10 Things I’ve Overheard at Hauz Khas Village

Tea Stuff I want to be snide about, but actually quite like.

 Since the NY Fashion Week's overheards became this huge thing, I figured I’d focus on a location that’s provided me merriment and glee over several years at the unintentionally funny quips that often sail through the discount-perfume soaked air of The Village (yes, I feel addressing it as ‘The Village’ makes it sound cooler, and that HKV is a very low-rung way of saying it).

I had plans to go for a typical ladies night with the GalPal set—bouncing about in the incestuous cluster of places that is The Village to whomever offered us the most free drinks that tasted the least like cough medicine. That very afternoon, my editor (a classy dame) remarked that a group of girls who were the quintessential behenjis ‘you know, those Hauz Khas types’ were at some do she was at. I was aghast! ‘I used to live there!’ I said, joking on the surface but dying several hundred deaths inside. She tried a quick recovery with words that in simplespeak were essentially ‘Um…not you….?”

But the damage is done. I am now significantly aware that I am one of innumerable ‘cheapie-types’ that frequent the pretentious little lanes of this debauch Delhi hole. I am of that imposter elite, that which the authentic elite furrow their designer brows at while they sit at some obscure winery, sipping a 1859 Bordeaux (these are just some words. I’m a wine philistine. I prefer a good 2015 Tropicana Grape). 

So, while Shahpur Jat is probably the new Village (and naturally, that makes MeherChand the new Shahpur Jat), I still stay a staunch Villager (just ask my team about my work get-up; they’ll confirm) and payed homage to the fact by hitting it up with my fellow Village people last night. I saw, in fact, several of the exact stereotype my boss had offhandedly mentioned; pearls, too-high heels, Rajouri Garden accent (By the by, good folk of Rajouri Garden, I’m just playing along with cool Delhi clique-ism. I have no grouse with you. I haven’t even been to Rajouri Garden. I mean, Uck, why would I?) 

The Least Trashy Village Picture of Self that I could find.

 So, down to business, I shifted my attention from the way people looked to what they were saying. And the results were the rhinestone-studded leopard-print of the conversation world—truly awful, but fascinating nonetheless.

1)    “She thinks she’s a singer now because she stole the mike from some bitch at Raasta. ‘OMG I have a gig, you guys!’ Please.”

2)   “You shouldn’t have worn a dress if you were going to eat, na?”

3)   “Wow! I love your…um…shoes…I think. I forgot.”

4)   “This scene is toh poora dead, boss.”

5)   “Will you give me a free drink? I’m an intern from Bareili.” (This was me. And it worked.)

6)   Sirf do hazaar laya? Kya pani piyega aaj? (You only brought 2,000? Are you only going to drink water tonight?)

7)   “No, ya. I hate this place. I’m only here because Mummy Daddy said no more parties this month.”

8)   “You’re, like, SO sober right now.”

9)   “She’s from Bombay na? They don’t understand winter.”

10) “I think she heard Koovs was cool, so now you ask her ‘Where’d you get this?’ and she’s always like ‘Koovs,’ but its Carol Bagh most def.”

Shallow as all hell, but I love this little cesspool of superficiality nonetheless. Thinking of myself as an ironic observer helps keep enough distance to continue the façade of being above it. That, and as long as I wear pants on eating days.