A Night with Delhi Elites

(Audrey) The night really got weird when I sat down to play poker with Sadaam. Later, after I had lost 3,000 rupees (65-70 USD), I nearly tripped over his black porsche on my way out. You know how many porsches there are in Delhi? I think one—this one. Oh, I was out of my league.

Let me back-up a bit. Yesterday evening Thane and I accepted a dinner invitation from a student of his from last semester. The student comes from the upper crust of Delhi elites; she lives with her husband’s family who owns the largest candy company in India and is accordingly rich. As planned we headed down to her home for dinner in New Friends Colony, a particularly posh area in South Delhi that has Manhattan-equivalent rent prices. We arrived at 9:15 for an 8:30 dinner, totally on-time by IST (Indian Standard Time), were promptly given wine, met the student’s husband and husband’s father, and had a lovely meal.

It was clear from the moment we arrived that we were jumping class boundaries. In my experience, one of the great joys about living halfway across the world is that you can walk in a variety of circles much more easily than you can at home. In America, with very few exceptions, I know neither really poor nor really rich people—everyone in my multiple social circles is like me, i.e. somewhere in-between. But in South Asia, I know a much wider range. I’ve been to homes where 7 people live in 2 rooms and there’s literally not enough food at dinner for us all to eat. And then I’ve been to homes like I experienced last night—a dozen servants (in matching sweaters over collared shirts with khakis, I might add), 300-year old carpets on the walls, expensive art everywhere, and a full game room…. this last one was my downfall.

After dinner, we went to the game room. Thane’s student has alerted us before we came that poker might be on the agenda for the evening. We were still a little taken aback when we sat down to the table and were promptly asked, “what stakes do you usually play for?” I had made the mistake of earlier mentioning that I grew-up with a poker table, which is true, but we never played seriously much less for money. The most I’ve ever put on a game of poker previous to this is $5. We had no idea what to say and so responded, “What are your usual stakes”? Answer: “$2,000 rupees a pot, and you can’t buy more than 2 pots in 1 hour.”

2,000 rupees is nearly 50 USD. That’s a lot of money to me, and add to it that there were two of us playing—Thane and me—and we were almost certainly going to lose it being both bad and infrequent poker players… We settled at a $1,000 rupee buy-in and proceeded to watch Sadaam, a family friend and son of the former Minister of Kashmir, take our money. The game was fun… but less fun for us than for everybody else. It’s easy to see why: we were losing our own money, not daddy’s money.

After handing over 3 very crisp 1,000 rupee notes, we headed out to go home. That’s when we saw Sadaam’s black porsche, no doubt bought with daddy’s money. You have to be either totally insane or filthy, filthy rich to drive such a car in Delhi where fender benders are a daily event and the top speed in the city (due to traffic, not laws) is 45 mph. We tootled on home in our little Hyundai, a mini-sized Korean car that starts seriously shaking if you manage to hit 50 mph, and resolved: we may be able to walk in Indian upper class circles, but no more gambling.

Tags: class, class boundaries, Delhi, dollars rupees, elites, gambling, India, money, poker, porsche, rich, sadaam, social class, stakes