Kishore Singh: Tag along

PEOPLE LIKE US

At about this time of the year, every year, for two months or so, my migratory relatives come to Delhi to winter in the warmer climes of Delhi's freezing cold. But if you live in Shillong, where it's seriously cold, perhaps even Delhi's teeth-chattering winter can pass for balmy weather.

At first when they came, my uncle and aunt would stay with us, leading to a cosy intimacy that, as the children (theirs and ours) grew, came to resemble a tenement not unlike a chawl "" imagine, for a moment, the laundry for eight residents and two in-residence servants in a three-bedroom apartment! So when they decided to buy a place right next to ours, there was a general sense of relief. With all that space available, we could hardly be responsible for their day-to-day care any more.

What we hadn't counted on was their social dependency. Separate flat or not, here they were, an extension of the family for better or worse. In the neighbourhood where we'd lived, taking children along for parties was considered infra dig. But here we were now, accompanied not just by an aunt and an uncle, but also their children ("We never go out without ours," my aunt said resolutely) and ours ("If they're going, we're coming too," mine insisted). I could see friends totting up the numbers, hesitating beside our name, putting "eight" in front of it, and then running a pencil through the line.

Invitations dwindled; neighbours put off celebrations. But for my kin, Delhi was one big party. I was forced to scrounge around for extra invitations every time we had to go out. "I love Delhi parties," my uncle would say, hinting that we hadn't been to any of the so-called Page 3 parties yet. Invitations I might otherwise have rejected as being too tawdry were accepted with great alacrity, provided we could bring an extra guest or two along. Hosts got used to seeing us arrive as a foursome.

Through traffic and fog we braved our way to Delhi's late night revels, often in farmhouses where all civilisation seemed to end. And unmindful of whether the next day was a working one for poor denizens who didn't get to take off two months every year, my uncle was often the last one still shaking a leg while the caterers were rolling the carpet from under his feet.

We suffered exhaustion. Friends "" close friends would say, "You must bring your uncle and aunt across to meet us," not meaning it one bit. But my relatives, taking it at face value, would persist that we follow up the invitations. They just couldn't understand why our friends would suddenly stop responding to our phone calls, or disappear suddenly from town on mysterious assignments.

Because they didn't need to worry about social decorum since Delhi was, strictly speaking, not their home, it didn't matter that they didn't know anyone at these parties. So what that my aunt, a couple of wines down, went sprawling across the dance floor "" it was such a lark! So what if my uncle, taken with a particularly attractive foreigner, wouldn't stop dancing with her "" "life's a party, baby!" he said.

I took to hiding invitations even from my wife, especially when she particularly wanted to go somewhere. "How can we," I'd remonstrate, "leave our relatives behind?" "Just say it's official," my wife would reject my plea. But our guilt wouldn't allow us to sneak out behind their backs, so we'd stay home instead and tuck in early.

With another month to go when we're either invited as a large, joint family, or not at all, I can see our friends counting the days when they can safely consider us a twosome again.