Sabya, now Christmas at marble palace?

There is extravagance. And then there is extravagance that knows precisely when to stop. Sabyasachi Mukherjee's Diwali party at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on Oct 21 belonged to the second category. With Rani Mukerji, Masaba Gupta and other glittering guests, the Durga Pujo Dashami celebrations hosted by Kolkata boy Sabyasachi demonstrated that Indian opulence need neither apologise for itself, nor behave like a Big Fat Bollywood wedding.

Sabyasachi's internationalism comes with Indian characteristics. His aesthetics organically carries India without packaging it as exotica, or worse, 'ethnic'. A logical sequel suggests itself. Having taken Durga Pujo/Diwali to NYC, why not bring Christmas to Kolkata, the designer's hometown, this December? And where better than the 19th-c. neoclassical expanse of Marble Palace, built in 1835 by Raja Rajendra Mullick, a Bengali merchant with a penchant for collecting works of art from across the world, and whose magnificent central courtyard, acanthus-topped pillars, and historic thakur dalan (altar) offer a setting that could make Manhattan's finest party planners blink?

The mansion embodies what Sabyasachi once described as maximalism - '...the secret to maximalism is restraint. That tension must be present because true maximalism is not chaos; it is clarity - a placement with purpose.' A Christmas tree amid the mansion's forest of classical marble statues, original Rubens, Renoir and Raja Ravi Varma, chandeliers illuminating with aristocratic splendour, carols jugalbandi-ing with champagne clinks in the famous jalsaghar (music room), plum pudding fraternising with nolen gurer sandesh. Even St Nicholas will be obliged to exchange his regulation red for a Sabyasachi brocade coat.