Lakshmi, Deluxe

Social columnist Devi Cherian observes that Diwali card parties have become the perfect occasion to further business interests. You have some land trouble? Invite the MLA from the area for teen patti and let him win. A new guy in the trade creating problems? Invite him for a night of Flush and ensure that he loses some hard cash. "There's a lot of cheating happening all the time," says Cherian.

Lakhs are spent on food and drinks, DJs and themed decor. In Mumbai, the casino look is much in demand this year. Kalpesh Desai, who spent five years in Atlantic City, has a winning hand this Diwali. He is booked solid this season, with five parties to organise every night. His company, Aces Over Kings, sets up a casino for the client—including blackjack, poker and Russian roulette tables—for Rs 25,000-50,000. Charges go up as the party pulls into the wee hours of the morning. The biggest win Kalpesh has seen so far is when someone won Rs 4.5 lakh in one hour at the roulette table. Kalpesh says he always warns his clients that real gambling, even playing teen patti in a hotel, is illegal. After that, it is up to them to take precautions.

Also hot this season in Mumbai is having a party on a ship. The owners of a well-known industrial group have chartered a Star Cruise ship for October 29 with 200 people invited for a champagne dinner with five-star catering. And the gambling will begin once the ship travels 12 nautical miles out to the sea, into international waters (where it is legal to gamble). A much bigger Bollywood bash is being held on a Star Cruise ship on October 31, with 1,500 people invited. It costs Rs 1.48 crore to charter the Star Cruise ship, Super Libra, for one night, including casino and excluding drinks.

Adman Suhel Seth says he finds such extravagance outrageous in the face of a tragedy like the Kashmir earthquake, and feels the government should crack down severely on high-stakes card parties. But Delhi's chatterati shrug off such 'spoilsport' attitudes, as they exchange gossip about the "divine decor" that has been created for card parties this year. This includes cascades of diyas, invitations shaped like firecrackers and trays of mithai made of pure silver. The socially ambitious angle for invitations to the stylish Diwali dos held by Natasha Nanda, cardiac surgeon Dr Naresh Trehan, Monish and Alka Bali of Mount Shivalik Breweries, Sunandan Kapoor of Kapoor di Hatti, and the cineplex tycoons, the Bijlis.

In Mumbai, apart from the cruise ship galas, the must-be-seen-at card parties this year are Rakesh Roshan and Jeetendra's do on October 28, Gulshan Kumar's brother Kishen Kumar's bash the next day at Versova (where Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif and Sonu Nigam are regular guests) and shipping tycoon Ravi Arya's October 30 party at his Walkeshwar Penthouse where guests are likely to include Malaika Arora, Yana Gupta and Kaanta Laga girl Shefali Zariwala. It's anybody's guess where Shahrukh Khan will be this Diwali, but last year Chunky Pandey's wife Bhavna played at the same table with him. And found "he is very good at bluffing. You can never tell what his cards are—he's an actor, after all. He also has the luck of the devil."

And when there's time for conversation at high-stake card parties, the talk will be invariably about who are the ones always lucky or unlucky at cards, who won, who lost and by how much. They still narrate with awe how Lalit Modi, son of industrialist K.K. Modi, once lost a couple of crores to hotelier Lalit Suri at a card game, how cinema tycoon Ajay Bijli won a movie hall (Priya in New Delhi, we are told) at a card table and how the patakas were drowned out when a mighty fight broke out between Suri and Singapore-based tycoon Dadi Balsara. Nirmal Mishra, main scriptwriter for Madhur Bhandarkar's Page Three, recalls how Akshay Kumar punched Shakti Kapoor during last Diwali when the latter accused him of cheating. "Shakti almost fainted. For a moment, everyone thought he had died," Mishra recalls, adding that on the whole, contrary to what people think, "the filmwalas are kanjoos—the stakes are much higher at parties given by industrialists and businessmen".

The buzz in Delhi's Diwali party circuit is that the legendary big winners include Lalit Suri, Kapil Dev and the Singhanias. And the big losers? We won't name them yet—maybe their luck will turn this year.

(Some names have been changed to protect the identity of sources.)