’, all the while engaging in modern practices of consumption, competition, and distinction. Their quest for identities, their discomfort with some of these identities, and their pride in upholding or embodying certain others tells a story of a longed for past and a desired future. For instance, it is perhaps nostalgia for embracing an ‘old elite’ identity that leads them to acquire art or to holiday in certain parts of the world. Similarly, it is perhaps their desire to assert their femininity, sexuality, and gender identity as being unrelated to their marital status that motivates them to insist on ‘female-only’ holidays. And it may be their hope of a better future for their family, which makes them take on roles of religious and spiritual healing and performance. This spectrum is vast, and fully comprehending the quests, desires, and reality of elite women’s lives is beyond the scope of this short book. Nonetheless, I have attempted to put forth a narrative of being a modern elite housewife, and the ways in which this might resonate with elite women of other societies. My attempt has not been to provide a homogenic narrative by depicting elite housewives’ feelings and expressions as marked only by anxiety and/or privilege. Instead, my aim has been to bring out a range of characteristics as evident in expressions of competition, pride,

92  Epilogue satisfaction, anxiety, and struggle. Whilst I completely recognise the lure of focusing on dynamics of pride, fulfilment, and envy of elites arising from their privileged position, I am also inspired by the narratives of their vulnerabilities (although this does not mean I consider them victims). It is their vulnerabilities, perhaps marked by a certain sense of absence, which shape their desires. This sense of absence is often unsaid, rarely articulated, and perhaps also unrealised. It could arise from the women’s inability to reconcile their marital status with a sense of self, money, and fulfilment, their incomplete paths (of education, employment, love) with new roads of life (marriage, children), their inability or lack of interest to maintain status amongst peers, and/or their feelings of failure or pride in maintaining or augmenting their class positions. These surely are expressions of frustration and doubt, yet they arise in the context of abundance (of money), leading to contradictory and contesting attitudes and ways of being. It is in this respect that I note the excitement of privilege as well as the moroseness of burden; the self-worth derived from materiality as well as asceticism for the spiritual; the fulfilment of well-maintained status as well as the encumbrance of stature. Their lives, expressions, and affections are marked by this duality of absence and presence in myriad ways, and my primary aim has been to capture all these aspects of their lives with a focus on the mundane, banal, extravagant, and superfluous. This book does not victimise elite women nor mock their privilege; but explains the interplay of ‘this’ and ‘that’. It captures the lives of elite women as shaped by the material and the nonmaterial; object and affect; body and soul; desire and nostalgia; spiritual and the mundane; absence and abundance.

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Index

Abu Dhabi 36 affairs, extramarital 38 – 9 affect 3, 10 – 11, 19n7 aging 39 – 40 Amalfi Coast 31 – 2 Ambani, Akash 67n2 Ambani, Mukesh 67n2 Anand, Akshay 45 Anand, Chinni 55 Anand, Mr. 46 Anusha 35 anxieties 73 Arora, Ashneet 54, 55 Arora, Mrs. 80 ashram 71 bagwati 24, 44n1 Bansal 79 – 80 Bansal, Mrs. 80 beauty salons 68 beauty treatments 39, 63 – 4 Bela 36 – 7 bespoke weddings 15, 48, 50, 52, 53 Bhasin, Ashok 25 – 6 Bhasin, Mallika 25 – 6 bias 6 billionaires 88 Birkin bags 24 – 6, 44n2 bling 9 Bollywood 27 – 8, 44n3, 89 Botox 39 boundaries 1, 7, 10 – 12, 16, 23 – 4, 27, 30, 82, 89, 91 bourgeois women 1 – 2; see also middle class women

brides 50 – 3, 67n3 businesses 17 capturing data 8 card parties 77 Cartier 89 castes 90 Chaddha, Mrs. 31 Chanel 29 charity 82; see also philanthropy cheapness 33; see also savings classes 11, 14, 43 colonialism 90 comparisons 21 – 3 competitions 15, 53 – 4, 60, 66, 82 consumption 10, 23, 29, 37, 44, 89, 91 Crazy Rich Asians 89, 90 – 1 daan 58 Dang, Mrs. 32 Degas, Edgar 1 – 2 Delhi 5 destination weddings 46 – 7, 55 – 7, 58, 64 – 5 diamonds 22 – 3 Dil Dhadakne Do 12, 91 Dilliwallas 5 Diwali 75 – 7, 80 DLF Emporio 1, 19n1, 21, 23, 50 domesticity 6, 12 Doon School 17 Dubai 36 – 7 Duggal, Aarti 41 Durga Puja 77

