Charades

The next door neighbour, daughter of a famous B-Movie actor, holds a charades evening. Her daughter, a former child actress, and daughter’s boyfriend who works in wine and is on a six-week life-diet crash course, are present. Also two old friends, one a sculptor, the other a Yale professor of Acting and Business.

After some cursory introductory chatter over a mug of chilli, we get on with the issue in hand. The daughter explains the rules. This takes twenty minutes with every nuance noted. Each participant has a maximum three minutes to perform, and the lowest collective time of each team determines the winner.

Mother, daughter, boyfriend and a missing guest constitute one team. The rest of us the other. We select subjects for the opposition, put them in a suitable container, and the game begins.

It is soon apparent that this is no ordinary game of charades. It is a kind of holy sacrament. Not a quarter is given by the experienced players. The mother-daughter combination is a phenomenon, the daughter a Charades-prodigy, heir to Fischer, Kasparov and their ilk. None of the mother-daughter team’s rounds last more than thirty seconds. The harder we expect our subjects to be, the easier it is for them to get them. Gilgamesh, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Salaam Bombay, Disturbia: all are fortresses waiting to be stormed. The only stubborn resister that defeats them is Martin Chuzzlewit.

Our team has some entertaining moves. Ravi attacks their offering with panache. Meera is wrong-footed by Brigadoon. The sculptor shows enthusiasm and the Yale professor has a dedicated attitude. It’s not enough. Our team is crushed and the humiliation is awesome. The mother-daughter team wins by three minutes forty to fifteen minutes eighty five.

They have the bit between their teeth. This is just the start. Before the evening is out we will play again and again and again, each defeat heavier than the last.