Where's the party tonight?

With Diwali a few days away, my wife said to me this morning, “We have useless friends, nobody has invited us for a card party yet.” “I imagine everyone is busy with their families, or work,” I dismissed her cribbing. My wife sometimes makes a mountain out of a molehill. Now was such an occasion. She took out loose sheets of paper on which she had been scribbling what appeared to be accounts, but which revealed themselves to be some sort of score. “We have had 43 card parties at home,” she said, totalling up numbers in her diary. “But we’ve been married only 32 years,” I reminded her. “Yes,” she said, “but some years we had more than one Diwali party, because all our friends are kanjoos.”

It wasn’t just Diwali parties she had made an inventory of. It seems that we had hosted 1,597 parties in the same period, such qualification based on having more than 10 guests, family not included. Of these, 438 had been “big bashes” she said, with 40 guests or more qualifying for that honour. Get-togethers were different from parties, my wife reminded me, of which — separately — we had apparently had 863. Get-togethers meant a guest list of six or under. Friends dropping in casually and staying for dinner were not included on the list. 

But there was more. “I have served 757 breakfasts to my in-laws,” she said, “the same number of lunches, and 711 dinners” — the discrepancy registering the occasions my parents were invited out by their friends in Delhi. (I could have, but did not, point out that my in-laws had enjoyed at least as many meals — and room nights — at our home, such comparisons being not so much odious as dangerous for one’s marital health.) On the same sheet, she had totted up the number of birthday parties she had hosted for our children, those for my daughter being vastly more than her age because she insisted on having several parties for herself as a child. (Apparently, my wife had also baked 1,365 cakes at home, though not birthday cakes.) With the children grown up, she had compiled the number of parties held separately for them, and this in addition to the parties we had thrown added up to quite a staggering figure.

None of our friends, it seemed, were as prolific. “Sarla,” my wife pooh-poohed her once-upon-a-time best friend, “has had no more than a few dozen parties,” which was hardly true, for once upon a time my wife and her bestie competed with each other over having guests at home, though it is true it has been a while since Sarla has had any party, leave alone one for Diwali. Our other friends too, it seems, have been scarce hosts, finding the occasional birthday or anniversary as reason to summon up buddies. “Don’t forget that Padma only has potluck parties,” my wife pointed out, having catered for a score or more of these at-homes with none of the cheer associated with pooled meals. 

Having been to a few parties this week, but none at the homes of those we reckon as friends, my wife is at a loss about where to have a flutter, or two, with cards. “I suppose we’ll just have to call them home,” she muttered, paving the way for our 44th Diwali party. Whether it will qualify as our 439th big bash, or merely a 1,598th party, will depend on the numbers who attend. Watch this space for updates.