When my parents attended dinner parties, it was understood that we were going to have a few unsupervised hours. But all of us liked to pretend that things would continue as they normally would. So when the children’s schedule said 7PM to 8PM study hour, everyone accepted that yes, it would still be Study Hour, with or without parental supervision. Of course, everyone knew that no studying would take place that night. The pretense was just the genteel societal thing to do. What separates us from animals, yada yada.
It was also a given for us, when we waved goodbye to them, as they drove off in a white Ambassador car, to say, “Hey, call before you come home.”
It was a widely transparent move on our part because at the time, we were too young to have mortal concerns for our parents, so the concern certainly was not that; we simply wanted an early warning system. But my mother, ever the gentle lady, wanting to keep peace and maintain the same delicate societal pretense as with Pretend-Study Hour, always complied. She always called us from wherever the party was held and we could calculate how much time we had to put the house back to order and get back to our study desks, or bed, whichever was appropriate.
The system worked.
Once the Ambassador was out of earshot, the entire house would descend into chaos. We did whatever we thought was best anarchy. It was always unpredictable. It could be a tame night when we just played Student-Teacher, still pretending to study; or just read comic books; or listened to audio tapes of Mizo Drama Clubs. TV did not always have cartoon on (because we are that old) so we played Fantasy a lot – Miss World (I was always Costa Rica, by the way), War, Batman, Business (that one always cost us a whole notebook whose torn up pages served as currency notes), or something. That, or, of course, it could be a night we all jumped from one sofa to the other and for two to three hours no one’s feet touched the floor at all. Or it could be a night where all the Barbies got decapitated, the GI Joes get quartered, and all the dynamos in all the battery-operated toys get extracted. Or just a wrestling mania which ended up in everyone crying.
I’m just saying we did OK. I mean it was dark. We had no neighbours. We had a baby-sitter and usually one more orderly in the house to make us dinner. There were sentry guards outside the house. And did I mention it was dark? None of us wusses who were dead scared of ghosts would dare to go outside anyway. Mortal threat-wise, we were fine.
A reflection of society, really, if you think about it. We don’t see it with our own eyes or actively participate in many activities in society but we all have a general understanding of what goes on. Many times we just like to keep up with The Pretense because it is what holds society together. If we just all did whatever we each wanted to do, society as we know it would collapse. And every now and then, we all like to let off some steam, choosing our own poisons. The war between the Individual and Society forever wages but mostly, we toe the line. Either that or risk ex-communication, or worse. Not for nothing did Albus Dumbledore say the youth cannot know how age thinks and feels, but old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young. We all conform, whatever degrees, one way or the other. Society beats us down. It is bigger than we are. The madman or the artists’ pain, and all that.
My parents no longer call us when they go out. They don’t really do dinner parties anymore either. These days, in their retirement years, they go out in a little grey Maruti 800, driven by my dad, all over Aizawl. They never call. In fact, these days, it is us who often call and ask where they were. My my how the turn tables.
We seem to live a very Live And Let Live policy these days. I wonder if that, too, is reflective of society today.
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