“She is so beautiful she is unnatural; her beauty is an abnormality, a deformity, for none of her features exhibit any of those touching imperfections that reconcile us to the imperfection of the human condition. Her beauty is a symptom of her disorder, of her soullessness.

The white hands of the tenebrous belle deal the hand of destiny. Her fingernails are longer than those of the mandarins of ancient China and each is pared to a fine point.”

—The Lady of the House of Love by Angela Carter

In this house, you encounter several stories, time zones and places all at once. Money can collapse all natural and unnatural phenomena. Like the character in the story by Carter, who is a vampire and forever preserved in her bridal ensemble and in her youth, Shalini Passi, an art entrepreneur, whose eccentricities are now a rage after her debut in Fabulous Lives Vs Bollywood Wives, is a persona frozen in time. That time is now. Some are even calling her the new self-care guru. Passi is now everywhere. She knows nothing lasts forever. This fame that she had always aspired for has come to her at last. She is now a part of Bollywood.

She walked the runway for several designers over the last few years and, in 2020, in a flaming red dress, she was a part of an allegorical tale in artist Vibha Galhotra’s The Final Feast, where she is the protagonist who cuts a blue “globe-cake” before the rich and the elite leave the earth that has fallen apart after human greed has finished all resources. Inspired by The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci, the staged-photo work is a sarcastic take on the rich and the rising inequality. Passi fit the part perfectly. For the artist, it was an obvious choice.

On one section of the curving walls in her house in Delhi’s posh neighbourhood, there is a black leather tussle dress hanging along with other objects, including a whip and leather-bound books. This wall is called the Theatre of Sade by artist Anita Dube. It is visible from the glass from the outside. Striking in its placement and in its provocation. Marquis de Sade, the 18th century French philosopher and author, and an extreme one at that, and the ultra-libertine, who has inspired the artwork, is a controversial figure for whom true morality was to pursue the darkest and most destructive passions to the farthest point.

There are two shutters with the face of performance artist Marina Abramovi? painted by Atul Dodiya on it and then there is that striking bust in gold polyester paint of a common woman with the wide, piercing gaze and an elaborate coiffure by Ravinder Reddy. In the manicured lawn, the face of the Buddha, a 25-foot sculpture composed of many utensils, by contemporary artist Subodh Gupta, stands guard. This is Passi’s house in Golf Links in Delhi, and it sets itself apart by being as unabashed as she is. The boomerang-shaped house with a huge lawn is a matrix of indulgences. There are rooms dedicated to entertain. . And then there are hallways with mirrors. Vanity is the theme here. It is in your face.

There is a makeup and hair team on standby. Passi is very particular about how she looks. Like the lady in the House of Love, she doesn’t reconcile easily to imperfections. Being a socialite is no easy task. You must entertain well and rise above the competition.

Passi is a Delhi woman who was born and married into privilege. Her husband, Sanjay Passi, is a billionaire and Passi says she was interested in arts and was a painter but then decided to buy art and promote it. The fame in Bollywood will help her promote Indian contemporary art.

Art is the way she got into Delhi’s very reserved elite circles where abstraction is discussed over champagne.

Passi has been dismissed as vacuous, but it is true that she has become this phenomenon, a persona that an academic said is an interesting study of someone who channelises fake and authentic at the same time. In her case, there no knowing what is real or unreal.

There is a strange quiet that envelops the house that’s part museum and part an indulgence of a woman who is determined to arrive everywhere. It is a house where there is perpetual summer or fall, depending on your mood.

When you pass by the numerous rooms, you wonder if anyone lives in them. In one room, a crew is assembling gifts. The couple sends out a lot of gifts. You have seen them in another friend’s house. A vase of plastic roses, a set of glasses, etc.

A reminder of their presence.

In Delhi’s rich and famous world, people slip down memory and the guest list fast and without much fuss. To be in favour and in flavour needs more than just money.

Passi knows all of this and more. The many facades of her ensure she is forever relevant.

