So there’s this old friend in town who can’t wait to meet you, and promises you lunch at 1pm that afternoon. You rush to the restaurant, old-friend-welcoming smile plastered on your face, old joke on the tip of your tongue - and there’s no old friend waiting. You order a beer, scan the menu and your phone, examine the trappings of Nirav Modi’s ₹75,000 a day suite in Manhattan, wink back at the winking girl video, look up with the smile that’s getting less welcoming every time the door swings open.
At 1.30 pm, and a pitcher down, you call him, he’s new to town after all, and ask if he’s lost, but hurrah, he’s two minutes away. You order pitchers for the two of you. At 2 pm, he’s still two minutes away and you’ve drunk his beer as well, and eaten enough masala peanuts to help you levitate. At 2.30 pm, you’re seeing double of whoever’s walking in through that door, and try to join a kitty party with enthusiasm which, you’re peeved they don’t return. He calls, he’s only two minutes away. He’s just around the corner. Whichever corner he’s around takes him another 25 minutes to turn. He apologises for being slightly late, he hopes solicitously that you haven’t been waiting too long. You eye the empty beer mugs with feeling, imagining what good use you could put them to, were you slightly more inclined to violence. But he’s an old friend, after all, and two minutes don’t really mean two minutes, unless you like your noodles raw.
As a people, we’re extremely generous in giving our word with righteous indignation at the thought that we should keep it. We’re not finicky like the Japanese or pernickety like the Deutsche. We’re a flexible lot. Take the abundance of good days promised us, which, of course, could only mean the biscuits. Or the guy who installs expensive high-tech gadgetry, promising he’s ‘always around’ if anything goes wrong. The gadget doesn’t work – and neither suddenly does his phone.
You promise to attend a colleague’s niece’s son’s wedding with convincing sincerity. You promise to visit, mail, message, call back in two minutes.
Promises, after all, come cheap. No one really expects you to keep your word. Quite the opposite. Were you to land up at 7 pm as invited, the hostess would still be whisking the plastic sheet off the dining table, and the host would be out buying the ‘home-made’ kebabs. And what if you were to actually return every call —how very ‘available’ that would make you look! What if those celebrities actually used the cars they advertise – cheap, cheap! It’s hyperbole which sells brands and wins elections, not honesty.
No, keeping your word is definitely on its way out – it’s last season, last century.
So why blame the NMs and VMs who promise to repay the few thousand crores they’ve vaporised ... they’ll pay it all back, the money’s on its way... two minutes... it’s just around the corner.
Where Jane De Suza, the author of Happily Never After, talks about the week’s quirks, quacks and hacks.