At Sabyasachi’s 25th anniversary show, all roads led back home

The soirée quiets down as a bellowing voice announces that the show is about to begin. Like a hive that has been smoked, 600 guests drop their glasses of champagne, and plates of cold cuts and cake around the unending grazing table. Across faux taxidermied tigers and cheetahs, over layered vintage carpets, the crowd squeezes itself into a mini Calcutta.

The entrance is recognisable, at least to me. Two dilapidated mossy houses with characteristic North Kolkata features are connected by clotheslines. Unassuming garments hang lifelessly on them. Crumpled—as if wrung by hand moments ago, like our grandmothers would do. Through a few colonial pillars, we enter the main hall.

The song that consumes the atmosphere is a rendition of ‘Jokhon porbe na mor payer chinho,’ written and composed by Rabindranath Tagore in 1916. For a milestone celebration like this one, the track feels ironic yet apt. The lines of the tune translate—“When my footsteps will not be printed on this road / I shall not be there to row my little boat across this pier / All businesses closed / I would repay all my debts / Cease to visit this village marketplace / One may choose not to remember me / May not recall me gazing up at the sky.”

Once everyone is seated, the energy quickly morphs. Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar’s Bengali hits from the 60s are coupled with Leonard Cohen and Usha Uthup numbers. Khorkhori windows in green—the colour once most affordable to the British East India Company in the former capital city—find themselves on verandas of the yore. The houses that skirt the runway are detailed down to the switchboard, with the iconic flcikable switches I haven’t used in decades. A lone printed sari, reminiscent of Sabyasachi’s initial collections, hangs itself lavishly from one of the balcony railings.