Why And How Delhi Gymkhana Club Double-Faulted: A First-Person Account

The reclamation order has roiled many of Delhi's social circles and WhatsApp groups are abuzz with the “fightback” promised by DGC members

Many decades ago, my father reluctantly filled up the membership form for the Delhi Gymkhana Club and, as his name was proposed by a senior retired ICS officer, it was speedily accepted.

Being my father, he also never got around to nominating me as a dependent member. Had he done so, I may have been one of those of my generation of civil servants’ progeny currently hyperventilating about “the Club" being reclaimed by the Central Government.

Right Word | Mandate-Rejection Continuum: Cockroach Phase Of India’s Opposition Politics

Opinion | Falta Rout Completes The Slaying Of TMC’s Brutal Diamond Harbour Model

CBSE’s Three-Language Mandate Is Chaos, Not Policy: A Class 9 Parent’s Note

Opinion | Can India Grow Like A Superpower Without Polluting Like One?

He must be one of the very few (if not the only one) who was so cavalier about this coveted gift that he could have bequeathed his two children. But I feel curiously liberated. The DGC was certainly a part of my growing-up years until my 20s; but then it ceased to matter. I made a life beyond the club’s swimming pool, tennis courts, dining room and lawns, although my Delhi wedding reception was held in the Rose Garden like many of my generation.

But my mother, a habitué of Lutyens Delhi for most of her life — being the daughter and wife of civil servants — loved DGC. Had she been around still, she too may have been horrified at the thought of not being........

© News18