Kishore Singh: Before-and after-party ruminations

This is what I made my children promise me this morning. "When your mother and I are old," I said to them, "and want to do things that are stupid, you will stop us from such foolishness." As I write this, we are in the aftermath of my parents' 65th marriage anniversary. Like feudatories from times past, their anniversary, and my father's birthday, are dates for the clan to assemble in a grand durbar. As homing birds, members of the extended tribe - including some none of us can identity - start arriving by the droves. They come by air and train and road, from Gujarat and Assam, Kerala and Punjab, with spouses and children and grandchildren and sometimes with friends and in-laws, carrying their allergies and old feuds, mandating their beer chilled but their whisky sans ice. They need boarding and lodging, fetching and transferring, entertainment and sightseeing, and babysitters to keep the children occupied. If, like me, you don't remember whatshisname, or face - and mix up the babies - then you're better off on the fringes of the melee, but that's difficult since you are also (notionally) the host.

So you send drivers for pick-ups and write menus for the chef, who is prone to spicing up dishes if he's having a tantrum, and hope that time will, indeed, chug along a bit faster because everyone else at least seems to be having so much fun. "Even if I want to, or your mum tells you to," I said to my son, "you will discourage us from getting sentimental in our dotage and wanting to share our anniversaries with the family." "Even if you want to," assured my son, "don't count on me for help."

"You can choose to be sentimental, or not, that is your choice," said our daughter, "as long as it doesn't affect my wedding." Our daughter celebrates her birthday like one. Just as for my parents, we are asked to fetch and carry and respond to her every whim. Even though she doesn't look like settling down any time soon, she has her plans ready for the perfect wedding, which includes a very large number of guests and a great number of "functions" arranged at different venues. "I'll organise everything," I've tried to reassure her, but she doesn't require her parents doing "tacky" things, so we'll have to employ the services of a wedding planner. I don't think I'll be retiring any time soon.

At my parents', after everything was over, these are the losses I counted: one broken garden swing, two missing (presumably lost) mobile phones, eight broken wine glasses, a set of car keys lost (the replacement will take a week to come), one pilfered silver tray, an aunt's dentures hidden as a prank by a drunk cousin who can't remember where he put them, one big and several small (drunken, but that's just an excuse) fights over the family's dirty laundry, and a broken TV no one is owning up to.

"I prefer elegant parties to big parties," my wife confided to me, "so for our anniversary we must avoid all this tamasha," she said, addressing the debris of my parents' celebration. I would have preferred not having a party at all to having one, an allergic reaction from suffering too many people in the same room at the same time, but agreed anyway. My wife has just shared a list of people who have confirmed attendance and it includes several out-of-townies. I'll be coordinating pick-ups and drops and rooms and drinks for longer than I had hoped.