Kishore Singh: Paid parties put paid to fun

In my mother’s kitchen you’re sure to find sachets of tomato ketchup, sugar, salt and pepper packets, and tiny jars of jam and marmalade, all with expiry dates that ran out several years ago, wrapped in plastic bags and stuffed into cookie jars. They aren’t strictly for use, they’re just the leftovers from airline meals and hotel breakfast trays that my father believes he has the right to help himself to as a paying passenger, though it’s extremely difficult to eat with the cutlery he also regularly purloins — egg and toast are just about manageable, but eating rice with the twin-tyned forks pinched from Indian Airlines, now that requires some feat.

Tell my father that he’s a garden-variety crook, the equivalent of a pickpocket, and he’d be shocked. Not my wife though, who through strange osmosis has inherited his petty burgling genes, so her bags and our bathrooms are supplied with paper towels from all the hotel washrooms she makes it a habit to visit — when most people go pub-crawling in the city, my wife and I go loo-looting, like serial users craving the next fix of soap, hand-sanitiser or moisturiser. As for those hotels that prefer to stock their public toilets with bottles of lotions with their screw caps off, well, my wife says to tell them we can find other places for our custom, you cheapskates!

She’s also miffed about the new trend that mandates clutch bags for party wear, which isn’t conducive to dinner takeaways — not if you mean to empty the bread basket in what used to be those huge bags that were all the rage till not so long ago, where in their previously lined with greaseproof paper innards you could conceal sushi, or even gilouti, provided you didn’t get too ambitious and decided to leave the soy and mint chutney be. She’s made good anyhow, adapting to the times, with what’s on the menu relegated to the backburner in favour of floral pickings. “The car’s in the porch,” she’s apt to snap her fingers at a passing waiter, “these are the two arrangements I want you to carry for me — fast now.” What’s a bewildered server to do but comply?

Everybody loves a good party, but they love it even more when it’s free. Ever wonder why the gentleman with the flashy tie who makes such a fuss over his Glenfiddich or Ardmore at the CEO’s party, settles for an Indian whisky at a colleague’s farewell where everyone’s going dutch? Or why the neighbour who rejects glass after glass of wine because “it’s the wrong temperature” or “it’s off”, decides that rum-and-coke is more to her liking when it’s her turn to have the neighbours home for dinner? When I worry about who’s going to be driving my daughter back from a night out, she gives me a peck on the cheek to assure me, “Dad, it’s all right, no one is going to be drunk, everyone has to pay for their own beverages.”

Perhaps it’s a good thing after all that they seem to come and go in groups intent only on the music. “What’s to eat, mom?” my daughter will ask, as she postures before the mirror in her gladrags before slipping on her stilettos. “I thought you were going out for dinner,” I check, mystified. “I am,” she confirms, “which is why I have to have something to eat now.” Back home, slipping those deadly heels off, she heads first for the kitchen to warm up a cup of noodles. Paid parties, they’re not a lot of fun. Especially since everyone’s on the loot, so you can’t bring back even a miserable tab of butter as your spoils of an evening out….