Kishore Singh: Heavy weather over friendship

When Sarla and her husband deplaned in Istanbul, en route to London, my wife hoped it would still be raining. It had poured on the afternoon a few days previously that we’d spent at the Istanbul airport, waiting for our delayed connection to Rome but unable to enter the city because we hadn’t bothered with visas, a hitch that Sarla had crowed over when they’d come to wish us bon voyage in Delhi. “It’s raining in Istanbul,” my wife had sent them a triumphant message from the airport, “too bad you won’t enjoy it much.” For good measure, my wife copied the message to Padma and her husband who, coincidentally, were also scheduled to take a break in Istanbul on their way to Greece.

We’d booked separately though quirkily on the same carrier, our friends opting for stopovers on Turkish Airlines’ Istanbul that we’d overlooked, causing my wife to pretend we hadn’t wanted to go there in the first place. Did they really think “that tourist trap Athens”, or “London, oh dear, just like Greater Kailash in summer” could compare with Italy and Michelangelo’s art, Titian’s paintings, the Sistine Chapel, and the vineyards of Tuscany? “Tchah,” she exclaimed to Kali, a common acquaintance, “what travel novices to compare themselves to our tour of culture, hmph!”

We went to the Colosseum and to Circus Maximus, to the Pantheon and the Spanish Steps where my wife had herself photographed, and then sat in a wayside café on Via del Corso to upload the pictures to send to our Istanbul-bound friends. She included a photograph of herself tossing a coin into the Fountain of Trevi with the message, “I wished for your sakes that it would be dry in Istanbul,” though the weather girl had already reported sunny skies over that city. She crossed her fingers when I told her this and said, “I hope it will rain so much that they won’t be able to go out at all.” “They’re our friends,” I said, “why wish them unwell?” “Because they failed to share information about their stopovers when we made our bookings,” retorted my wife, “and I hope they hate it there.”

For our part, we traipsed to every sacristy and obelisk to make sure we covered more places in one day than our friends managed in Istanbul through their entire stay. We walked up neglected steps to gaze down at the city skyline till we probably knew Rome better than its residents. And we shopped at the neighbourhood supermarkets for lettuce and cheese and fruit, for olives and condiments, making salads on the go, sipping gallons of wine, walking cheekily across roads where the whim took us just to see the traffic stop obediently even though the drivers threw up their hands in frustration.

“It’s really cold here,” I sneaked messages to Sarla and Padma, having sat shivering in the evenings at the cafes and bars while pairing our wines with risottos and watching young men zip around the piazzas with their girlfriends. Because we’d neglected to carry our woollens, we were both soon snivelling into our handkerchiefs. Istanbul, though, after that freak shower, remained gloriously sunlit. “Not a cloud in sight,” Sarla gloated over visions of my wife with her feet in a bucket of hot water. “I’m sure you’ll be fine by the time you get back to Delhi,” wrote Padma. “I wonder why,” sniffed my wife, puzzled over their solicitous messages, “our friends don’t like us much.”