Kishore Singh: Mistaken identity

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It's had my colleagues in the office in splits, but it isn't funny, not really. Hoping to earn some sympathy, I had shared with them my failure to recognise a prominent ambassador while conducting a conversation with him that would have been better suited had he been the chef I had assumed he was. It was at a small dinner where only a few people had been invited, and it now strikes me that the expatriate chef, no matter how respected, would not have been there while the ambassador, popular for his flamboyance and open house, certainly merited his place at the party.

In my defence I will say I had, in a matter of days, met the chef on two occasions and was overjoyed with his plans to open a delicatessen while he went about the task of advicing restaurateurs on how to improve or market their cuisines. But the ambassador too I had met at his home on consequent occasions, besides running into him at every party in town, so there was really no excuse in failing to recognise him.

But fail I did, making a complete fool of myself in the process. Having greeted him more familiarly than one does an ambassador, I told him I was thrilled about his recent initiatives. "Really?" asked the ambassador, raising a somewhat sceptical eye. "Oh yes," I assured him, all but patting him on the back because it wasn't that kind of party, "you've got the city eating out of your hands."

Since the ambassador prides himself as a good host, that seemed to pass muster, but making conversation at formal parties requires effort, and soon I was putting my leg into it again. "How many hours a day do you work?" I asked him. The ambassador stuttered a reply that I cannot now remember, but I know I asked him, "What do you think of the local supplies?" "Oh, I get whatever I require from back home," the ambassador assured me. "But that must be expensive," I persisted, "so do you make people pay for it?" "I suppose the people do eventually pay for it, yes," mused the ambassador, "but it's what I'm expected to do."

I said I wasn't entirely in agreement with his view. "Surely your job is to minimise costs and improve services," I reprimanded him. "Oh, I don't think so," he replied dubiously, "I would much rather look at policy." "But that's a management job," I pointed out. "As well as a diplomatic one," he assured me, but the penny failed to drop right away. It was only much later into this exhausting exchange, when the ambassador's wife walked over and said how delighted she was to see me again, that the whole, horrible truth became apparent.

However, having committed the gaffe, I could hardly own up to it and tell the ambassador I'd thought he was the neighbourhood chef. Still, amends had to be made, and I was more than willing to attempt them. "I suppose you have your task cut out for you," I changed tack, "with the economy having taken off in India," which seemed to be the right sort of thing to say because he was soon talking about businessmen who kept his embassy busy with requests for meetings with ministers, and his house full of guests wanting their fill of the country.

Later into the evening, when we stopped by at his table to say goodbye, the ambassador caught hold of my hand to assure me he was not a wasteful man and only imported into the country what he absolutely could not get here. Which is why I fail to understand what my colleagues find so funny about what was just a simple case of mistaken identity.