The 15 Minute Party

New Year’s Eve did not mean much in India other than to Christians, anglicized upper class elite and youth of all classes educated in missionary institutions until the 1990s. The rest spent it watching the annual late-night entertainment programme on the state-owned channel Doordarshan anchored by a young man and a woman with clipped British accents and include a pot pourri of Indian and Western music and dance, the highlight being a live performance by a celebrity Bollywood singer. Majority of Indians would ring in the new year to ‘the nightingale of India’ crooning in her dulcet voice or to her husky-voiced sibling. If the government of India decided that western popular music was more befitting the occasion, the Tamil brahmin popstar, dressed in a sari with a giant bindi on her forehead, would be invited to get families sway in their living rooms to her brand of pop music. Only an insignificant proportion of young men and women strutting down in tweed jackets and smuggled Levi’s jeans would brave the chilly nights in Delhi to make their way to the couple of discotheques in the capital. Things began to pep up a little when luxury hotels introduced the idea of New Year Eve parties to lure Indians curious to know what the New Year Eve, they knew only from Bollywood films looked like in reality. However, since very few afford to indulge in these exclusive celebrations with their overpriced tickets, the others had to make do with house parties of friends where young men and women were permitted to attend so long as they went out in groups.  They would dance to western music with the speakers turned full blast to the chagrin of their neighbours.

She had never been to a New Year party.  But the family would make the day that also happened to be her birthday special by cutting a cake at midnight.  The entertainment show on Doordarshan ended on the stroke of midnight with the comperes wishing everyone a happy new year. They would turn off the TV and open the box with the cake that her husband would have brought from the bakery with her name and go through the annual ritual of blowing the candles and cutting the cake. With all of them in their nightwear, it was more like a pajama party that took barely a few minutes until everyone turned in to the sound of music blaring from the neighbours’ house party. She would always offer to buy her children the tickets for one of those rip-off nights so that they could sample the glamorous life that she knew only from Bollywood films. But they politely turned it down knowing it would be a strain on the family finances and opted to spend the rest of the night dancing with the neighbours’ kids.

At last, they were in a neighbourhood where the New Year eve in movies spilled over into their lives. Not only Anglo-Indians and Christians but also the rest of the residents, largely from the armed forces, had a tradition of celebrating the New Year eve in style. The invitation to attend the party was extended to one and all for a modest fee for refreshments and a catered dinner. She enthusiastically bought tickets for the entire family thinking that she would be able to spend the evening with her loved ones without having to cook. But the young ones had better ideas for the evening than to be closeted with their parents in the community hall. For now, some of them could afford to buy their way into the themed New Year eve parties where dancers from Spain or Egypt would perform live to guests sipping the choices wines and feasting on delicacies from across the world. Those who couldn’t wanted permission to have a night out with friends at a club or a friend’s farmhouse.  With all the tickets wasted, it was just her and her husband who made it to the party. The organizers had ensured that it was a grand party without anyone having to shell out a fortune. The seating arrangements had been made well in advance with dinner tables covered with white tablecloths and a vase of roses strategically arranged to leave enough room for an improvised dance floor. 

The evening began with a fashion show that was professional by any standards considering that many of the colony’s daughters were winners of beauty contests and the city’s highest paid models. After the tambola, drinks were served that her teetotaler husband politely waved away before the music began to play.  The music had been carefully selected to cater to the tastes of dancers of all ages.  Elegant women in western dresses and kancheepuram silk saris were chivalrously led to the floor by mustachioed commodores to waltz to the slow, melodious music that wafted from the speakers. She watched them in utter fascination.  She had her husband sat out at all the dances and felt completely left out. Her husband made some attempts to strike a conversation with the neighbours. But most of them slightly tipsy and backslapping each other and chortling over old memories at the bases they had served together were in no mood for civilian tittle tattle. She, of course, was content to hug the shadows and sip the piping hot soup that the waiter had just brought to her table. She tried to match the parents with their sons and daughters and made a mental note of checking with the young women where they shopped for their evening wear.  Perhaps she could pick up an evening gown for her new daughter-in-law for her birthday. But they were all too busy catching up with one another, with news of their mutual friends or admiring each other’s pearls and diamonds to pay heed to her softly spoken question.  With no interest in jewellery or clothes, she had nothing to contribute to the conversation. The talk of orderlies and maids bored her to death. Nor could she play rummy or bridge that the women turned to play leaving their men to get drunk.  Her husband used to narrate long tales of his heydays in the Ministry was also like a fish out of water since he neither drank nor danced nor indulged in macho jokes. Completely at sea in a westernized environment, they decided to call it a day and sneaked out to their apartment.

Smarting under the royal brush-offs given to her by friends who would turn up to her for help with recipes, a sick child or gas cylinder, she greeted her son and daughter-in-law more enthusiastically in a high-pitched voice when they showed up for their 15 minute annual ritual of cutting the birthday cake. The son greeted her with an equally falsetto voice to cover up for his guilt at not spending the New Year Eve with her. The daughter-in-law made up some unasked-for excuses for why she was wearing a dress way above her hemline and shot a conspicuous yawn in her husband’s direction to indicate that she was exhausted by the partying and the cake ritual should not exceed 15 minutes. For those 15 minutes, she was willing to oblige with a pasted-on smile. She got her little girl and boy to prattle on incessantly to stop her in-laws from tuning in their long-playing records. 15 minutes later with the candles blown and cake cut, they gratefully made their escape. Beaming that her children remembered to look in even for 15 minutes, her face fell when she overheard her granddaughter complaining to her parents in the car parked outside her bedroom window why they were taking so long and making her miss out on all the fun in her friend’s party.

The next year, she refused to buy the tickets to the annual New Year Eve party and went to bed at 10 p.m. She could visualize her well-dressed neighbours dance at the party. She could hear their loud laughter. She couldn’t sleep until the fireworks rang in the year but she pretended she was fast asleep. When the children rang the bell at midnight, she refused to open the door and travelled in her mind’s eye to the time when they would all sit around in their living room watching the Doordarshan programme and munch on pakoras and other snacks she would whip up at a moment’s notice. The birds had all flown. Her nest was empty. She turned on her side to watch her husband snore and went to sleep.