Kishore Singh: The time of our lives

With the Janamashtami-Independence Day extended weekend offering the option of fleeing from the city, we scheduled an upcoming clan celebration cleverly to coincide with it, even if it meant long-distance co-ordination. Invitations were extended (and accepted — doesn’t anyone stay home any more?), caterers and cooks booked, accommodation arranged: In short, everything taken care of, short of our getting there, that is.

No one can blame our family for lacking the spirit of bonhomie, but getting us out and about on time is another matter altogether.

Family bets are placed on the likely time we will set out from home as well as when we will arrive at our destination, and I have it on authority that bookies have made vast fortunes off the enterprise. This time though, we could ill afford to be late — as the quasi-hosts, there was a lot we had to take charge of.

Our plans intended our leaving from Delhi in two cars, my brother and his family in one, my wife, kids and I in the other, to halt at night en route to Bikaner at Samode Palace for R&R, to leave the following morning after an early breakfast. My brother said he wouldn’t be able to leave before six in the evening; since I don’t like driving at dusk, I said we’d probably leave in the afternoon. “Hah!” said my brother. “No chance,” confirmed my sister, who was coming all the way from Ahmedabad. “Afternoon,” fretted my mother, “you mean you’ll leave at night.”

Determined to prove the sceptics wrong, I ensured that we were packed and ready on the morning of our departure, the gifts and goodies and groceries filled up in cartons, then taped, labelled and loaded in the boot of the car.

We just had to get through some urgent chores and we’d be on the road relaxed and early. Those betting otherwise would lose both money and face. “I’ll believe it when I see you here,” mocked my father. “Come and have a drink with me in the evening,” said an uncle, who was unable to join us, so I excused his sour behaviour.

By the afternoon though, our plans had begun to unravel. I was a little while longer in office, but all I had to do was swing by home and pick up the family and we’d be on our way a mere half hour later than I had anticipated. “I’m ready, almost,” said my wife, when I called to confirm, but even so, by the time I reached home, she was still drawing the bath. By then, it didn’t matter anyway. My daughter had called to say she was going to be held up in college because her professor had scheduled marketing presentations for the class. Besides, my son, who had spent the day with his girlfriend, had come back with a headache: “I need to take a nap,” he insisted.

“We can probably leave together,” I called my brother to say, ignoring the laugh he tried to disguise as a coughing fit. In the event, he did leave before us, because I had to collect my daughter from college — my wife was still bathing, my son still sleeping — and when we got back, my daughter said she was too pooped to think of a long journey right then. “We’ll leave at three in the morning,” I called to inform my brother, “join you for breakfast in Samode, don’t start before us.”

So, okay, we didn’t quite manage that, nor breakfast in Samode, and if any of you’ve placed bets, we’re running 13 hours late and, at the time of writing this, our destination, as Mohammad Shah Rangila might have said, is still door ast. But as my wife says, what’s the fuss about time anyway?