The second MASH Ball lands in Mumbai this week with a Fashion x Films dress code. Its conceptualiser, Shalini Passi—dressed as Rekha from Khoon Bhari Maang for TVOF—talks obsessive detail, life behind makeup, and her Black Swan costume

“I did not like the Wishing Well water body the production company made for our 2023 edition of the MASH Ball, so I came back home to take a Lion Head marble fountain. It is a 19th-century piece; we dismantled it and the team put it up at the Taj Mansingh Hotel in Delhi, the venue of the ball,” says Shalini Passi. Her tone is casual, as if a feather had been plucked from one nest and gently placed in another.

The interview didn’t begin with this anecdote, but it captures her playbook exactly. Micromanagement—she will unpack marble if the detail displeases her. Aesthetic dominance—she places artistic flamboyance above everything else. And sentimental storytelling—the fountain reimagined as a Wishing Well for guests to drop tokens for children under a United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) programme her organisation MASH Foundation supports.

This week, the MASH Ball returns for its second edition in Mumbai, themed Fashion x Films. The moodboard on the invitation looks like a celluloid hall of mirrors: from Audrey Hepburn to Rekha, Charlie Chaplin to Amrish Puri’s Mogambo, Amitabh Bachchan to Ranveer Singh, Marilyn Monroe to Mumtaz and Madhuri Dixit. Guests are urged to dress as their chosen alter egos. Meanwhile, Shalini is fussing over the art pieces that will transform a dedicated space at Mumbai’s St Regis Hotel as the backdrop of cinematic costumery. She has just returned from Dubai ateliers where she found costumes for her mother and sister, but nothing for herself.

MASH Ball 2.0

The MASH Ball began as a fundraiser for art therapy for children in Bihar’s impoverished Purnia district. Its hostess has since become a reality-TV “wife-life” leader via Netflix’s Fabulous Lives vs Bollywood Wives. Amid the gaggle of ostentation and beneath the layers of makeup, Shalini managed to stay disarmingly transparent.

That play—between costume and candour—is the real story of Shalini Passi. It should be the tagline of the MASH Ball. 

Before the costumes from the high-profile event this week in Mumbai with 200-odd guests from India and abroad become streaming fodder on social media, we wanted to know more about the planning of the sequel. And if, for our digital cover, she would dress up as Rekha from the 1988 Hindi film Khoon Bhari Maang—all glam makeup and seductress charm—straight out of her moodboard.

It’s a yes, she messages. Jazzy clothes will be sourced, don’t worry. Shalini has Masterclass-level expertise at makeup (Rekhaesque, some would say) and all we have to do is watch the spectacle unfold as the photographer captures her moods.

The room assigned for the shoot in the museum-like house she inhabits, feels like a stage. She is lead actor, director, stylist and hair and makeup artist. A staff member steadies an oversized mirror; a song from Khoon Bhari Maang runs on loop; red velvet curtains cascade down one wall, another wears vintage wallpaper. Replicas of Michelangelo’s famed sculpture David’s head share space with candelabras and books. Her staff scurry with gloss, shoes, bottles and makeup brushes. Her hair is pulled back with a gold headband to match her blingy Moschino outfit. Large gold hoops, manicured nails, fluttering eyelashes, sky-high heels—she dances lightly and tries to enjoy the drill.

With Shalini, the spectacle scripts itself. Costume metamorphoses, spreadsheets, WhatsApp memojis generously sent out showing her with braided hair, big smile, hands cupped into heart shapes—these are her pronouncements. She introduces satire into the plot by being herself. She knows the effect of candour, polishing it into an art.

“I eat food only for sustenance, not for taste,” she says, as if measuring each word like a calorie count. “I will faint in the heat if I step out during the day,” she adds, adjusting the floral dress she wears with tall wine-coloured Valentino heels. That dress, she says, she has held on to for years until she found the right moment for it. “I respond a lot to the 1950s, and I find myself feeling the vibe of a dress or an era.” 

Then she shifts statements. “I am simple and basic. I wear the same clothes every day—for work, workout, temple.” No malls, no gyms, no fancy everyday clothes. “When I am not shooting, I am a very functional person.” A pause, and then: “I am a very spiritual person.”

But watch her closely, listen intently, and it is never that simple.

“I respond a lot to the 1950s, and I find myself feeling the vibe of a dress or an era”. 

