Kishore Singh: Gay abandon on the party scene

This morning my wife said to me, "Now that we know so many criminals, what will happen to us?" I thought of our friends, a few of whom might have cheated on their taxes, or bribed a policeman to avoid a traffic challan - delinquents, yes, but hardly felons. "Nothing, really," I said to her, reminding her that though the writ of the Aam Aadmi Party might stretch to weeding out corruption, it hadn't yet made baksheesh for services rendered an offence. Personally, I think Arvind Kejriwal needs to do something about the excessive service charge in the restaurants, but for some reason he seems fixated only on power tariffs.
 

"No, you silly thing," my wife explained to me, "I'm worried for the sake of our friends whose love dare not speak its name." "It's true," I agreed, for we have acquaintances whose sexuality has now been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. "Do you think we're guilty of harbouring criminal elements," my wife asked me, "if our gay friends come home for a drink?" "Oh dear," I worried, for what with having other friends from a minority community whose presence is sometimes alarming to our majority buddies, inviting people over for a bonfire bash was turning into a game of snakes and ladders.

For starters, we couldn't have Padma and Sushma together ever since they'd fought about whose husband had bought an Audi first - even though Padma's husband had booked his earlier, Sushma's husband had got his delivery first - and now they did not speak to each other. Lucky and Happy had been rivals ever since they'd been double-timed by a girl who'd then married someone else, and their bitter ripostes were now boring after so many years. Sheba thought her friend Anuradha's husband's innuendoes were regressive and had taken to arguing with him every time they met, both of them demanding their chums split into supporting camps, just like the inmates of Big Boss, which usually meant an evening spent bickering instead of merely drinking.

We'd decided on a bonfire party on the terrace, the trouble being who to safely invite. With people either sulking, or being abusive, the festivities didn't bode well. Already, the list of guests had been brooded over, scratched, annotated, edited, surveyed and redrawn. "And now all this," my wife wailed, the Supreme Court verdict having added a not inconsiderable burden to her guest list. Nor was that all. Political positions had polarised to the extent that you couldn't have Congress and BJP supporters together, to say nothing of the very vocal aam aadmis who had every reason to be loud. And if you hadn't voted in the elections, you risked social suicide, which is why we couldn't ask our friends, the Jains and the Sharmas, even though they are otherwise wallpapers who add volume to a party without being in any way offensive or controversial, or even noticeable. Every time we've done a headcount of the number of guests, we've had to pinch ourselves that they were actually present.

My wife has, therefore, done what she deems best if we're to have guests over. "You must not talk about money," she told her friends Padma and Sushma, "or politics" - this for everybody - "or sex" as a warning to Anuradha's husband, adding the Supreme Court rulings, murder trials, non-bailable offences and PJs to her veto list. "So, what do you want us to do," her friend Sarla asked, "get bloody sozzled?" Which, as an idea, has great merit.