This is the last on the recent Bangalore meet. One of the revellers Sangeeta wrote thisaccount of the meet. Rather long, but enjoyable, I assure you. Incidentally there are some short forms in there such as SF for Swordfish, the Nom that I go under, TOS, for The Old Sureshot which is the Nom of Vikas Sonak etc. Quote. Im not trying to sell you snake oil, I said to a perplexed Swordfish, while Kalyan, if that is indeed his real name, looked on. It was noon on Sunday, the 20th inst. and everyone was on his guard at the Wodehouse gathering, a natural habitat for impostors. I met you in 2007. We had masala dosa and you recommended the badam halwa. It was a restaurant on Race Course Road, I forget its name... the letter J seems to come to mind, I said. SF hadnt the foggiest what I was talking about. Are you Nandini? he asked. Not that I know of, I answered. Then you must be the journalist. Id love to be one. But Im really Augustus the cat. I could sense Kalyan step away, like one would from a ticking bomb. He felt the need to call the preeminent loony doctor, Sir Roderick Glossop, for this was clearly an advanced case of one having lost her marbles. He didnt know that the person standing next to him had assumed the identity of the person impersonating the said doctor. Kalyan wasnt (yet) one of the denizens of Colney Hatch, otherwise known as the WodehouseIndia group. As a result of this minor flaw in an otherwise impeccable record, he wasnt aware that the afternoon held in store for him 1 no. each of Swordfish, Augustus the cat, TK, Beamish, Bill Lister, Major General Sir Masterman Petherick-Soames and Psmith. The only person who must have appeared sane to him was Sriram, who like him, had heard of the revelry on Facebook and had come armed with his real identity and the secret code. The secret code was known only to SF, Kalyan, Sriram and about 7900 other chappies around the world who hob-nob on Facebooks Fans of Wodehouse page, throw bread at each other and occasionally, it appears, throw each other out. One can only surmise that something like the Freddie Threepwood - Psmith meeting must have unfolded when SF and Kalyan met. After staring at each other for a space of a few minutes, SF must have walked up to Kalyan and whispered conspiratorially, It is going to rain in Koramangala to which Kalyan must have replied, Bad for traffic. TK arrived next. When quizzed about his nom, he seemed evasive about what the K stood for. Kitchener or something like that, he said and deftly turned the conversation to copyright lapses. Beamish seemed to be the real thing, but the chrysanthemum he had promised to wear in his buttonhole during the email pourparlers was conspicuous by its a. Perhaps she is Penelope, said Beamish to SF, eyeing me with suspicion. SF decided to pursue this new angle. Are you the Penelope we met in Washington, D.C.? I felt rather like the fellow in that Henry S Leigh poem, you know, the one who was always being mistaken for his twin. In fact, year after year the same Absurd mistakes went on, And when I died - the neighbors came And buried brother John! I was saved from further interrogation by the arrival of Bill Lister, of whom Beamish had spoken with effusive warmth. He and Blister both worked for the same corporate overlord. In an earlier WI meet, the first one that we both attended, said Beamish, we sat looking at each other with puzzlement. I could swear I had seen him before. He popped up again in a meeting at work the next day. It was only when we exchanged notes that I was reassured that I wasnt seeing an apparition. Ah, you were Tipton Plimsoll to his Bill Lister, I observed. I wanted to be Bill Dawlish, said Blister with a wistful note in his voice. Bill Lister was the name that stuck. I made a mental note that these two blokes were probably in cahoots for the loot. The loot du jour was a pair of silk accessories - a scarf and a tie fashioned by the Dutch Wodehouse Society. The Old Sureshot, who abbreviates his nom to TOS, presumably to pass himself off as AToS - a stout fellow (AToS, not TOS) - should he (TOS, not AToS) ever find himself in a pickle with the law, had come into possession of these prized articles. With the milk of human kindness sloshing about inside him, TOS sneaked the articles into the subcontinent on one of his visits and handed them to SF to bestow on a couple of passing Plummies. It was as good of a lure as SF was ever going to get to wake the denizens of GC out of their stupor and have them feel the rush of life along their keels. So he rang the lunch gong to rally the citizenry to the trough at the Jayamahal Palace, which