Kishore Singh: Skeletons out of the closet

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It was an elegant sit-down dinner, planned to the last detail, at a smart restaurant in town. But no matter how meticulously you design the menu and choose the starters and wines, at the end you're at the mercy of your guests. True, it had rained earlier that evening, truer still that my wife and I weren't as punctual as our hostess might have wanted, but many others were much, much late. And it wasn't just a Delhi thing, for those who came in last were prominent Bollywood celebrities.

These last arrivals caused a minor shuffle and chairs were redrawn, and instead of the minor royal who had been sneering down his patriarchal nose at having to talk to the hoi polloi, I found myself facing a somewhat flustered, extremely friendly, extremely talkative woman. "I know you," she said by way of her opening gambit, putting her elbows halfway across the table, and claiming me as her exclusive companion for the evening.

On my left and on my right all other guests were engaged in earnest conversations, so there was nothing to do but comply. My newly-made friend leered, and said to the waiter, "I'm a rum drinker." Since hard spirits were not on the menu, I butted in to assure her that red wine would fit the bill just fine, and it was duly poured, and a few sips later, my garrulous friend was telling me the goriest goings-on in her family.

Her sister-in-law, she claimed, was a "murderess", cackling loudly when I said that might be an extreme way to describe a family member, and began spilling family secrets that would have made a writer blush for thinking them up as fiction. There were details of a brother ("alcoholic"), a father ("communist"), parents ("my father said he preferred my mother without any clothes on"), some ill-chosen colourful language (fortunately, no one else was eavesdropping on our conversation), all of it delivered with a smile and without artifice.

The waiter was hovering around again, wanting to know if she required more wine. "Why can't you fill up the glass," she asked him, indicating the brim, "instead of pouring a half-glass?" She smiled at him: "It's to save you the trouble of coming back again and again." The waiter, petrified by such logic, left the bottle on the table and fled.

My dining companion now wanted to send the soup back because it was cold. "It's a gazpacho," I said, "it's meant to be served chilled." She looked at me disbelievingly and pushed it aside anyway. Her main course "" chicken; mine, for the record, was fish "" replaced it but lay ignored. She still had a lot of talktime left and wasn't wasting any of it. More skeletons tumbled out of the family closet "" there had been a funeral following a death (or was that a murder?), friends who wouldn't allow the family close to the body (corpse?), a mourning ceremony where the elders sat elbowing each other in the ribs and bellowing with laughter "" about people I had never met and (if it had indeed been a funeral) was unlikely to.

"I know you," she said again, pointing a fork in my direction, before launching into more family gossip, this time about her daughters. But by now some of the guests were leaving and, on another table, her husband stood up, indicating it was time for them to go. My "friend" stood up too, but this time to eat her chicken and mushrooms and brocolli standing up while everyone said their byes. "You," she continued, "have visited me at home, and stayed at my home in the hills," and a mouthfull of rice later, added "You really should remember things better!"