I don't do Diwali, fake bonhomie or chumminess well. Which is not to say I'm averse to parties, just that I prefer partying among strangers over catching up with "friends". Because Delhi parties are so huge, you can - like me - choose to remain anonymous, or, as my wife has sometimes done, invite other acquaintances along to dine out at someone else's expense without once shaking paws with the hosts. What's not to like?
There are other advantages to these celebrations, such as not having to worry about holding a conversation because nobody else does. You can occupy the better part of an hour air-kissing strangers in greeting, and an equivalent amount of time wishing them goodbye. You can sit quietly in your cups and drown your sorrows, or hang around some groupie fringe holding forth on politics, or hunger (while drinking champagne), or Mr Modi's government. It's better than most stand-up comedies, and everyone's invited.
What I'm averse to is the bogus arm of friendship from some distant past cutting through the cobwebs of memory simply because you had the misfortune to go to school with the unfortunate chap. College was a long while back, school years go back years, so why would I be interested in who pinched my jam sandwiches in class five while I was wiping the blackboard?
Remember whatshisname? The snotty nerd who told on everyone and was no one's friend? Well, guess what, he sold his start-up to an investor and is a dollar billionaire whose kid's wedding is the next class reunion where, naturally, everyone's going - but me. "Seriously," wonders my wife, "you don't want to be there?" "No," I insist, "I don't even remember him" - for which I cannot entirely be blamed, having experienced a peripatetic childhood marked by admission in eight - no, make that nine - schools, so they're just a hazy blot of faces and places.
My wife, on the other hand, does schoolfriends, and Diwali "catching up" well, as a result of which I'm sometimes dragged to teas and lunches, often to be ignored, which isn't the same thing as being anonymous. What trips me up is the lack of an accountable job. "I write," I explain with trepidation, but it's like telling a roomful of strangers that you're an alcoholic. It isn't considered a full-time job, a serious profession; you can't sell it and sail down the Adriatic into the sunset.
My wife doesn't bother to explain herself, she simply signs up for more bashes, going off to founder's day with her alumni group, and for a reception with mine. She's even signed up for school groups that have nothing to do with her because, incredibly, she says they're "so much fun" - and no, I don't think she's smoking anything. She's a sucker for flying off for class reunions, school anniversaries and kids' weddings, while I remain ignorant of their names or whether they even have kids. "It's the new family," my wife tells me, but when I can hardly tolerate mine, why would I want someone else's?
Diwali-time is particularly bad for those umbilically linked to their juvenile phase. There are frat card parties, year-of bashes and batch reunions. Surely, I'm coming? I can't say for sure, I ad-lib, desperately confirming invitations from people I don't know, because, I explain to my wife, it's better to be anonymous in a group of strangers than be ignored in a get-together of grown men and women trying to pass themselves off as schoolkids.
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