Index  97 economic policies 88 education 7, 17, 20n19 elite-ness 2, 11, 25 – 6 employees 81 – 2 fashion 84; bridal 50 – 3, 67n3; and travel 24, 41; and trendsetting 27 – 8; and weddings 44n3; see also handbags femininity 5 – 6, 21, 82, 86 festivals 75, 77 – 9; see also Diwali food 47, 59, 60, 74, 83 friendships 4, 7, 14 Ganesha Puja 77 – 9, 82 – 4 gender roles 12, 16, 20n15, 76, 85 – 6 gifts 50, 53, 54 – 5, 63, 73, 75 – 6 Goyard 26 – 30, 42, 89 Greece 32 – 3 Gucci 30 Gupta, Ankita 56 Gupta, Kritika 64 Gupta, Mr. 58, 63 Gupta, Mrs. Rani 65 Gupta, Niketan 56, 58 Gupta, Rani 63 Gupta, Vaibhav 61 gurus 16, 69, 86 – 7 Gurusaab 69 – 74, 87n1 handbags 14, 23 – 30; see also fashion Harrods 19n1 Hermès 24, 44n2, 50 Hinduism 69 holiday homes 33; see also property homemakers 19n5; see also housewives hospitality 57 – 60, 66 housewives 2, 85 – 6, 91; and affect 3; vs homemakers 19n5; and marriage alliances 12; of New York 18 hypogamy 5 inequalities 9, 13, 20n17, 88 – 9 invitations 49 – 50, 67n2, 84 Jani, Abu 51, 52, 55 Janmashtami 79 – 80 jewelry 22 – 3, 85

Kansal, Chirag 85 Kapoor 80, 83 Kapoor, Anjali 78, 79, 82 – 5 Kapoor, Sonam 27 Kaushik, Mrs. 61 – 3 Khanna, Shamita 30 Khosla, Sandeep 51, 52, 55 Kiran 76 kitty parties 4 Kumar 85 Kumar, Mrs. 40 Lalwani, Mrs. 37 leisure activities 13 Lekhi, Mrs. 61, 63 Le Maison Du Goyard see Goyard len-den 54 London 28, 33 – 4, 41 Louis Vuitton 24, 27, 29, 30, 89 luxury 30, 33, 41 – 3, 50 – 1, 89 Maharani Bagh 33 Maharasthra 77 mahasamadhi 71 makeup 22 Malhotra, Rani 22 marriage alliances 5, 12 marriages 15 married women 4 Mata ki Chaukhi 47 Meena 69, 71 mehendi 47 Mehra, Mrs. 72 Mehrotra, Mrs. 39 Mehta, Ruby 21 – 2 ‘me’ time 37 middle class women 6, 8; see also bourgeois women Milan 28, 42 mishri 50 Mittal, Mr. 62 Mittal, Mrs. 60, 61 – 3 Monaco 32 money 2, 3, 10 – 11, 16, 19n1, 80 – 1 Mukherjee, Sabyasachi 51 neoliberalism 7 nouveaux riche 5, 29

98 Index Osho 87n1 paath 85 Parashar, Mrs. 39 – 40 Paris 28 parties 47, 62, 69, 76 – 7, 87; see also kitty parties performances 68 philanthropy 6, 12 – 13; see also charity physical appearance 14 piety 82, 85 Piketty, Thomas 9 poker 77 Primates of Park Avenue 24 property 34; see also holiday homes Punjab 7, 80 racism 42 – 3 Rajasthan 56 Raman 31 – 2 Ramayana 85 Ramesh 76 religion 15 Roy, Reena 28, 29 – 30, 42 rudraksha mala 68 Sameer 34 Santorini 32 – 3 Sareena, Mrs. 39 – 40 satsangs 16, 71 – 4, 86 savings 28 – 9, 64 – 5; see also cheapness Selfridges 19n1 Sethi, Mr. 45 Sethi, Mrs. 45, 53 – 5 Sethi, Siddharth (Sid) 45 Sethi, Suhana (Soha) 45, 51 – 3 sewa 69 – 70, 82, 86 Sex and the City 24, 36 Sharma, Smita 32 – 3 Shashi, Mrs. 57, 63 Sheila 31 – 2, 76 Shekhar 48 – 9 Shireen 36 shopping 36

shopping malls 1 Shweta 26 Sikhism 69 simplicity 64 single women 4 social events 7 social media 13 Sonia 71, 74 spirituality 15, 72 – 3 Srinagar 56 stereotypes 9 – 10 stylists 22 subjectivity 6 Sunaina 48 – 9 Suri, Maya 27, 28, 29 Surijeet, Mr. 34 Tandon, Mr. 34 Tandon, Mrs. 34 Tandon, Rashmi 35 tastes 27, 29 traditions 73 travel 14; and anxiety 40 – 4; and beauty treatments 39 – 40; and destinations 30 – 2; and extramarital affairs 38 – 9; and fashion 23 – 4, 41; and holidaying 33 – 5; and weddings 31 – 2; women-only 35 – 7 trendsetters 27 – 8, 44n3 Udaipur 57 Vashisht, Mr. 31 Verma, Mrs. 53 – 4 vulnerabilities 11, 42 – 3, 73, 91 – 2 wedding guests 58 – 60 wedding planners 48 – 9, 56 weddings 11, 15; destination 46 – 7, 55 – 8, 64 – 5; and fashion 44n3; planning 47 – 9, 58 – 9; and travel 35 Wild Wild Country 87n1 work 6 Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara 24, 44n1