Because she had been unusually busy, my wife was delighted when an invitation for a working (for me) trip (for the family) came up, complete with the promise of spa treatments and gourmet meals. “We’re in Agra for the weekend,” she started postponing her appointments. “Whoa,” I cautioned, for I had not yet said yes, “I may be busy with another assignment and unable to go.” But my wife had made up her mind. “Pack your bags,” she told our daughter, “we’re off to Agra.”
I didn’t want to disappoint her but this weekend, and the next, I planned to spend with a billionaire who would pay handsomely for the pleasure of my company. “I’m an intellectual,” he had said over the phone, then followed it up with a list of degrees that positioned him nicely as a nerd with the qualifications to prove it. It was a long conversation and not all of it made sense, but this much I knew: The American couple wanted to be introduced to India by an intellectual giant — my wife couldn’t help sniggering when I told her this — and their agents had planned everything from special permission to view the Taj by moonlight to private planes to ferry them to the medieval kingdoms of Rajasthan. My wife ignored me. “Don’t bother with formals,” she told our daughter, “we won’t need them in Agra.”
I was to be part of an entourage that included a celebrity photographer, but he was to compose his shots from a distance, and “not like the paparazzi”, the American told me, “because we don’t want our sense of intimacy to be disturbed”. I was to be similarly employed: Speak when spoken to, mind my interventions, a kind of brains-on-planes that they could dip into any time they wanted to discuss history or archaeology, foreign affairs or economic matters, books, writers, films or poets from the past or of the present. “But he insists I should not view this as a social outing,” I told my wife, “he wants to spend time strictly in the company of his wife, but we’re to accompany them and be on call for when he desires debate, discussion or discourse.” “Will you do your own packing for Agra, or do you want me to do it for you?” my wife persisted.
I told my wife that she should consider it a privilege that I would be in the presence of someone who, on his travels in other nations, had employed chief anthropologists, world historians, bestselling novelists, well-known scholars. “He’s promised me every luxury as part of his travelling group,” I told her, though it did seem that we were to be a large presence, and surely they would feel overwhelmed by the number of experts and service professionals who would cater to their every whim. “I suspect it will be a lark, a little bit of jaw-jawing and all the hedonism of private travel,” I gloated to my wife. “While I,” repeated my wife, “am looking forward to going to Agra.”
I ordered myself a new wardrobe, one suitable for the intellectual companion of a picky billionaire; I brushed up my history and geography; did some number crunching; pored over dates; practised a little light humour; even working on an American accent as part of my training for the task and was all set to play my evangelical role when the billionaire’s wife decided the entourage had grown too unwieldy, that jobs would need to be axed, and so with words of appropriate sympathy, I was put out to pasture.
“Oh dear,” I said to my wife, “I had been looking forward to my cerebral holiday.” “It’s okay,” said my wife sympathetically, “I’ll listen to your garbled nonsense — but in Agra.”
