We’re expecting some little friction having invited friends, one a lawyer, the other accused in a marital feud in which she’s fighting the case. “Maybe we can give them different timings,” mused my wife. “Or different days,” I added. “Or turn the party into a masquerade ball,” my daughter contributed — only, of course, it would violate the spirit of what we hope will turn out to be an elegant garden lunch. That our guests from hell include an activist vegetarian primed to tell you how your foie-gras is prepared after force-feeding geese and damaging their livers, or how assembly line chickens are butchered, just when you’ve sat down to tuck into your fish orly or lamb steak, makes us wonder whether we might also have murder on the menu.
The toughest, though, is keeping the company of a psycho-analyst, the kind who spooks everyone by turning each conversation into a therapy session. You’d hope Padma would chill over a glass of wine, but that’s hardly likely with a 100-odd people, each of them a potential patient, waiting for any conversation to turn into an insinuation about the state of their mental health.
“How are you?” an unwary guest might ask her, opening the floodgates to a session on the couch with Padma. “How do you think I am?” Padma might reply, if you’re lucky, but she’s more likely to stump you with “Why did you ask me that?” which can be awkward but, nevertheless, requires a response that will more than likely get you into both trouble and a teaser of how a sitting with her is likely to turn out. Over the years we’ve learned to rescue acquaintances before the grilling begins, for once they’ve started confessing, it’s almost with relief that people who were strangers only moments before spill the most intimate secrets of their life with a shocking lack of discretion.
Should you happen to eavesdrop on the secret lives of some of your friends, it would make WikiLeaks look like kidstuff. You’d expect fidelity to have a low premium these days, but do you know of mistresses who’re threatening a public candlelight vigil because they want inheritance rights for their children on a par with their legitimate siblings? Middle-aged uncles and aunties you’d hardly expect of being on the take are making a business of scamming companies and siphoning funds where they work. Businesspeople you’d expect to be frequent travellers use their travel agents to stay home while a trail of false tickets and hotel bookings turns into hefty deposits in their bank accounts instead.
Padma manages the information effortlessly. “We should plan a holiday together,” you might say innocently to her, to have her come back with a loaded, “Do you feel the need to run away from something?” Suggest a drink and she’ll want to know why you’re choosing inebriation as a cloak to hide things that are sinister. Vent some spousal or office frustration around her and she’ll gaze into your eyes and say, “Talk to me.” But she’s been having a tougher time of it of late. “People,” she said to my wife the last time she came home, “seem to be more evasive these days.” My wife, wisely, kept both her silence and her counsel.
Doctors who’ve performed interesting surgeries, dentists who’ve implanted more than just crowns, bosses old and new, warring friends, people entrusted with the burden of financial secrets, inquisitive colleagues and those with clandestine lives — what Padma will fail to ferret by way of information will fall to the lot of two other guests that afternoon, one a face reader and the other a coffee reader. “You can come with your private lives,” promises my wife gleefully, “but don’t expect to go back with any.”