There are no friends in this world. Only strangers we are yet to make.
~ Swami Vivekamunnunn ~
This is the first of a series of stories on how my social distancing efforts began way before the outbreak of the coronavirus.
We have these friends, a couple. Okay, we had these friends. (I’ll personally take credit for the past tense.) We would meet them regularly. The evenings were always pleasant. Except when I spoke. So I kept that to a minimum.
Now, let’s call them Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy had a daughter in the USA. Obviously. Fancy college. Of course. Paid for by Mommy-Daddy. Duh. She was working now. Daddy got her a job, silly.
I began noticing at these intimate dos that Mommy would be unavailable for an entire hour. It didn’t matter where we were. Mommy would slink away into the shadows, just totally vanish and materialise an hour later, sporting a sparkling maternal corona.
‘She just has to talk to Swapnasundarimani,’ Daddy would say, taking a large sip of single malt as a fatherly tear (with extra salt from the peanuts) rolled into his glass at the tenderness of it all.
His loving ardhangi who had borne him his ekaika suputrikamani indulging in an hour-long WhatsApp video-embrace at a designated time every night was the stuff of art, poetry and Rajshri Productions.
Everyone nodded approvingly. Mother-Daughter sentiment is unbeatable. Ask T Rajendar. Daddy even got a choked-up pat or two from a fellow father missing his own offspring, currently learning root vegetable hybridisation or tractor tyre technology in Umpherston Sinkhole, Australia.
The whole scene was soft-focus, glowy, family-affirming, wonderful. Except for one tiny glitch: me.
‘Mommy,’ I said that day what I’d been thinking all along. ‘While keeping unfailingly in touch with your grown-up daughter is fab and all, not too fair on us, is it?’
One very extended minute of silence followed. When I open my mouth that is the standard reaction. It is followed by a panchanga sravanam or a punch to my kisser, depending on my horoscope for that day.
‘How so?’ said Daddy.
‘Why fix up to meet us if you are unavailable for an entire hour?’
‘I’m there, no?’ said Daddy.
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But... er... that’s not what we signed up for, no?’
‘Hey,’ popped in Mommy, bristling like Nargis in Mother India . ‘Swapnasundarimani comes above everything for me. And that ‘s our designated time.’
‘Why?’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘Why is that your designated time?’
‘Well, er, it’s convenient for her to speak at that time,’ said Daddy.
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s when she drives to work.’
‘Okay, so it’s convenient for her ,’ I said. ‘What if that time is inconvenient for you?’
‘We’ll adjust, of course,’ they said in chorus.
‘What if I won’t?’ I said.
They both stared at each other.
‘Here’s the thing,’ I said. ‘By all means make all the adjustments you want to make for your daughter. That’s your prerogative. But don’t expect the world or life to follow suit. They won’t.’
My wife got up on cue. ‘We will be leaving, I’m guessing,’ she said.
She had guessed right.
‘Never to return,’ she muttered under her breath.
On our way back home, I had to ask, ‘Was I wrong?’
‘Your timing was off,’ she said.
‘What do you mean? I shouldn’t have said it after a drink?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have said it before dessert. It was puran poli , idiot.’
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli is a satirist. He has written four books and edited an anthology.
