Kishore Singh: Out in the open

PEOPLE LIKE US

My dear nephew (even though you are older than me; I mean, anyone can see that, what with your white hair and all),I'm sorry for usurping your column, but I think you need to be held accountable for your writings about your family and friends and neighbours, all of whom are unjustly portrayed by you "" no doubt with mischievous intent.

To start with, there's your wife. I'm not saying she can't take up for herself "" she's shrill enough, I know "" but I have to make a pretense of standing up for her. Call it the sorority thing, or just my compulsion. After all, if it wasn't her, who'd take me shopping to the tailor's, or the wholesale market from where I can buy cheap gifts for all my friends back in Shillong? Though I do wish she'd shut up and listen to what I'm saying instead of being such a know-it-all. So, you lay off her buster!

And you lay off your brats too, not that a wallop or two wouldn't serve them right. I mean, anyone can see that all that smarmy affection they shower on you isn't real. All they want is for you to keep doling out advances on their pocket money, or cut classes, or go to the movies with their friends, and like an idiot you keep falling for their stories. Won't eat fish, eh? Want to put gook into their hair because it's some trendy craze? Want tattoos? Well, I don't encourage that kind of thing, so send them to me and I'll have them sorted out in a jiffy!

And now that we're on the subject, what about that friend of yours who lives across from our flat?

A nosey-parker, isn't he? Always asking us where we're going, when we're coming back, and when we're going to be leaving? Don't think I don't know that your wife has been using our apartment in the months we aren't here. Oh-ho, I know everything "" like that party you had in the flat. Left marks all over the walls too! Just because you look after the place in our absence, and have it cleaned regularly, and pay the taxes, and carry out improvements, it doesn't give you the right to come sneaking around as if the place is yours, I hope you've got that loud and clear.

And now that I have your attention, let's sort some other issues out, my dear nephew. Such as your habit of coming across every other evening to check on our welfare? What do you think is going to happen to us? Okay, I might have stumbled at a party or two, or been unwell, but I know why you saunter across as soon as the sun is down. "Have a drink," your uncle will say, and you'll say "yes," and then want chicken tikkas and paneer samosas, as if I'm running a restaurant. And so if you must know, that is the reason we insist on going out with you to all your parties "" not because your company is entertaining, oh no, but just to avoid serving and scraping before your majesty should we stay at home!

As for all your friends at these parties, I don't think much of them with all their air-kissing and their snotty ways and their lah-di-dah accents. We're simple folks from the country who come to Delhi for a few months, and we aren't used to all this back-biting among friends. We're upfront folk who say it like it is, and if you don't like it "" and a weak-spined, low-life creature like you who's afraid of his wife's shadow probably won't "" then dear nephew, you can lump it.

Your (definitely younger than you), Aunt