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After the summer, there’s only one way to get back into the swing of life in Mumbai: an old-fashioned house party. I hadn’t thrown one in aeons, and was long overdue to “retaliate”, as my father puts it, towards our friends whose hospitality we have so often enjoyed. So, when my friend Priya Gaekwar, who runs a luxury brand consulting firm, rang to ask if I’d host a party in honour of the Ritz Carlton Reserve in Ubud, Bali, I said, “Sure, but what is the ‘Reserve’?” “Well, there are only five of these properties in the world, and they offer a luxurious, personalised travel experience,” she said.
Since it was Bali, I decided to go with a lush jungle theme décor (no prize for ingenuity) and found, through a helpful friend, a talented local florist who immediately got the brief. We decorated my doorway with heaving heaps of leaves and branches, while in the house there were generous bursts of white ginger lily, whose fragrance comes alive in the evening. Luckily for me, I had stumbled upon a home décor shop in St Tropez that had table mats with banana leaf motifs (made in India), so I pulled those out, and placed them on the dining table to channel Ubud. An ambitiously early time of 7.30 pm had been sent out, but by the time Ali Nizar, the head of sales and marketing for the hotel, arrived, I already had a few guests. By 9.30 pm, there were about 50 people at home; unfortunately, one air conditioner had conked out and so had the light dimmers (blame it on monsoon leaks). “Can we dim the lights?” was a question I dodged multiple times. In the middle of the evening, one subset retired to the guest room to discuss Kashmir, and another perched themselves in my bedroom to gossip. When the doorbell rang at midnight, and people continued to stream in, I turned to Ali and said, “Punctuality is not our forte, but at least you’ve seen South Mumbai in action!”