By Harsimran Kaur

Are you rich by right or poor by choice? It is a flavoured idea roused over time’s malleability, and then it turns out to be flawed because how we think is an imperfect crackling of characteristic ambiguity. And then we have destiny to fraught over, which is the lemon that must be squeezed for everyone albeit the flow of juice is aleatory.

I am still playing the phantasmagoria of the opulent stress of ornamental obstinacy at the Met Gala 2026, and I were to regulate such imaginative luxury, I thought that Isha Ambani displayed richness as if it were an intellectual oratory, but it was not, and definitely looked more like a performative grandiosity. I then thought about Mamta Banerjee, whose privilege in the perceptive dominion of fiery speeches and the stimulating marches on the streets has met a cul-de-sac.

So, talking about privilege, and looking at Isha Ambani, a thought strikes, is privilege a celebrated lethargy of diamonds resting imperiously on the swathe of skin, and then I may say if the exuberance of Isha Ambani be called a practiced nonchalance, and I leave this judgement to you? But Mamta Banerjee has my affection. The tenure of last 15 years; beaten and bemoaned, she stands without any privilege today; is more in decrepitude, as in her case privilege turns out to be a demonstrative fallacy.

Privilege is thus a matter of inheritance, or if I were to calibrate further, is it a temptation one explores; politically or wickedly, or unsympathetically or indulgently? And, in case the pomp does become necessary or luxury is a cultural asset to tag along, doesn’t such an outward display, in such times of exorbitant media glare, leave a pang of resentful monotony in the lives of people who are now questioning the perfidy of destiny, and it’s not that they are mournful or in melancholic distress but such insouciant display is a gravitational shift to psychological discontentment.

Mamta loses the elections, she screams; a privilege is lost but the sense of losing such a privilege is torrential. Isha Ambani has nothing to lose. Her diamonds and crafted couture are not politically motivated but the history behind her sari’s blouse caparisoned by a royal turbaned jewel used as a brooch is an anachronistic privilege.

It was an ineluctable sight of the epizeuxis of ‘mom’ ‘mom’ by the Ambani lady, suspending all inhibitions, and why such verbal fixation suggesting vainglorious redundancy? If Mamta echoed in the same parlance, stretching to a ‘come un eco’, and considering Mamta is no Isha, it would be regarded as malignant rabble-rousing. I guess the repetition is a self-signifying desultory; the mystical trance of ‘mom’ ‘mom’ by Isha Ambani finally bordered into a burlesque. 

Mamta’s privilege has reached an impasse. On the flip side, can Isha Ambani be ever dethroned of romanticised luxury?

Is privilege a mercurial ventriloquist?

Or, is it a boasting vignette? And in the sentimental fury of its self-exculpation, to get it back then, is it a tiring wring?

But the difference is noticeable.

Mamta has a prodigious history of being the CM of West Bengal last 15 years, but guess nobody is talking about it; I hear a vague history, though, of the Nizam of Hyderabad’s collection; the one jewel worn by Isha Ambani. To come back to the point, the loss of privilege for Mamta has become an animated distortion of facts, of her success and her incessant struggle with staggering confrontations. Why nobody is talking about her political achievements; her ineradicable commitment last decade?

It looks as if the honour of privilege is a bloated distention in the abdomen and once the air of power moves through the untraceable walls of incomprehensibility; the blank vapours circling their own putrid wretch; when now they feel assailable, so now they no longer remain still but pour out of the insatiable mucosa.    

Often, privilege like the one where the act of such a privilege is selective and unassailable, and even if such privilege exists, why to concretise impropriety, and I wish to say that such creeping stiffness of success and pride is a psychological blithe.