THE INVITATION DILEMMA

 Being a dyed in the wool (now a 'dead in the water' ) bureaucrat, I have never been the life and soul of any party. But strangely enough, hostesses kept inviting me frequently to dinners, I suspect because of my village idiot qualities, because I could keep a conversation flowing in the silences when everyone else had their snouts buried in the main course. But since 2015 or so the invitations have dried up, like the mythical Saraswati river: divergent political perceptions make the breaking of bread with me an uncomfortable experience. Most of my erstwhile friends, colleagues (those not yet brain dead, that is) and those sharing the Shukla genes with me, are of the view that Mr. Modi's arrival has been like the Second Coming whereas I see it as Paradise Lost or the arrival of the False Messiah. But this suits me fine: in these twilight (not yet sunset, folks) years one cannot wish for more of an evening than a single malt at hand, a contented pooch at one's feet, smoke rings framing one's face like a Henri Matisse painting, and the sounds of Beethoven's Emperor concerto wafting through the house, a voice-over, as it were, to the sounds of the city.

Which brings me smoothly to the media frenzy about the invitations for the dinner/banquet for Mr. Putin recently. It was made out that Rahul Gandhi's omission from the guest list was a well deserved snub for his hostility to Modi and the purchase of Russian oil by India. To which my response is: HUH? Being invited for dinner with a war criminal, a fugitive from an ICC arrest warrant, a killer of half a million Ukranians and a million of his own soldiers, a kidnapper of 10000 children- that is not exactly the greatest honour in the world, is it? ( I am not even going into the question of whether it was appropriate for India to have hosted, and laid out the red carpet, for such a person). Mr. Modi and his cohorts may be comfortable in the company of the Putins and Netanyahus of this world, but most of the civilized world is not. And I suspect the government knew this, and that RG would in all probability turn down a dinner invitation in any case and so made a virtue out of necessity.

Something Mr. Shashi Tharoor should have done, in my view. He is no longer a part of India's government or even its official diplomatic framework, and was thus not bound by MEA's protocol or the invitation. I am not saying here that he should have refused the invitation as part of a Congress "boycott" of Modi or Putin, but as a moral statement. If he could disassociate himself from a Savarkar award, then why not a Putin dinner? Aren't both based on the same principle of right and wrong? Surely, what is sauce for the RSS goose should also be sauce for the Russian gander. But maybe Shashi was just being cautious: Putin may have taken umbrage and treated him as an enemy. And his enemies have an odd habit of ending up in hospital beds or beneath the Siberian permafrost. Just this week he has threatened personal harm to the Belgian Prime Minister and President of its Central Bank if they released Russia's frozen assets to the European Union for further disbursal to Ukraine!  Certainly not a dinner to die for, as Gen Z would say, or more likely, tweet. Safer to sup with the devil, I daresay.

Not that these dinners are very exciting or stimulating occasions. I have attended many during my days in the MEA, and have even organised a few in that Mecca of gastronomic diplomacy, Hyderabad House in New Delhi; I can vouch for the fact that these repasts are like a Death Watch, where everyone fervently wishes for the proceedings to end quickly. Nobody knows anyone, the seating arrangement always ensures that the person you dislike most in the world is seated next to you, you need to be fluent in at least seven languages in order to converse with anyone, all the pretty ladies are arranged next to the Chief Guest or Host like a row of savouries, out of reach of even an Indian Wrestling Federation office-bearer. Everyone is more tight-lipped than the oyster in your soup lest they let slip a state secret, the food tastes like a dog's breakfast, no liquor is served in India: they served apple juice or nimbu pani during my time but its probably cow urine now. Everything is so bloody formal and starchy that even the chicken legs on the plate stand at attention. No wonder Rahul Gandhi skipped the Putin feeding orgy and went to a pizza joint instead.

But I must concede that rejecting such invitations is not without its risks. In the early 80's, as a relatively junior officer in Shimla, I received an invite for a dinner at Raj Bhavan. I had attended these ghastly functions earlier, in which you had to sing the national anthem before the soup and again after the dessert, and had no intention of parading my patriotism again. So I fixed up a squash game with my buddy Sandeep Madan that evening and sent a regret to the Governor's Secretary. Sandeep, who thinks that keeping an appointment with a senior is a sign of servility, never turned up, so I missed both the dinner and the game. Next morning I was summoned by the Chief Secretary, Mr. Tochhawng.

Now, no one with an IQ of 25 and above (the UPSC benchmark for the IAS) argued with Mr. Tochhawng, primarily because he was built like a Patton tank, was about 6' 6'' tall and had a genuine 56"  chest, unlike some people I don't know. He was a mild man most of the time, but when he was wont to shout he sounded like thunder reverberating among the mountain peaks. He started reverberating the moment I entered his room. "What's this I hear about your refusing a Raj Bhavan invitation, Shukla?" he roared like a primed IED. "I had a squash game lined up, sir," I replied. The IED exploded. "You should shove that squash racquet up where the sun doesn't shine, young man! No one- NO ONE- rejects an invitation from the Governor, you cretin, it's not an invitation-it's an ORDER! Got it?"

You bet I got it. Maybe Shashi Tharoor was right, after all.