Kishore Singh: With friends like wives...

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Planning a dinner is a complicated affair at the best of times, but nowhere else can it prove as hazardous as in Delhi where "formal" probably means an extra swipe of the brush across the shoes. Formal clothes, of course, mean little, which must make it pretty embarrassing when the hosts are not Indian, and the guests are!

At a small dinner recently, our hosts had taken care to book the whole restaurant, all 30 covers. Formal clothes had been recommended. And a few days before the event, the hostess called to suggest (with a nice little giggle) that I might want to bring with me any person of my choosing who was fun, a bon vivant, and in whose company I might want to spend the evening.

"Don't even think about it," snapped my wife, when I asked her if I might take her friend Sarla out for dinner at someone else's expense. (Sometimes, when she's had a lot to drink, Sarla can be either fun, or maudlin "" but you never really know what you're going to get, so it's always a bit of an experiment.) So, sadly, I accepted the invitation but my companion for the evening wasn't too much fun, nor a bon vivant, but someone with whom I spend most evenings anyway.

As it turned out, there was just another couple at the elegant dinner. Everyone else seemed to have taken the hostess's advice and armed themselves with rather more interesting companions. Or maybe they were the interesting companions. Certainly, many seemed unable to peel their eyes off their partners. They all laughed a lot too.

But where there's a couple, there might well be a menage-e-trois too. A short while before, when the hostess had called to confirm that I was indeed on my way, and that I was seriously not considering a break from my own partner, she'd complained good-naturedly.

"Why is it," she asked, "that the invited guests want to bring more than just one person along with them?" "To have twice as much fun," I hazarded. "But," she sighed, "I cannot put in any more seats in the restaurant, which means that some of us" "" adding up knockoffs in the team of hosts "" will have to absent ourselves from the party. I tsk-tsked. It's tough if you're part of a team of hosts but don't get to be guests at your own party.

Later, driving back home, my wife said, "Everyone else seemed to have so much more fun than us, but I am not sorry that I did not allow you to bring some other friend instead of me to the party." However, she must have felt a little guilty since the next day when we attended another formal dinner (where sadly the hosts did not ask us to bring other interesting companions in lieu of spouses), she suggested that I could sit with a friend who was also at the party, while she would sit among strangers at another table.

Our friend, who can be charming at most times, was probably not in a good mood, or maybe she is just naturally bossy. "You must eat this," she indicated some shreds of lettuce with her fork, and jabbed her finger when she saw me enjoying my ravioli. "Don't eat all of that," she stage-whispered, "or else you won't have any place for your main course." I sneaked a peek at her plate "" which had been wiped clean of everything. And the way she nagged through the meal, she might well have been my wife and not a friend after all.

So, perhaps all those people the previous evening were only pretending to have fun, and maybe wives are better people to take to parties than some friends.