A Desi party and the reluctant host

A very short story originally published in Deccan Herald: Feb 11, 2007

It was one of those merry desi parties in America, where a dozen or so families had gathered at a mutual friend’s. It might have been a birthday or a house warming or a pot luck or baby shower or some or the other such party. The occasion is irrelevant here; suffice to know, it was simply one of those merry desi parties, where a dozen or so families had gathered at a mutual friend’s.

Ladies sat in the family room and slashed conceited opinions about the schools their children studied and the expensive jewelry their anxious husbands gifted. One’s low collided empathetically with another’s of an identical shape and size , and the third, whose children were in college, felt her depression was even deeper than the Grand Canyon. Someone’s decision about going back to India for good the year next was met with someone else’s ridicule.

A friend nudged at another and whispered spice, feeling compelled to point at the moral defects in an Indian vocal artist, whose local fame had been reigning supreme in that easily excitable community. A mom spoke passionately about what children must do to make it to the Ivy Leagues; and another mom who knew all about it and more, remained silent considering it unwise to share her knowledge lest others took advantage; and a vast majority of them unequivocally agreed, there ought to have been strict laws that dealt categorically with all mothers-in-law.

Little girls played noisily in the backyard and chit chatted about Barbie dolls. Bigger girls debated with heat on Tom Cruise and Hrithik Roshan. Boys screamed for their turn at the video gadgets; older boys being older boys exchanged notes on Kobe Bryant’s misadventures; and the teenagers talked about driving licenses, cool web sites, hot crushes, and shared mutual gripes about the nuisance of having to accompany parents on their socializing trips.

Men, having earlier switched TV channels and browsed free copies of Economist and Times at the book shop or internet or perhaps while waiting at the barber’s , spoke with authority on matters such as Bush, Iraq, economy and outsourcing. The knowledge they exhibited seemed profound. The insider information about startups and corporate America they exchanged seemed red hot off the press. Their insights on the economic future seemed as crystal and clear as the images from the Hubble telescope. So much so that, Greenspan, had he been eavesdropping behind a window, would have scribbled notes on his cigarette case and called his broker to place rush orders on his privately held stocks. A couple of recent home owners listened apprehensively to their renter friends lecturing on the imminent explosion of the housing market and the old timers dismissed the bubble theory with supreme confidence and resumed their tales of remodeling ordeals.

The desi party, in other words, was progressing with a text book like perfection.

Our courteous hostess, Tulaza Gowpande (“Tula” to friends and “Tulazabai” to her mother-in-law and to the IRS), ballooned with satisfaction not only at the puris she bulged from the frying pan but also upon the reflection that, before the cycle of obligation fell once again upon her to owe the next party, she could look forward to many more owed by others where she would just be a nonchalant guest.

However, our hero, Tukaram Gowpande loathed all such gatherings and was cursing himself at the painful necessity of playing the amicable host. He loved reading thrillers and would rather have stretched his legs upon the teapoy, treating himself to a cup of tea and Dan Brown’s latest. Instead, he lent his wife a helping hand, or rather two helping hands, for he was a conscientious husband who understood what was good for him. Casting a tolerant smile like a male Mona Lisa masking his sorrows, he went about his errand, refilling the empty glasses with the cheap wine of which he had gotten an abundant supply from the Trader Joe’s.

At the prospect of striking a conversation in the nature of even an idle chat, such as remarks about weather, Gowpande’s reluctance resembled the engine of an overloaded bus. He, instead, found it less cumbersome to put on the act of a good listener. He had learnt to alleviate the awkwardness of a pause just at the point where it would have become uncomfortable by interposing an innocent remark or a harmless question. He would then fix his eyes upon the person who wished to hold the floor, shake his head in just the agreeable direction, raise his eyebrows by the correct inches, shrug his shoulders to the precise width or merely say, “really?” in a manner so as to indicate complete harmony with the speaker’s opinion — only Sherlock Holmes with professional help from detective Karamchand, after exhausting their respective stocks of tobacco and carrots could have detected in Gowpande’s manner, a poised attention one hundred percent fake.

Gowpande wondered dreamily when would he see the moment, when that moment would be his own moment. Wouldn’t the day ever dawn when he could indulge himself in so much as simple pleasures of life? Wouldn’t he ever be able to bring himself to reading the unfinished pages of The Da Vinci Code?

Wouldn’t he? He pondered. Why couldn’t he? Or rather, why shouldn’t he?

What, thought Gowpande, if he disappeared now to a quiet spot where he was unlikely to be found and engage himself with some of his favorite things that he wanted to do, but never quite got to? Would anyone notice? Would anyone come looking for Tukaram Gowpande?

Probably not, he reflected. He was already done with his errands for the party. Earlier in the afternoon he had helped his wife with the cooking, vacuumed the house, and had laid out the dinner buffet, complete with paper cups, cutleries and trash bags.

Gowpande was alive to the realization that his was not a compelling personality that caused guests to long for his society. They seldom payed attention to him, unless they wanted to ask their way to the toilet or needed a spoon, which he knew to be an unlikely contingency, as none of the guests were strangers in his house. He knew his society attracted as much social attention as a paper weight. A professor of psychology would have summed up Gowpande as, “a subject, neither whose presence can be felt, nor whose absence.”

He looked at his watch. It was only half past seven. Experience told him that the party would not be over any time soon. The propensity of the guests to linger around for indefinite periods was well known. During this time he could have sneaked out to watch a movie, or play solitude, or visit a book store, or simply curl up and read a thriller.

Thriller! It was at this point while contemplating the possibilities that he remembered the unfinished Da Vinci Code.

Strange, how people, while brooding intensely over questions of extreme complexity react when they see the answers suddenly in a flash. Recall the story of Archimidis, who after cracking the puzzle of submerged bodies is chronicled to have flung out of his bathroom and run all over Syracuse naked shouting “Eureka!”

Gowpande hesitated no longer. He headed towards the chest in his bed room, picked up his copy of Da Vinci Code, and, unlike Archimidis, who had chosen to run away from the bathroom, walked into it with purposeful steps and closeted himself inside. And there in the bathroom he sat, happily catching up with the trail of detective Langdon- the book’s hero.

Outside, children continued to make merry; ladies, compared this, contrasted that, playing on each other’s emotional strings; and men, humdrum-ing their views on raising interest rates and other current affairs, made themselves comfortable sinking their trouser seats deeper into the sofas — none had the foggiest inkling that their host was not among those present.

To put everything in a nutshell, God was in his heaven blessing the world; the host was inside the bathroom absorbed in the thriller; and, outside, all was splendid and just right with the desi party.

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