Kishore Singh:The art of being boring

There’s an interesting mix of people in the room: I tote up a corporate filmmaker, an irreverent fiction writer, two bohemian artists, a brilliant photographer, a couple of gossipy journalists, an exporter who goes to sleep in Madrid but wakes up in Cairo, entrepreneurs with exciting start-ups, a designer who can’t stop talking about which Hollywood stars wore his threads, a theatre director working on a new play, a few diplomats, a shippie, a chef, some technocrats and bureaucrats, a publisher… The air is thick with conversation, and laughter — and cigarette smoke. I imagine it’s where a lot of people might like to be, which is why I cannot understand why my son wants to go off with his buddy for a quiet beer to a pub. “Are you sure?” I ask him, concerned at least partially at the potential loss of a pair of hands to help me at the bar. Looking around him, my son declares, “Dad, your friends are so boring!”

The filmmaker is singing for a group in one corner, one of the artists is dancing even though no one’s switched the music on, the publisher seems like a stand-in for a stand-up comedian, the designer’s stories are getting more outrageous, the shippie is scolding everyone because they aren’t paying attention to the house pet, one of the guests is harping on about vegetarianism, the chef has decided to flambé a selection of snacks for a little drama — and my son says, “Look at them, a bunch of deadbeats — I’m going, Dad.”

“We must get some new friends,” I tell my wife the next morning, “our children find us, and our friends, lacklustre.” “Let them find more exciting friends for themselves,” my wife retorts, “I’m too old to make new ones, or let go of my old ones.” Mindful of the veto, I address the task at hand, which is to make possible my son’s birthday party at our club. He wants a place reserved by the poolside for his friends, since some of them might want to swim — which makes it sound more exciting than our parties, I admit to my wife — but which calls for bending the club rules since private parties aren’t encouraged there. When the clearances have been obtained, he tells us that he would like to sit alone with his electrifying friends, but my wife and I should be at hand to take care of the orders and signing the bills and the other detritus of managing a party.

Finally, of course, only a few of the boys condescend to swim — and then it doesn’t seem too exciting, since they seem to cling to the edge to watch the IPL match on the big screen by the poolside. Since my son is in the pool, I decide to take over some of his duties as host, and introduce myself to his friends who, I find as I engage them in conversation, are like him, all of them students of law, so it’s like a conference of lawyers-in-the-making. Sometimes lawyers can be boring, I know, but these must be all interesting people if they are my son’s friends, I remind myself, and the only way to find out is, of course, by talking to them.

Over the next half-hour they swamp me with information — they are interning with various law firms in the city and one wants to specialise in human rights, another has been following up on civil rights; they debate upon the virtues of criminal law versus corporate law; they throw acts and sub-acts to defend their positions, they talk of judiciary and reforms. So when my son comes back, I say to him, “I think your mother and I want to go home now — because your friends are so boring!”