Kishore Singh: Got friend, will travel

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This fall, my wife has decided to treat herself to a vacation in Europe. Not in America, where her brothers are, because she's had a tiff with one and hasn't spoken to the other in weeks, so why should she grace them with the benefit of her company? Not in Australia either where she has a close relative but even closer friends in Sydney and Melbourne and Canberra. The relative has shown no inclination to host her, yet if my wife stays with her friends, it might erupt into a family scandal back home, so Down Under is definitely out.

She could go to London, since she's going to be around those parts, but is thinking of giving it a miss because her nephew overlooked, on his last trip back to India, to come a-visiting. If he won't visit us then, why, my wife won't visit him either "" fair's fair!

If elimination has been the easy part, planning the rest of the trip has been a nightmare. She's definitely going to be in Paris where a friend has been coaxing her to come and visit for years. "How long do you think I could spend with her?" she asked me hesitantly. "Two days," I suggested somewhat practically.

"I was thinking more like two weeks," she suggested. "Visitors, like family, start stinking after three days," I reminded her, quoting her favourite lines every time we had unwelcome guests "" which was oftener than usual. My wife pretended not to hear, though she did murmur, "I don't think I'd like to spend my entire holiday in just one city," laying to rest ideas of a two-week sojourn in France.

She was clear although that she wasn't about to waste her hard-earned money staying in hotels and pensiones when she had so many friends who were keen that she come and stay with them.

"Such as?" I asked. "Well, there's this couple, whatstheirname, somewhere in Germany, who said I should visit them whenever I'm in their country," she replied. "You've only met them once," I reminded her, "and that too fleetingly, so I don't think you can take their invitation at all seriously." "But they did say I should visit them," she insisted. "You hardly know them," I pointed out, "what if they turn out to be serial killers?"

"You know, you're right," sighed my wife, "so maybe I can go spend a week with my friend in Seoul, or visit the NRI family I met at the fair in Pragati Maidan, and who said they have a lovely bungalow in Mauritius." "Neither Korea, nor Mauritius," I reminded her, "are in Europe, which is where you will be if you go to France." "Oh dear," sighed my wife, "I'll just have to think of some other people I know, however briefly, so I can stay with them when I go abroad."

She looked in her diary, and through a pile of visiting cards, but there wasn't anyone she could count on to offer her board and lodging in Rome and in Venice and in Greece. Other friends had moved out of Switzerland and Vienna, and she now knew no one else there. As for Munich and Bonn...was I sure she couldn't stay with the German couple, so what if she hardly knew them? And her friend from school who she hadn't been in touch with for 20 years used to be married to an Andalusian girl, surely it was worth finding out her number if it meant she could also go to Spain.

Last heard though, she was wondering if she should change her travel plans "" there's that friend in Singapore who'd be sure to put her up, so what if they didn't like each other....