Sometimes she talks about her two white hair strands and the benefits of Ayurveda. But beyond this rich and famous persona, there is another side to her. She is unapologetic about who she is. In a world that runs on projections and pretensions, Passi holds her own ground and she doesn’t care what the world thinks. Or maybe she does in a way that makes her the perfect antidote to the “intellectual” overdose that many are suffering from.

“I love objects more than people,” she says in the show. “They don’t talk back.”

And the world is lapping up every line of hers. There are countless memes about her circulating on social media. She is now omnipresent.

In Delhi’s rich and famous settings of the art world, where the famous M. F. Husain has designed the house of a known art collector and gallery owner, Passi had to prove her mettle. She launched an art organisation, associated with the United Nations, and of course, started to collect a lot of art worth millions.

Passi is many things now, but mostly she is someone who is an almost agent provocateur who is forever placed in that liminal space between imaginary and reality. She can afford to be there with her wealth and her curated style. When Karan Johar calls her “Cleopatra” at an art event in Mumbai, she glides past the sarcasm and owns the tag and everything else that comes with it.

Mostly, fame. She calls herself the last of the socialites and says her parties are not sponsored but thrown to entertain and to have fun. That was a dig at the Bollywood parties. Hers are purer, she said.

She is 48, and full of one-liners that can smash entire lifetimes built around templates and glamour manifested by the Bollywood wives. They are fierce, but Passi, the Delhi socialite, is savage. Irrespective of whether it is scripted, the show has the usual tropes. Women against women, rich women, the tale of two cities, etc. There is no real plot here. Just a lot of backstabbing, party-going and gossiping in this ultra-glamorous world to keep the viewer thoroughly entertained. We live in an age of voyeurism, which is why reality television is so popular. Women have sold everything from cars to shaving gel for men. It is addictive. Besides, this show is upper crust. Built to last. Built to corrupt. And also built to challenge notions because it has middle-aged women discussing their relationships and ambitions, competing with each other, having fun while being eccentric and endearing. Where do we get to see such women? In that, there is some merit.

Passi knows the big names in the art world. They are always in attendance at her parties. Everyone indulges her. Money gets you many things. The wealthy can buy their way into anything. Passi calls herself the ‘Lady of Leisure’. She knows that bizarre is the differentiator, so she gave up on being normal long ago. She says she had gone to her therapist seeking to be normal, but it became too boring.

“My mind is like a Ferrari,” she says.

That’s a borrowed line from countless reels on ADHD and creativity. The game is to pick what can fit your narrative and peddle it, so the young and the old applaud you as a person they always aspired to be. Passi is that person for now.

She likes to throw these flamboyant parties and, unlike Bombay, where the red carpet and its many versions are a staple at all parties with paparazzi shouting mock names they have given to the celebrities who they photograph through the day, Delhi is more private, more hidden, way more risqué.

The Karan Johar show, which is both binge and cringe-worthy for many with women pitched against women, takes the old Delhi and Bombay rivalry route. But the women in the show hardly represent the cities that they are from. Both the cities are much more.

This issue of Outlook is an ode to both cities. As Mukul Kesavan says in his piece that one burns while the other drowns.

And in its millions of people, like Passi and the Bollywood, there is a bit of the city. Bombay is a tough place. You can see the blue of the tarpaulin sheets that cover the slums in monsoons from the flight as you can its high towers. It is often called the Maximum City. It moves fast.

Delhi is brutal. Scathing summers and cold winters with that smog that makes everything look so apocalyptic.

Both the cities are real and surreal depending on who you are. There is a lot of soul and there is soullessness too.

Both are marked by ambition and surrender.

Passi, in that sense, is that ambition that is set against a failing city on that cover. Her outfit, designed by Rajesh Pratap Singh, is inspired by Delhi-based artist Mithu Sen’s artworks. The backdrop of the cover is a part of a larger work by Pooja Iranna, who casts the dystopian cityscape in her work made up of stapler pins. Her gaze is trained on us. Confrontational and unfazed.

Here’s to both the cities then.

(This appeared in the print as 'The Lush Socialite')