Be ambassador’s guest.

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

The party hall resembles a sci-fi movie set. Giant mushroom-shaped structures rise from the floor to the ceiling. Guests are walking across a transparent floor beneath which illuminated plants glow. A drone is noisily drifting across the hall, recording the gathering from above.

A European embassy is hosting its national day reception this evening. Not in the chancery but at Zora, the Central Delhi venue near Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

Most Delhiwale never step inside these receptions. Throughout the year, foreign embassies mark their national days, usually inside their own compounds. Zora is an exception. Whatever, this is how most national day receptions unfold. Invitations are e-mailed to the city’s well-networked citizens weeks in advance. On the appointed evening, passing through the security gate of the embassy compound, it feels a little like clearing customs at a Schengen airport. Behind the effortless choreography lies the embassy’s biggest annual social occasion, planned with painstaking precision by a staff that has rehearsed every detail.

Once inside, ordinary Delhi grows distant. The grounds fill with diplomats, bureaucrats, business executives, celebrities, and lately, influencers. Women arrive in silk saris and tailored gowns. Men alternate between business suits and bandhgalas. A few foreign diplomats wear military uniforms heavy with medals, making everyone else look underdressed.

The reception is formally launched from the podium, where the host envoy and the chief guest, usually a union minister, deliver their speeches on the enduring friendship between the two nations. An enterprising ambassador occasionally jolts the proceedings with a punchy line in Hindi, earning instant taaliyan. During the national anthems, guests holding glasses of imported drinks do their best to stand straighter. Truth be told, the drinks counter has a larger following than the podium.

Gradually, the assembly splinters into little clusters. From a distance, the conversations sound profound, as though they might settle the questions of war and peace. Listen closely, and they are usually about office politics or weekend plans for Orchha or Goa.

As for the guest list, it changes less than the buffet. Every National Day reception dutifully offers a few dishes from the host country. The same faces, seen at reception after reception, receive these unfamiliar dishes with diplomatic courtesy before defecting en masse to good old dal makhani.

At Zora this evening, a foreign diplomat is wearing a sari. The sari is unmistakably Indian, the drape is unmistakably her own. Somewhere between the two lies diplomacy.