finding itself in the cast of a Wodehouse gathering, decided to impersonate Blandings in the summer. The last to arrive were Psmith and Major General Petherick-Soames. Psmith revealed plans of an imminent move to Shanghai, possibly to be out of reach of the long arm of the law once the deed was done. And the Major General earned the affection (and perhaps the silence too) of the newcomers by distributing autographed copies of his first book. The cast of impostors, having now assembled, rolled up its sleeves and set out to dispel doubts about its Wodehousian credentials. What was that book in which whosis (Adella Cork was it?) starts a vegetarian colony? Wasnt she a big-game huntress who takes a healthy bite out of the tribal chiefs leg? That must be Lady Bassett. Didnt someone paint a moustache on a statue in that book? Wasnt that Chimp Twist who runs a vegetarian colony? Or participates in one? Possibly, the book in which the Molloys are introduced? Was that the one where the head of the household disguises himself as the butler or am I thinking of something else? What about the book in which the fellow becomes a butler at an establishment on the other side of the pond? Are Ice in the Bedroom and Do Butlers Burgle Banks? the same book? I wonder why they have different titles for books in the US and the UK. Makes it dashed confusing for a chappie trying to build a collection. Wait, didnt someone paint a moustache on a statue? I was reminded of the exchange in French between Packy Franklyn impersonating the Vicomte de Blissac and Oily Carlisle claiming to be M. Duc de Pont-Andemer in Hot Water, one of my favourite scenes that I have had occasion to comment on before. For the space of perhaps a quarter of a minute the French aristocrats stared at one another dumbly. Here, you would have said, watching them, were two strong, silent Frenchmen. Mr. Carlisle was the first to rally from the shock. Parfaitement, he said. Alors, said Packy. Parbleu! Nom dune pipe! There was another pause. It was as if some theme of deep interest had been exhausted. Au contraire, our theme of Wodehousian interest was never exhausted. Incidentally, while on the topic of French, the group recounted the very scene with loud, happy voices, that drew looks of concern from the adjoining tables. Le soleil! Mais oui! Ooh la la! Talking of French, said one of the revellers, I adore the opening lines of The Luck of the Bodkins. Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French, recited another. A shifty hangdog look, added Psmith, roundly acknowledged as the resident VBC. Someone at the table was making a mental note that a rich collection of Plum treasures was shortly to be moved from Bangalore to Shanghai. Psmith himself was trying to ascertain the exact location of someone elses Plum collection in Seattle which he was hoping to purloin. Sriram was christened Gussie Fink-Nottle for the day when he reached for a watermelon juice while the rest of the party fortified itself with something more robust from the Pitcher. The Pitcher was a stand-in for the establishments famed Tower of Beer that was missing in action. Psmith, sitting next to Sriram, was given the task of stepping in for Bertie and lacing the watermelon juice with stronger stuff. That brought up the topic of Bobbies readings of Gussies speech. A discussion of erstwhile WI conventions and characters around the world followed. The whereabouts of Claire, Clarence and Crumpet. Pillys visits to India. Ramu Damodaran and the elusive Miss Moore. Something about a gargoylish venue of an earlier gathering. Boshams interest in British Raj relics and a future adventure to go in search of the grave of Ethel Wodehouses first husband, rumoured to have been laid to rest in Kolar. The episode with the journalist and the sound chappie (Psmith was not in a position to comment on his morals, of course). My all-time favourite character is Alaric, Duke of Dunstable, said Kalyan. Uncle Fred in the Springtime was my first book. Wait, what pestilential enterprise is Dunstable up to in that book? Thats the one in which Dunstable schemes to steal the pig and is constantly annoyed by the gardener who whistles The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond. There was a blissful pause as we recollected the joy of that piece of work. My favourite character of all time is Minna Nordstrom, said T.K. The name doesnt ring a bell. Its from one of the short stories. She is an actress. Is that the actress from The Luck of the Bodkins? Ah no, you are thinking of the actress who keeps a pet alligator in her quarters. Dont look now, but people are giving us