The Aristoprats

A year of dating a feudal throwback forced Shrayana Bhattacharya to confront her fascination with the wealthy

- Shrayana Bhattacharya

A FEW YEARS AGO, THE INDIAN  Army and I could have been accused of a similar form of discrimination: favouring Jats and Rajputs. While my dearest friends suggested I was dating the who’s who of human crap, a petitioner in the Supreme Court highlighted bias in the Indian Army's recruitment policies for the Presidential Body Guards (PBG).   Unsurprisingly, the Army defended itself on physical grounds—the PBG was a small ceremonial unit which demanded tall officers (over six feet) with common build and appearance to ensure adequate “pomp and projection” during events at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Thus, only martial castes would suffice.

Despite the trivial nature of my love affairs compared to lofty affairs of state, I found deep parallels between the army’s defence and mine. For me, too, a partner had become an accessory in the performance art that was my social life in Delhi. Unable to bear the weight of being on my own or being myself, I chose to burrow into one of Delhi’s feudal landed gentry. Determined to break away from the nerd-herd at university, I was mesmerised by his quiet confidence, despite his lack of an ancestral gun salute. His sense of  self-possession born of privilege, and the financial freedom that arose from successful “investments”, seduced my anxious salaried soul. He also looked like  Shashi  Kapoor. While his frame was many standard deviations away from the average men who populated my life, I ignored that his intellect did asymptote to zero.