Kishore Singh: Someone talk to me, please

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Now that my wife is very busy and doesn't have the time for such things as sitting down for meals with us, or even giving us the neighbourhood gossip, I have taken to ringing up various members of the family just so I don't feel like a social outcast.

Last week when I called my parents, my mother sounded surly, so I asked her what had upset her.

"It's your father," she said into the phone, "he's behaving like a sullen schoolboy simply because there was no pudding for dinner last night." "Surely you can't be fighting about something so silly at your age!" I marvelled, "Just make him something nice to eat so he'll be happy." "I will not do that," she said evenly, "unless he apologises first."

I did not think my father was likely to apologise to my mother, so I hung up and called my mother-in-law, who said, "Your father-in-law is at it again about how he wants to build a school in his village, as if he is some millionaire. I tell you I'm fed up with the man!" Since I was familiar with this litany, I did not want to waste more money listening to her rant, so I called my elder brother, who is in Jaipur.

"Are we still going for a family reunion to Ranthmabhor?" my brother asked. "Yes," I replied. "Well, you had better define how big the family is, because your aunt, and her aunt, and several uncles all want to come to our family outing," he cribbed. I assured him I would make sure that no one else cadged an invitation to our family do, and called my younger brother who was in-charge of the travel arrangements. "He won't come with me to Chennai," my sister-in-law started to cry into the phone, "because he says there's a terrorist threat to the city." So instead of warning him about keeping distant relatives at bay, I told him he was a fathead, and not to be a spoilsport and keep his promise to his family.

By now I'd had enough of my family's troubles so I rang my brother-in-law in America, but he didn't want to talk to me because I had told him not to shout at my son when he was last in Delhi, and he had carried the grudge back with him, or so his wife said.

So I rang up my other brother-in-law, but he was not at home, and his wife gave me a shopping list of things she wanted from Delhi, and could I please not mention it to her husband, else he would shout at her.

Finally, I decided to call my sister, who is in Ahmedabad, but she was in a tizzy because her husband had been unwell and was, therefore, not permitted to drink beer in the daytime. But he had defied the rule, saying he would recite the Hanuman Chalisa by way of divine forgiveness. "Tell him it's bad for his blood pressure," I advised her. "How can I," she shrieked, "when I'm not talking to him."

I thought I'd call my sister-in-law to speak with her, only she had decided she did not want to have anything to do with me because I had not loaned her some paintings and vases for her house when her daughter was getting married. On hindsight, this was not such a bad thing, since she was clearly someone better not speaking to you than speaking to you.

But it left me with no one to speak with other than my wife, but I was happy that she was too busy to speak with me "" at least that way there was no way we could get into a family fight.