The evening before she took off for her month-long vacation, my wife, in a rare moment of candour, said, “With me gone, there will be no one to trouble you, therefore you can relax,” going so far as to add a cheery, “Enjoy yourself, then.” And our daughter, who was accompanying her, chipped in with her own ode to bonded parenthood, “Read, see movies, wake up late, watch television,” since I would no longer be employed, however temporarily, in catering to her mood swings of pick-ups and drops and juggling cars and schedules. A few days later, my son too left for college with a similar homily. “Think,” he said, “write,” and to underline the importance of sustaining the domestic revenue stream, “make money.”
As anxious as they were to be off, I was delighted at the prospect of being by myself, and so told the domestic staff that I was going on a diet that was minimal, and wanted to lead a life not so much rich in experiences as pared down to reflect a more meditative frame of mind. They looked on disbelievingly.
It started off simply enough. Some neighbours wanted to borrow the staff for odd errands, others invited themselves home for dinner, and yet others, with the house empty of all but one of its residents, wanted to have a party here, use the computer, download music, use it as a studio for purposes of photography, schedule theatre readings, do their laundry, send their servants for sleepovers, or simply use it as the common colony hub for extended tete-a-tetes with each other, during which they didn’t mind in the least if coffee-and-cake or, even better, whisky-and-kebabs, were served up.
The out-of-towners were the next to arrive. First a brother-in-law twice removed whose son was looking for a hostel, having successfully managed admission in a local college and now requiring the accommodation to leverage it. It proved chaotic in more ways than one: They preferred soaps to solution dispensers, wanted spoons for dining that were neither as large as tablespoons nor as small as teaspoons, refused the use of coloured towels, disdained meals not in sync with their weekly religious mandates, sought naps in the afternoon, and were always late going out, requiring me to placate the taxi-stand from which I ordered cabs for them, even if I was at work.
The morning they departed, they were replaced by another father-son duo who needed a car at their disposal for running errands, set their own daily dinner menu, required to be entertained in their off-hours, and couldn’t stand the Delhi heat so I had to leave all the air-conditioners running in all the rooms to cool down the temperature at home, even if no one happened to be around. “You must be bored all by yourself,” my wife said over a rare, long-distance telephone call, “all that time to do whatever you want.”
Not that she’s planning to come back in a hurry, having asked the travel agent for an extension on their tickets. By the same measure, it doesn’t seem my resident relatives appear to be anxious to leave.
Actually, they’re here to be with a friend who is in hospital and, by the look of it, unlikely to leave any time soon unless he finds a donor for a transplant he urgently requires.
“You have to help,” my uncle stated baldly last evening. If anyone cares sufficiently to want for me a few days of privacy before my wife returns, here is a plea: I’m in the market for a liver — donors may please apply directly to my uncle who, at this moment, is fixing tonight’s dinner plans with the cook.