I ring the bell. There will be a lot of people at the party. I will have to behave. I am a little anxious. Ipsita opens the door.

‘Come on in,’ she smiles.

‘Late?’

‘Not at all. Nobody has turned up yet.’

I am amused about the Indian sense of time. Time for us is not strict, it’s a range. When most Indians think of going somewhere, they never reach at a particular time. We always think that we have to reach around certain time within certain limits. The time given to us is not an ultimatum but a pivot. We have to be somewhere around the pivot. Hence an 8’o clock party means we have to reach somewhere around 8. By Murphy’s Law we take the last limit of the range.

‘Others will be here soon. Take a seat,’ saying this Ipsita went into the kitchen.

I sit on the black leather sofa. Her drawing room is well decorated. There are pictures, landscapes on the wall. A frame on the table is the picture of her family. On another table in front, the food for the party is being kept. Chicken kebabs, chips, fish fry, paneer tikka adorn different plates.

‘I am frying Chicken nuggets. Some of our faculty likes them,’ she spoke from the kitchen.

‘All these, you prepared?’ I ask.

‘You mean the dishes. Are you mad? I got them ordered over Zomato. Who has the time to spend in kitchen nowadays? I returned from the University in the evening and ordered.’

The bell rings again. Ipsita shouts from the kitchen. ‘Come on in. The door is open.’

Two male faculty enter talking to each other. They see me, stop talking for a little while, and we shake hands. After this brief interlude, their conversations continue. They are arguing about the rivalry between Amazon and Flipkart.

‘Don’t you people ever stop?’ Ipsita enters the room smiling.

‘What else is there in the life of a professor, other than arguing about knowledge?’ Said one and both of them broke into a wild laughter.

‘I am going to convey this to your wives,’ she said.

‘They know it already. It is our wives who put us into this situation. Whenever there is trouble at my house, my wife always says why don’t you go and discuss this with Prof. Agnihotri. I am like why the hell should I discuss this with Agnihotri. She is like you should have married him rather than me. I am like hello, your parents came with the proposal. This statement puts an end to the verbal quarrel but prepares the ground for further subconscious tussle. Anyways let’s not spook out our new faculty here. Prof. Jha, you said your name was?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which area have you joined?’

‘Economics’

‘Oh. And the other one is in Organizational Behavior, right? Good, we need faculty in these two areas. Otherwise, the Dean asks us to teach the Economics and OB courses.’ He looked at the other faculty who nodded.

The bell rings again and Ipsita goes to the door.

‘Come dear. No need to open your sandals.’

Sabina enters. The two faculty give her a short smile. They do not get up to shake hands with her as they had done with me. She looks at me, smiles and takes a chair placed near the glass windows.

‘I was in a call. Hope I didn’t miss out too much on the fun.’

‘No worries. You are early,’ said Prof. Agnihotri.

Over the next half hour, the other faculty keep pouring in. The room is full of people, human voices, and laughter. Ipsita keeps making trips to the kitchen and back. Sabina is helping her with it. The conversations veer around the students, the Dean, the new rules imposed on the faculty, and some weird television program which all the faculty seem to watch. I have hardly anything to contribute to the discussion so I keep quiet and listen. In a crowd of people where they keep chattering and making sounds, my voices never come up. The voices outside overshadow them. This is the reason I loved the Bombay local stations. I would sit at the local Vashi station for hours and hours reading. My inner chaos found solace in the chaos outside and did not disturb me.

I am comforted with the knowledge that there is no senior in my area to boss me around. Some of them had left the University to join other places. This realization gives me a sense of relief. It means complete independence in how one can design the course and teach it. It also means little interference in other activities of the area. I smile at this thought to myself.

‘Prof. Jha, why don’t you eat some Chicken kebab, they are delicious?’ said one female faculty to me. She was a little bent, her long hairs swaying a little as if there were slow winds in the grassland. She had a piece of chicken in her hand, her mouth chewing like a goat savoring it’s food.

I pick up one piece of chicken. ‘Call me Kabir,’ I said smiling.

‘There is booze on the circular table here,’ shouted Ipsita clapping her hands trying to get everybody’s attention. I look at the table kept outside the kitchen. It looks like a mini bar. Scotch, beer, rum, wine, and vodka are the five kinds neatly placed on the table with white plastic bottles and some chakna.

‘Ah. This is what I was looking for,’ rose up one male faculty. Everybody laughed.

‘This is why he has come here. Otherwise, do you even see him mingling with us?’ said a male faculty with a sound as if he had diarrhea and was passing stool.

The concerned faculty laughs like it is the best joke he has ever made. In the whole process of his laugh, he looks at everybody in the room as if wishing that everybody understood the joke as well as he did.

I pour one small peg of Vat 69. I am not fond of drinking anymore. I have decided to make a small peg. The idea is to stay with it as long as possible taking miniscule sips after long intervals of time. This is better than not drinking. Not drinking at a party makes you an object of attention. In some ways it excludes you from the fun and frolic. Sabina too takes a small peg of Vodka.

With the first peg, everybody is sober as if they are drinking orange juice instead of hard drinks. The chit chat is usual. After the second peg, the group asks a faculty to sing. He sings some beautiful Hindi songs. Some people sing with him. Others sway to the tune. Once the third peg is done, a faculty puts a song on Ipsita’s laptop, brings her from the kitchen, and starts dancing with her. Others join them. After that some of them stop drinking and others increase their speed. I see one faculty drinking, dancing, and then filling his glass. He goes on to his sixth peg after which he collapses on the sofa and starts crying. The music stops and others console him. I gather from what they are saying that he has lost a child in miscarriage. Once consoled, he goes back, gets the music on, and starts dancing like a wild animal. He is trying to forget everything in dance and drinks.

I am still on my first peg taking miniscule sips. I notice Sabina. She is drinking fast and the size of her pegs has increased. Initially, she was hesitant to join the dance, but after some time she went in too. The songs are peppy numbers from Bollywood. She is an awesome dancer. Her hands and hips move to the rhythm of the song. She turns around at the right beat. She matches steps with another female faculty for some time. She is at the center of the floor. After a while, others are dancing around her. I am asked to dance too and one faculty takes my hand and drags me into the circle. I move around like a bear and I can see some of them smiling at my movements. But I come out after satisfying their wishes and observe the group from a distance.

It is 11:30 p.m. The faculty start taking leave. Ipsita is seeing them out of the door. I also rise up but she motions me to keep sitting. I look at my phone. There is a missed call from mother. It is too late to call her back. She would be asleep by now. Sabina is filling one more peg. How much will she drink!