A typical social evening in Calcutta and the celebrities that are the flavour of the month

Any typical upmarket social event in Calcutta goes this way... There are a handful of event managers and each of them have a fairly typical guest list. Every upmarket event managers' list contains the American Consul General and his wife (more on the wife later); the "actors" (my disgust at the word being used to describe both women and men who act should be evident, if not, I shall mention it ad nauseum) June Maliah (A popular Bengali TV artiste - heh, what did you expect anyway?), Konkona Sen Sharma (Aparna Sen's daughter) and/ or any of the Sens (Moon moon or the moonlets otherwise named Raima and Riya); any visiting "actor" from Bombay (These days it is Sanjay Dutt); The artists Suvaprasanna (I wonder when he paints, considering the amount of time he spends at society dos), Wasim Kapoor or Bulbul Sharma (when she is in town); Russi Mody (if it has anything at all to do with any corporate); the designer brigade consisting of Kiran Uttam Ghosh, the Monapali sisters or one of the younger set; the VPs (or whatever corporate nomenclature is assigned to them) of Citibank, HSBC and/ or ICICI; the mandatory tea crowd; the mandatory shippies; (Calcutta would not be Calcutta without the shippies and the teawallahs); the mandatory Tata crowd; Oindrilla Dutt (Who is always present everywhere like the cheshire cat and dressed like a christmas tree ALWAYS); Bikram Ghosh (never the tabla player and always the tabla percussionist) and his newly wedded wife Jaya Seal ("The actor"); the mandatory gallery owners (More often than not Spandan's Renu Roy); the mandatory travel facilitators (snerk!) and last but not the least our dear gajra-sari-choodis wearing mami Usha Uthup.

A typical event would start with plauditory speeches by an emcee who does not know a hors d'oeuvres from an entree or jazz from rock-n-roll. The emcee introduces the American consul-general (again!) and/ or the other "distinguished" guests and makes them give a speech. After that comes whatever the agenda of the event is and ALWAYS ends with Usha Uthup grabbing the mike and singing till the end of the evening with the harmonising effects being provided by the American consul General's wife. The singing ends with Usha and Lee Alison hugging and providing a photo opportunity for the city photographers. We like to party the Calcutta way. Heh!