Kishore Singh: Old records lose their groove

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One of the things you give up gratefully when you enter the middle years is the frenzied body shaking that passes for dancing in Delhi. Which is why it is with apprehension we accept invitations to Sarla's house for dinner. Sarla is an excellent hostess, but two factors can prove your undoing. One, if Sarla's husband is in a lighthearted frame of mind, there will be music and, two, with Sarla around, her sister is bound to be in the vicinity. And where there's Sarla's sister, there's dancing. No matter that you're talking Chagall, or the booming economy, or the hanging of Saddam Hussein, Sarla's sister will want you to dance. Of late, that has been the reason we have been absenting ourselves from Sarla's dinner parties.

We should have been as vigilant when we accepted an invitation to our friends' wedding anniversary that was SMSed to us. The first hint that we might have let ourselves in for more than we had bargained for occurred when our daughter wanted to know what the party venue, RPM, meant. "RPM," I laughed indulgently, "that's revolutions per minute," going on to explain the technology of long playing records that provided our music in the years before CD players and downloadable music consigned them to the realm of nostalgia.

It transpired that neither my wife nor I knew where, or indeed what, RPM was. My son proved helpful in the matter. "It's a dingy place where they play loud Punjabi music "" but why are you asking?" Why indeed? And were we expected to dance?

Having arrived late, it became clear that there was nothing else on the agenda. Expectedly, the place was dimly lit, there was a DJ with the mandatory pierced ear, and a couple of bartenders who dropped more liquor on the floor when juggling, than pouring it into glasses. Appallingly, there was almost no seating, our hosts didn't introduce us to their friends, and no sooner had we entered, we were pulled on to the dance floor.

"Look like you're enjoying yourself," hissed my wife into my ear over the blast of the music. "I want to sit, I want a drink, I want something to eat, I'd like a conversation," I whined. "Always I, I, I," criticised my wife, "now go dance with your hostess for a while."

The hostess was wearing a dress, or at any rate a skirt and something that resembled a large bow, and had on boots with stiletto heels that tattooed the wooden floor as she jerked like a palsied puppet across the room. A row of teenagers who were clearly not with the party watched in fascination, though I'm not sure they weren't fixated on the motley group of middle aged men whose only defining feature seemed to be receding hairlines and generous middles barely reined in by tight belts.

In the half-hour we spent at the party, here's what we witnessed through the gloom: a crush of dancing every time a Hindi film track was played, bottles of champagne being sprayed across the floor with tedious regularity, an entertainer who tried to set fire to women's hair with his fire-blowing antics, plates of chicken tikka flying across the room by energised elbows swinging to Crazy kiya re, someone puking in a corner (but that could be the teenagers who occupied the other half of the den), a drunk guest who clearly had had enough going by the way he collapsed on the floor...

"The next time, let us find out where a party is being held before accepting," said my wife, easing her aching bones into the car. "The next time," I sponged champagne off my clothes, "let us not go to any party where we're required to dance for our dinner."