Join the club

‘Slap and Tickle’ gave me an international community

I was about to ‘See Five’, a prospect that had me more nervous than a lead actor who, as the curtain rises, realises the play is King Lear and what he’s mugged up is Othello.

You had to undergo ‘See Five’ to become a member of Calcutta’s Saturday Club, nicknamed the ‘Slap and Tickle’ for the high jinks that purportedly took place there. The Five the candidate had to see formed the Balloting Committee, and had the power to blackball you, a procedure that had nothing to do with what are euphemistically referred to as the ‘family jewels’ but involved an ebony sphere being cast in the membership-seeker’s disfavour, thus denying the person’s entrance into the hallowed institution.
To be blackballed was a no-no worse than being caught cheating at the card table and almost as bad as being nabbed peeing in the swimming pool.

My sponsor for membership was Bunny’s dad who had joined the club a couple of years previously, and Bunny was almost as nervous as I was. Do you play tennis? See Five asked me. No. Squash? No. Bridge? No. What do you play? The fool? I almost said but didn’t.
See Five changed tack. What’s a Manhattan Cocktail, wondered a See Five. I knew the answer and gave a detailed recipe, for good measure adding those for an Old Fashioned and a Highball. See Five viewed me suspiciously. Are you applying for membership of the club or as a bartender? asked See Five.

I thought of Aristotle’s dictum: A gentleman must know how to play the lute – but not too well. However, I passed the See Five test and Bunny and I were taken under the protective wing of Brian St John Conway, an expat and the oldest member of the club.

Brian became our mentor regarding the protocols of clubdom. But, more importantly, he introduced us to the intricacies of the cryptic crossword puzzle reprinted in The Statesman from The Times , London.

Bunny and I became crossword addicts, thereby joining a multinational club of solvers who daily grapple with anagrams and other convoluted conundrums. And, yes, it does help to know something about cocktails.

END OF ARTICLE