It is only in films that the long intervals of delayed trains, traffic intersections and non-starting cars are neatly edited out. Then well may Chaplin say ‘Parting is a sweet sorrow’ to Claire Bloom to the accompaniment of a thousand violins on a railway platform in Limelight.

I like the guy who says one firm goodbye, turns away and walks briskly without looking back. I like even better the guy who lights out without the formality of a goodbye.  Unfortunately that variety is strictly confined to the chaps who top their drunken state with rigor mortis. Admittedly they are better than those who turn into pranksters or worse, Hamlets with unending soliloquies about the meaning of life. But the catch with rigor mortis is that you are stuck with the body.

I don’t know but it is supposed to be human to linger longer. That painful passage of time is supposed to epitomise the entire interaction— be it a wedding reception, a child naming ceremony, house warming or just a casual evening in a friend’s house. All the cleverest things are reserved to be said in that gap of time when you get up signifying definite intention to go and the time you actually drive away. Like the pudding it is the lingering taste. So everyone crowds it with many unmeant things like the ‘sweet sorrow’ stuff.

Personally I would like to just get up and run. Even better I would like the magical powers of the Cheshire cat. Except that I would not like the dramatics of zeroing in on the lingering grin though that I admit is the most apt critique of partings. I would like the ‘here now’ transition, like a snapshot, to a ‘Not here now’. 

That of course is a pipedream. Bad as the plight of the harangued guest is, there is no equal to the sufferings of the reluctant host. He spends anxious hours before the occasion preparing for trivialities like ashtrays that don’t exist in the house. Mud cups, discarded tins, and babies’ shoes are pressed into service. One does not enter the domestic domain of the kitchen, which mercifully is in the care of the wife, who in any case is almost always the perpetrator of the torture.

Hours, long hours before the appointed hour, every speck of dust in the house having been attended to, the host is ready. The kitchen is one huge babble. Acidic moments pass as one watches painfully the wife’s travails. She is undistinguishable from the domestic servant five minutes before the cursed clock strikes the hour.

There are a whole lot of totally unconnected instructions about the tap, the towels, the dog who was the first to go mad anyway, before she disappears into the boudoir.

Party fever...
That is when you reach for the Gelusils and curse the day you were brought into this world. 

Time of course passes, except that each minute is an hour. Every crunching foot outside, hooting horn, barking of the neighbour's dog wakes you up into fresh heights of anxiety. I wish some people who do medical experiments on man’s pulse at 25,000 plus would stop wasting their time and instead pick on perfectly ordinary situations like this one.

Before long the wife, now miraculously transformed, joins you. That in other situations of distress is palliative of sharing. Not in this one. It speeds up the rate of bile production as her anxiety feeds yours. 

Seven is not seven for guests. It is any time in the night. So the first of the stragglers, your neighbours, drop in at eight and join in the adrenaline orgy.

It is a long story thereafter. After you pass the top of the Bell curve and approach the line, the process is repeated minutes again slowing down to hours. The clock strikes the hour of 11 and the first lot express their desire to leave before midnight. You protest. The last last round of drinks is gratefully accepted.

Finally the first departure is definite thus setting off the last phase that calls upon your last resources. You are living on nerves and nerves alone, as the frequent but long interludes of parting begin. They say goodbye. You say goodbye. And then you go to the door to accept with gratitude their expression of gratitude for the great party.

You somehow know it is impolite to close the door on the guest. So you step out and the long saga of partings begin all over again. There is always something that the man had forgotten to mention in the long evening he had spent eulogising APJ Abdul Kalam… 

Finally, the final goodbye as the man takes the wheel and the wives’ mutual smiles are staling to the sight. The keys are found, inserted, the motor turns over, over, over, over…

I wish somebody will devise a vehicle that gets going the moment the desire is expressed for that is the point at which all human resilience gives up. He wants to go.  You want him to go. And still he has to keep up the act of reluctant departure just as you do of wishing he had stayed back longer…
Parting is sorrow. Period.