Cleopatra and the Making of a Ball

“People urged me to create a Met Gala version of the costume ball, knowing my flair with India Art Fair parties. My friends insisted. While I had been contributing to UNICEF personally, I thought a costume ball could channel corporate social responsibility funds from large corporations—or private charities—towards art-based therapy for marginalised children,” she says.

Though Shalini first considered supporting a village closer to Delhi, UNICEF steered her to Purnia in Bihar, one of the country’s most deprived districts. “Everything, everyone needs enablement there,” she says. This collaboration for art-based therapy is part of Early Childhood Development, a programme focusing on the critical first 1,000 days in a child’s life.

The first MASH Ball set the template for donations. Invitations came with embedded links, and there were similar details on the UNICEF page. Both the Mash Foundation and UNICEF tracked contributions—and continue to do so. The same template will be followed this year. 

When the inaugural Ball, themed ‘Straight Out of a Painting’, appeared on Netflix’s Fabulous Lives vs Bollywood Wives, it created a ripple, she says. Guests turned up with vividly inventive looks—one even came as a miniature painting. Artists Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher stood out, the latter in a headpiece fashioned from steel utensils. 

She herself arrived as Cleopatra: bejewelled headgear, diaphanous drape, ornaments layered on, and twin daggers in hand—holding the world at bay. Her entrance stunned the Bollywood wives, their comments aimed at her “assets”. Loaded or not, the MASH Ball and its Netflix cameo thrived on Shalini’s flair for costuming and her insouciance. 

A Reason to Wake Up

Now, as she zips between late-night flights and mornings packed with requests for red carpet appearances, shows and award events—making sure she ends each day only after every message is answered—Shalini says she hasn’t forgotten the years when none of it excited her. “From 2006 to 2008, I was questioning it all. I had seen the world, been to all fashion weeks, knew where to buy, what to buy, shopped what I wanted. But I needed a reason to feel more connected,” she says.

Married at 20 into a life of privilege, she was a young and indulgent mother who later developed unexplained aches and pains. “My bones would hurt. I could ski in the coldest weather, but I could not handle heat,” she recalls. At one point she cut off her long dark hair, donated it at the Tirupati temple, and found no solace in any style or colour. She wore black with white shirts, Schiaparelli included. Even now, she never colours her hair, dusting strands with mehndi when they show. “I only cut my length when I’m ready to donate again,” she says.

In that emptiness she stumbled into purpose. “I have been given so much, what could I do with it?” became her quest. To find a voice of her own.

The MASH Ball, including its audacious costumes, now dresses up that voice. As do her other appearances where she wears glamour like her armour. She has built a life crowded with couture, shopping trips across Milan and Paris, closets filled with shoes and bags, and skills sharpened in makeup, music, exercise and dance. Then surge her references to spiritual practice. Yet what peeks through is a surprising clarity.

Ironically (or perhaps not), beneath Shalini’s glittering eye shadow, the sculpted contouring, and the often over-the-top clothes, the flicker of her persona is a constant. It is the appeal of irony about self. “I am 50 years old. I need a reason to wake up every day with fear,” she says.

Film x Fashion

One reason we suggested she dress up as Rekha for our cover was how she transforms with makeup—and that she is never publicly seen without it. She agreed instantly, calling for one shiny gold and one silver dress, the latter embellished with pieces of glass, a hood and gloves for sleeves. She accessorised with a cat-shaped Judith Leiber minaudière evening bag from her personal collection.

The post-betrayal feminist resurrection of Rekha in Khoon Bhari Maang—when she survives the murderous plans of her husband—looks good on Shalini. She suits the part. 

For the next Ball, as her guests (including the Bollywood wives’ group and Karan Johar, among others) rack their brains over the filmy character they will wear, she wants to portray the Black Swan. The 2010 psychological thriller by Darren Aronofsky was a devastatingly beautiful cinematic study into obsession, performed by Natalie Portman as a ballerina in shades of white and black. Shalini says she hasn’t watched the film—“I get nightmares with difficult narratives”—but chose it for its meaning and poignance.

“When the party opens, I will wear the white swan outfit and then change into black. It talks about theatre, obsessions, performance and the darker side of things…”

Enigmatically, Shalini circles between spectacle and self-awareness. The black and white swans she will wear are not disguises; they are her mirrors. If you are going to the ball, make sure you are wearing yours.