Kishore Singh: First come, first served

The admonition on most invitations these days – “Please carry this card with you for reasons of security” – appears a little intimidating. Security, really? Are our friends expecting terrorists to disrupt their daughter’s pheras? Will snipers be lined up at the book launch? “I’m carrying my fruit knife with me in my purse,” my wife insists, till I tell her that far from making her feel secure, she could be turned into a security risk for carrying an instrument capable of doing some violence to an apple, or guava, but which would be useless on people.

The risk, I tell her, is not so much from security as from gatecrashers. “You mean, like the party we went to where the prawns were excellent,” my wife says. “Exactly,” I tell her, “till we realised we were at the wrong venue and had to go one floor up.” “And you didn’t even let me try the dessert,” sighs my wife wistfully, “especially since the catering at the other party was so awful.”

Everyone likes a free party but none more so than those not invited in the first place. I suppose we’re as guilty as anyone else for asking along the odd guest who wasn’t issued an invitation but who, for some reason or other, appeared to be the odd appendage on that evening — a house guest one had to entertain, a sister-in-law who, well, wanted to tag along, or some old school chum who decided to stop by just when you were stepping out and felt bad for the poor bloke for having driven halfway across the city in search of free booze on the presumption that if he’d called ahead, you might have said you were going out simply to keep him away. Then, not wanting to appear like a freeloader before your host, you try to ignore the guest you’ve brought along anyway, only he sticks to you like a leech, forcing you to make an introduction but not the admission that you’re responsible for adding to his per-plate cost. Or maybe it’s just karma, for wasn’t your host the one who’d brought along a couple that you’d never even met before they came as guests to your party that you had especially said was just a small affair?

Where there are parties, there will be freeloaders, invitations or not, and now here we were, at dinner, waiting for a table where all the cutlery settings had been placed formally, but there wasn’t a spare chair in sight — or even a square foot of carpet area. People milled around looking for forks, glasses of wine or the polenta with pine nuts into which waiters were now dumping a mix of mutton and dal. The rice had long run out, the kitchen staff was buzzing around carrying whatever food the chef could find in his pantry, so you could have your hakka noodles with sarson-ka-saag, and if you wanted seconds you’d have to settle for mashed potatoes with chicken curry. It was a party with more gatecrashers than invited guests, and they came from all corners of the globe, having read in the event booklet that there was a party on that night but having failed to grasp that “by invitation only” required you to, well, have been invited in the first place.

You could hardly blame us then for leaving the party venue in search of food that was a little more palatable and air that was a little more breathable, which my wife found, luckily for us, across the hall where it suited us just fine that we didn’t know anyone, and even though the hosts looked at us suspiciously, hey, we did have an invitation — so what if it was to the wrong party in town.