A huge hotel with over 100 beds spread over 40 cottages on a parcel of land right next to the most sensitive and security impacted part of New Delhi. It calls itself a Club with a 108-year history. History, as we all know, is something that a group of people agree shall be least offensive to the victors and the writers. So a history about the Club being an exclusive preserve for white colonials was foisted and in due course this hotel pretending to be a Club became an aspirational destination for neo-Colonial WOGs.
Zero checking of vehicles, baggage and person. Zero sniffer dogs or electronic options. 24×7 entry and exit, full on potential of explosives, narcotics and anything else that the world of power and pelf by entitlement desires. Full on eminent person memberships to the Pappus of the world but a huge outcry if a Neighbour visits for a wedding function, that is also the reality of this so-called hotel with rooms and cottages and restaurants and a coffee shop whose roof fell down, luckily during the lockdown.
Facilities worthy of a casino. Affiliate membership from across the country and the world can also benefit from the huge access to an unchecked lifestyle that claims a heritage to the colonial era as its primary identification and reason to exist. But attitudes towards others, especially employees, of the sort that even the Colonial Rulers would not practice. “Koi Hai, Boy, Idhar Ao“, said in just that style known as Lootyen’s ka Baby-BaBa Log, to a doddering old retainer old enough to be the Grandfather of the 3rd Generation entitled and usually unemployable lot, just about sums up what I have
Not just any hotel. Welcome, dear readers, to the Delhi Gymkhana Club Ltd., a Company Limited by Guarantee, with an Authorised and Paid Up capital of Zero rupees. With financial assets exceeding 300-500 crores, not including land value, the Directors have not had the time to notch up the Authorised or the Paid Up Capital. For the past 108 years or so. Currently up against an assortment of legal issues, largely pertaining to “public interest” as well as “Section 447 of the Companies Act, 2013” which deals with fraud.
“An excerpt from a letter written by a large number of members to the Governing Council says a lot – “we recommend the following:-
a) Accept the Interim Order of the Tribunal gracefully.
b) Cooperate with 5-member Committee to facilitate their investigations.
There are also some rumours that some group of members are keen to go in for an appeal against this Interim Order probably driven by resistance to the five-member committee being appointed.”
Going through a huge mass of documentation on the travails of this hotel cum resort, because it can’t really be called anything else, the first thing that strikes a dispassionate taxpayer reading the volumes is this – are my taxes going for this? Prime land rented out to a select few, basis their achievements, is one thing. Happens all over the world. But that this should continue for generations and generations, without much reason other than parentage, is what? Bollywood style nepotism could learn a few tricks on how to scale up a family tree at taxpayer’s expense.
The membership history of the Delhi Gymkhana, like all other Government Clubs, was co-terminus with tenure. In due course of time, it got extended to providing facilities for people who had retired, which could be understood to some extent for multiple reasons. Now it has become hereditary. This is like claiming hereditary rights on a railway train because Grandpa was in the Railways. Or if Grandma was the Mistress of a Colonial White being entertained at the Gym (non-white men were not allowed in but non-white women were welcome), then the grand-children had over-riding rights, also because they were almost shiny white in colour.
Today, our taxes go towards propagating a massive security risk, right in the middle of town and sharing a wall with the Prime Minister’s residence. Think about it, if anybody wanted to do anything nasty, where would be the best place for them to try to set up base?
Veeresh Malik was a seafarer. And a lot more besides. A decade in facial biometrics, which took him into the world of finance, gaming, preventive defence and money laundering before the subliminal mind management technology blew his brains out. His romance with the media endures since 1994, duly responded by Outlook, among others.
A survivor of two brain-strokes, triggered by a ship explosion in the 70s, Veeresh moved beyond fear decades ago.