strange looks. An actress who keeps a pet alligator must sound to them like the ramblings of someone missing from the rolls of the local loony bin. Minna Nordstrom was in one of those Mulliner stories about Hollywood that wasnt a Mulliner story, explained T.K. with lucidity. The mention of The Mulliners of Hollywood brought up the wild gorilla of the Perfecto-Zizzbaum Motion Picture Corporation. You speak very good English for a gorilla, someone said to much laughter. Thats when SF brought out the goods. I got the scarf by default owing to my being the only f. of the species. I was thrilled to have been spared the ignominy of flunking a quiz. A quiz by the Major General was indeed suggested as the means to decide the winner of the silk tie among the m. of the s. Blister and Beamish called for handicaps if they had to compete with Psmith. SF, finding it rather a tough crowd, decided to make it a simple lottery. The Major-General went ahead with the questions anyway, while the lots were being drawn. Who won the Great Sermon Handicap? Who got horsewhipped on the steps of a club? What was the name of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloes other pig? Who was Lord Emsworths girlfriend? What was the context of some thingamajig or another? SF, quite astutely, gave me the task of drawing a winner, lest he be the one accosted later in a dark alleyway by a disgruntled element. The silk tie went to Psmith. There were pictures taken and added to the running commentary on Whatsapp WI. Once the excitement settled down, the talk turned to screen adaptations of Wodehouses works. You cannot really do justice to Wodehouses humour on the screen, said Sriram. How do you portray something like, She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and forgot to say when? The Small Bachelor and the Damsel in Distress were adaptations in name only, tut-tutted Kalyan. Beamish became quite sentimental. The Small Bachelor is an extremely underrated book, he said. With that followed a discussion of the harrowing experiences of Officer Garroway, Beamishs instructions on melancholy in poetry and the turnaround of his opinions after he fell in love with Madame Eulalie. There were loud calls for Beamish to read Streets at the next gathering. Having been crippled thus far in the proceedings with a memory that behaved like a sieve when it came to the canon, I was glad to finally be able to quote from memory. The Small Bachelor was the first book of the master I ever read and as a consequence, is imprinted in my mind. One of these days, that joint is going to get pinched. What joint is that? asked someone at the table. The Purple Chicken, you know, where you can get it if they know you. The topic of the FB secret code for the days meeting was revisited which led to a recollection of the exchange between Freddie Threepwood and Psmith in the lobby of the Piccadilly Palace Hotel and Freddies mix-up with chrysanthemums and carnations. Psmith removed the chrysanthemum and dropped it behind the chair. He looked at his companion reproachfully. If you had studied botany at school, comrade, he said much misery might have been averted. I cannot begin to tell you the spiritual agony I suffered, trailing through the metropolis behind that shrub. SFs eyes lit up. Theres a chappie that Psmith approaches before Freddie shows up and when Psmith tells the chappie, There will be rain in Northumberland tomorrow, the chappie replies, Thanks, Zadkiel. Deuced gratifying, Im sure. I suppose you couldnt predict the winner of the Goodwood Cup as well? More guffaws all around. TK mentioned that Leave it to Psmith was his least favourite Psmith, it being sappy and what not, and much preferred Psmith, Journalist instead. And so the conversation wound its merry way through the main course, until the last of the dishes were cleared away, the waiter brought the check and SF morphed into Oofy Prosser. There was a call for one last picture on the grounds of Blandings and we lined up in a jiffy as frequent guests of the Sing Sing are wont to do. I quietly took my place next to Psmith while he was instructing the waiter-turned-photographer on the intricacies of his camera phone. We said our goodbyes, promised to do this again soon and started walking away. It is indeed true that Plummies are the nicest blokes, I thought to myself as I opened my bag to stash the scarf and the tie that Psmith would later miss on his person. I had to make room for them amidst all those bottles of snake oil. Unquote
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 06:16:01 +0000
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