There was no sign of her troupe yet. So Anu, finally smiling at Shwetha, followed the waiter. The man walked past the lawn, then past the large dining area with a wall-to-wall TV blaring IPL, past a tastefully decorated smaller dining area and stopped at a closed door.

‘Is he taking us to the toilet?’ Shwetha whispered. ‘To murder us there?’

‘Shh…’ Anu waited for the waiter to open the door. The man stood at the door and said politely, ‘Please wait here, ma’am. I will be back.’

Anu and Shwetha rushed inside the room and stopped short. It was a storeroom! With cans of oil, flour and potatoes stacked all along the wall. In the middle was a table with three proper legs and one broken short. The dim light in the room was what her father used to call a zero-candle lamp.

‘Well done, Anu. Hope your invitees are blind and have lost their senses of smell.’ Shwetha began to laugh.

Anu turned to the waiter who was now bringing in the chairs. ‘Look. Please don’t send in the old people who are waiting at the reception. Not yet.’

‘Shwetha, go get the balloons and the cake. Go from the garden entrance.’

In the next fifteen minutes, Anu begged the waiter to cover the storage area with table clothes. It looked as though people were hiding behind curtains, but still, it was better than seeing sacks of potatoes. She then asked him to turn on the wall-mounted TV . It was a tiny one, but as long as her father-in-law could watch IPL it was all right.

Shwetha placed the balloons here and there and put the cake on the table. Then she looked around. ‘Anu, this place still looks like a dreadful dump.’

Before Anu replied, everyone walked in. Anu scanned the faces for disapproval. But the great thing about old folks is that they are not hostile. ‘Oh ho! A cake for me!’ Her father-in-law laughed in glee, his friends joining in.

Thankfully, none of them noticed that the picture of the cricket bat on the cake was drawn with icing or that the table had only three good legs or that that was a room where the staff slept!

‘Winger,’ smiled Shwetha. Anu smiled contentedly. She had saved the night after all. When they were all about to disperse, Anu’s father-in-law stopped to talk to her. ‘Thank you, Anu. For all the effort.’

Then, Padma aunty whispered in Anu’s ears. ‘Next time, try not to forget.’

23

23

‘Everyone knew I had forgotten about the party and they were nice enough not to mention it. Except, of course, Padzilla,’ Anu gulped her beer down.

Sameer chuckled. ‘Why do you have to lie? Just say things as they are!’

Anu shook her head. ‘I lie only to those who make me feel miserable.’

‘Why do you hide from Sanju that we meet?’