Kishore Singh: In the nick of time

When our son missed his red-eye from Mumbai to Delhi, he blamed it on the hotel for failing to wake him up when requested. When I insisted he had been negligent, he pointed out - rightly, I suppose - that my wife and I had missed our flight from Bengaluru only a day previously. His mother had suggested we were on a later flight, an error we discovered only when we reported at the counter several hours late. In both cases, the additional cost had to be borne by me for what was no fault of mine.

Nor is this the only time we have been "delayed". While showing up for a wedding function an entire day late on account of an oversight might be unforgivable, we've been routinely lackadaisical about timings, often arriving after dinner has been served, and, worse, cleared away. Once, we showed up for lunch to find the original occupants had given way to another group, a fact we discovered only because instead of lunch we were served high tea. My wife shushed me up when I said we should leave, and was entertained by her new friends, and I don't think anyone realised we had gatecrashed - not until they probably opened the gift that was meant for a friend's wedding anniversary, not a stranger's baby shower.

Mostly, we've caught flights by the skin of our teeth, and all on account of my wife changing her mind about her accompanying wardrobe. No matter how early I set the alarm for a morning flight, I can be sure my wife will wake up to decide that all the clothes she had packed the previous night are wrong. If clothes and shoes are flung out, it's a given she will find she's "forgotten" to pack "matching" bags, or jewellery, or stoles, necessitating rushed trips to the local market, one reason among several for our infamous delays, even when staying at a destination hotel for a wedding that requires "a minute, at most", as an exasperated hostess pointed out, to step out of our room and into the party venue.

Embassies and expats are notorious for starting on time, and having realised our inability to make it even on Indian Standard Time, they've stopped calling us for formal occasions, causing my wife to complain about implied racism, which is hardly true. We must cause them considerable trepidation too, for whenever they're invited home, they're a regulation half-hour late, only to discover they're still early, and my wife is fussing in the kitchen in her casual clothes. She is always late at her own parties.

Being behind schedule can be infectious, which is how I landed up to take part in a panel discussion, only to discover that a medical conference was in process, the one on art having occurred several hours previously. Often, my fault lies is assuming the venue when, in fact, the launch is in quite another part of town. Which raises the moral dilemma: to arrive still later at the correct venue, or to ignore it altogether? It isn't something I've successfully resolved, my wife hijacking such occasions to "call on" friends for an impromptu celebration.

While I'm not averse to these diversions, I do resent having to pay for someone else's sins of omission or commission. Which is why, from now on, whoever misses a flight pays for it, even though my track record on that score is far from exemplary and squares with the family average.