Everyone's heard of wedding crashers but this week, I think, my wife and I crashed a private party without anyone being the wiser. Because she picks up strangers as friends, we don't always know to tell a friend from a stranger, especially when they're just names at the end of the phone. Mostly, I am able to deflect her enthusiasm to socialise with a "delightful couple" she might have met once at an airport, or in a mall, or at someone else's party, and got along with like a house on fire, but I was caught off-guard in this instance because she had just returned after an extensive tour of faraway lands and therefore, I thought, deserving of a little leeway.
"I was jet-lagged," she said in her defence later, but at the time this is what she called to say: "We're going to my very best friend's home for dinner tonight so please retain the driver when you come home from work." She couldn't remember her best friend's name - "It's slipped my mind but will come back to me in a moment" - but she'd had the foresight to note down the address so at least we knew where we had to go. In the event, because she was still tired from her peregrinations, she was sleeping when I got home, so by the time she woke, had her tea, washed and set her hair and went through her usual half dozen changes of wardrobe before deciding on her first selection, it was quite late and traffic had thinned on the road, so we made good time to the venue.
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It turned out to be a handsome home, though we were unfamiliar with the name on the gate, but my wife remembered that her "best friend" whose name she still couldn't recall had mentioned that the party was at a borrowed house. At any rate, we arrived to find there were no familiar faces at the party, though that was no deterrent from receiving hugs and kisses and polite enquiries of how we were. We talked about the weather and how everybody was getting ready to quit Delhi "now that the heat is here". Someone talked about mangoes, another had us in a thrall about a Bollywood star's shenanigans, elsewhere a group was watching the IPL match on a TV screen, and a circle quickly formed around at least one elegant lady, who decided to entertain the rest with her voice. Still, there was no one we recognised, even though as parties go it wasn't a particularly large one. There were presents, and some carousing, so we reckoned it was a birthday party, or somebody's anniversary - but we weren't able to make out either host or friend, not even when we'd had our share of dinner and it was time to leave.
"Bye, love," we were waved off when we announced that it was still early in the working week and time, therefore, for us to hit the road, "see you soon". My wife even fixed up a day for a few of the rabble-rousers to come home, though I suspect no one knew either her name or our address, nor cared. We were seen off with no little ceremony, and it was while leaving we saw another celebration at the home next door. Maybe my wife had mistaken the address, or forgotten what her new best friend looked like - but it did seem like we'd attended a party that we may or may not have been invited to.
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