H is for Hosting
Hosting so we can enact our neuroses in the humid pit of the living room
Two years ago, in Delhi, most Saturday nights used to be a constellation of conversations for us. Friends, new colleagues, some old ones, upstairs neighbours turned besties, we’d all gather around especially on smog-laden winter nights to talk till oblivion. Those wine-dark nights, us lounging on the terrace, cold air stinging the back of our knees, I’d often never even realise this unnameable confidence of hosting, enjoying would become so rare in my life in the coming years.
In Sweden, as in most parts of the world, there’s a hosting crisis. In addition to all other multiple crises that seem to be continuously unfolding around us. We’re all enconsced in our own small, tidy apartments, staring at phones, building our bodies, prepping for meals, reading our novels, writing our essays. In the last two years here, we’ve hosted friends but barely more than five or seven times. I’m largely absent from social media, but whenever I do visit Instagram, seeing photographs and videos of gatherings at friends’ places makes me feel a kind of FOMO.
Back home in Kanpur, parents host work friends, bosses, cousins and relatives all the time. When I was a kid, those dinners were a mish-mash of everything — talking seriously, dancing silly dances, endless singing, cooking together, sometimes even cleaning up together. As kids often I’d sleep over at the friend’s place just because I felt like. Parents would abide, and in turn my dad would be happy because this way he’d get to meet his friend again for the chai next morning. Parents gone, we’d swap Rudyard Kipplings and Hansel and Gretels. We’d play UNO, burn CDs of photo albums or make our own unique wishlists. We’d make noodles at 3am just to sit up and slurp them in front of the computer screen. We’d drag chairs together to make beds in case there wasn’t enough space to sleep on.
It was a minor, but important everyday ritual. Movies were made around these kind of gatherings, novels written. As a kid I remember hating the fact that guests were coming over which meant that brother and I were to behave a little better, be extra nice and not yell and scream at each other.
In the few times we have hosted friends here its felt so easy, just like Delhi. Not like Jhumpa Lahiri’s probashi Bengalis in Interpreter of Maladies but just expats and locals jamming together on wine or Indian food or politics or books. Conversations have been easy, a few glasses of Italian tends to make them so, as we’ve gossiped about the country, our homes, the food, the weather. We’ve chatted, played music, maybe some board games or cards, looked out the window and quipped silly nothings about the neighbourhood or expressed our usual, common or not-so-usual anxieties.
At the turn of the night when the wine has overflown we’ve reminisced too about other cities we’ve stayed in, the places that felt better than here, other people, other wines, other stuff. We’ve also shared our views on politics however mundane or disagreeable. Passionate conversations about ideas ranging from the next holiday to the peculiar song used in a car launch.
I know it sounds cheesy but there’s a romance here; the romance of socializing in person with people who you know you are about to become friends with.
M and I were, I believe, satisfactory hosts in Delhi. Almost every weekend a gaggle of friends would turn up, some planned, some not so much. And we’d chat till the sun came up or at least the last uber found our apartment. Thinking back to those evenings, I now recollect how often those evenings were accidental.
A friend is in town, a colleague is coming over, another friend is in the neighbourhood. We didn’t always need to call, or plan in advance. Things would fall in place just the way they had with my parents. We lived in a joint family, the ground floor of my parents’ ancestral house allotted to our unit of four. So each time there was a knock on the door after 7pm we knew it was either a friend of mine or my brother’s or my parents or a relative or a cousin. The options were endless, we always had plenty of food and what else was there to do!
Now when the doorbell rings, it’s not a surprise. 7pm sharp folks trickle in; wine bottles, champagne, presents in tow. They spill breadcrumbs, some drops of wine on the rug. And for those three (or was it five?) hours, time passes by just as smoothly. No glimpsing the internet, except for the occasional song request. We snap pictures of wines we love, swap holiday details, discuss movies we loved and the ones we might watch together. Mostly it’s just basic conversations, connecting, bitching, shedding the load of life, recharging our batteries for the oncoming week.
It’s been a while since we hosted; life (™) things have a tendency to get in the way. Some friends are scattered, others out of touch, but there’s a cache that sits close. Its’ the end of October and temperatures are already in single digits. Autumn dazzles outside the window. I don’t know when, but I know that soon I’ll be setting up the table in this cold, quiet neighbourhood. Then when I see my friends at the threshold of the apartment, unlace their boots, I will feel that tinge of teenage excitement. What a luxury that these people are my people, that we drifted into each other’s orbits! And for those tranquil few hours, we’ll once again be bound together by the warmth of a shared meal, a shared life.
PS: Delhi is on my mind and I loved reading this Uday Bhatia piece in Mint Lounge: The politics of running, onscreen and in the streets.
PPS: I’ve been looping DevD album? Because why not!
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