It’s the season for literature festivals (and thus lit fest events). That means it’s additionally excessive season for small bites and small discuss.
At a latest lit fest occasion, the Kolkata night time nonetheless had a hint of chill. My scarf had emerged from its naphthalene hibernation. As I smiled, tried witty banter and balanced my glass of wine, a waiter approached with a tray of hors d’oeuvres.
I skewered the grilled prawn delicately with a toothpick, popped it into my mouth and returned to my dialog. Then I realised I used to be caught with the stick. I stood there, wine glass in a single hand, stick within the different, hoping my fastidiously organized scarf wouldn’t require any sudden adjusting.
Writers are sometimes socially inept creatures used to being on their very own. Holding on to a glass of wine and a starter provides them one thing to do as a substitute of awkwardly hanging out on the fringes of a dialog. So we are likely to eat extra starters than obligatory and are then stranded with tell-tale indicators of our nervous gluttony. Those discarded sticks are the particles of fancy events. They signify the slim pickings of our literary lives.
I noticed an eminent poet wanting round additionally twiddling with a stick. He caught my eye and shrugged knowingly. The more proficient amongst us confidently hailed a passing waiter, picked up a hen kebab with a brand new cocktail stick and jettisoned the outdated one in a single clean transfer. The poet pointed on the pizza counter. There was an unused nook with just a few discarded toothpicks. He added his. I sidled over and added mine.
‘Hilary Mantel grappled with it too’
I realised my stick dilemma was not so petty when I discovered even the redoubtable Hilary Mantel had grappled with it. In the London Review of Books, she wrote about going to a ebook commerce occasion at Buckingham Palace, an event graced by the Queen. Little kebabs had been going round on trays. “It took some time to chew through one of them, and the guests were left with the little sticks in their hands. They tried to give them back to the flunkeys, but the flunkeys smiled and sadly shook their heads, and moved away.”
As she left the occasion, she seemed again and on the base of each pillar was a forest of deserted and gnawed sticks. That is strictly what the Queen would have seen too if she too had seemed again. It was like gazing on the ratty prosaic underside of the pomp and splendour of monarchy — “the scaffolding of reality too nakedly displayed, the daylight let in on the magic.”
As a person, I’m luckier than Mantel. If push involves shove, and I’m unable to find a waste basket within the arid expanse of a brightly lit lodge ballroom, I can unobtrusively stuff the sticks, wrapped in a serviette, into my pocket.
But till I learn Mantel, I didn’t perceive that these weren’t simply cocktail sticks. They had been little sticks that flimsily held up your entire spectacle. Whether royals or writers, we prefer to preen smugly when positioned on a pedestal. When you out of the blue get wined and dined and plied with present baggage, it could actually depart you just a little light-headed. Suddenly for one night, you’re a crucial particular person, not somebody who works in his pyjamas. There are individuals dancing attendance on you with trays of canapés. “Could you bring those achari prawns,” you ask the person attempting to ply you with mushroom vol-au-vents.
Bursting a bubble
All that glamour is constructed on a home of playing cards. Or a pile of little skewers. While the descriptions of the starters may ooze sophistication, all we’re left with, ultimately, are little pointy sticks. Sometimes to humiliate us additional, the galouti kebab falls to items as we attempt to skewer it and carry it off the tray. And there I’m with half a galouti teetering on my stick, the opposite half fallen ungracefully onto the tray whereas the waiter appears on totally deadpan, discreetly ignoring my cocktail stick ineptitude.
Any air of smug superiority I had felt about being feted and dined immediately vanishes, skewered on my stick. It’s not a cocktail stick any extra. It is the petard on which I’m hoisted, a strategy to burst my ego bubble. Defeated, I decide the kebab up with my fingers. The waiter stays studiously expressionless.
Then the lit fest season ends. The shawls and occasion duds are packed away. We return to our shabby writerly lives till sooner or later, for some dinner, I placed on these formal pants or that blazer. And I stick my hand into the pocket and get stabbed by a toothpick, a remembrance of events previous from a world to which I don’t actually belong.
It’s like a pinprick of conscience.
The author is the creator of ‘Don’t Let Him Know’, and likes to let everybody learn about his opinions whether or not requested or not.
Source: www.thehindu.com