Now that Diwali and its parties are behind us, I have it on my wife’s authority that the festivities weren’t a patch on those of previous years. “I rather enjoyed myself,” I said to her – and not just because the cook’s inconveniently timed annual vacation meant I looked forward to feeding at the party trough – even though I’d noticed that some of the regulars hadn’t hosted their bashes, or perhaps for reasons of austerity we’d been downgraded from the A-list parties and had to settle for the B- and C-lists.
“That’s because,” said my wife, “you can’t see beyond your glass of whisky, or you’d have seen that everyone was repeating things this year.” When I said I didn’t understand, my wife explained, “You know Chandni, right?” I nodded. “Well, Chandni wore her diamond-encircled Longines from last year for the Sharmas’ party this year, and what’s worse” – I held my breath – “she wore it again to the Kumars and Jains and,” added smugly, “everyone noticed.”
It appears that Chandni wasn’t the only one in social purgatory. Pratima tried to pass off an old Fendi bag as a new one – “as though we don’t see the catalogues”, my wife sniffed — and her husband had his old S-class repainted to fool everyone into thinking of it as a new acquisition, but Sarla’s husband noticed its old registration number and the cat was out of the bag. But Sarla, too, wore her sister’s emeralds even though everyone knew they weren’t hers.
Sarla also sent over a casserole of stale biryani from her dinner, which my wife gave away to the driver, though I would have liked to have had some. “Hmph,” snorted my wife, “can you imagine inviting people for cards and serving only biryani,” with no prawn entrees (which Ruchi had), no imported cheeses (everyone serves them said my wife), no choice of Cambodian, or Lebanese, or Thai, or even Chinese. “No one serves Indian food any more at Diwali parties,” my wife said, which explained the leftovers at Sarla’s party.
The cards were a let-down too, at least at the gaming tables where we sat, my status mostly that of an observer, my wife having warned me against a tendency to play blind and lose. Everyone knows, of course, that couples have secret gestures and cheat, but because I can never remember whether the third crooked finger is a signal for the ace of hearts or the three of clubs, and with my multifocals making it difficult to see the hand anyway, I found it better to focus on the biryani than on the flush. Even so, it was disappointing that the most anyone won, or lost, at the tables was a mere couple of lakhs. The piles of thousand-rupee notes was fewer than in previous years, and the gamblers played with more caution, drinking less and concentrating on winning – “such bad sports,” my wife said of them – rather than losing, “which is what Diwali is about,” she griped, having managed to fritter away our eroding savings at a flutter or two.
The Khannas, meanwhile, had decided to ostracise Diwali because “everything’s so banal” they said; they wanted “some excitement, some adventure” which they hoped to find – to our collective envy – in the Bahamas. They offered us entertainment instead because Sarla’s brother-in-law posted a picture of them from Manali where they’d holed up for the duration of Diwali. “Sarla,” giggled my wife, “is sending her driver to Manali with a deg of biryani for them.” At least the Diwali spirit is still alive and kicking…