Conference Tales

1.

They met at a conference. The topic of the conference is not important. They didn’t remember it themselves. They had lunches and dinners together, had tea during the breaks, had coffee sometimes, not often. Coffee gave them headache, both of them. They exchanged numbers. ‘Let’s keep in touch,’ she said. ‘Sure,’ he said, while trying to conceal his excitement.

They met again five years later. ‘Didn’t we meet at a conference on something?’ She asked, her face looked like a history textbook. ‘Yes,’ he said, his face nondescript, ‘on something or the other.’ ‘Must be the other,’ she smiled, ‘why didn’t we keep in touch?’

‘We did actually,’ he said and left the room.

2.

‘All of that is good. Great in fact. Precise, eloquent and easy to understand. However.’

He didn’t listen to the rest of the comment. He knew the discussant. An old hack; never gets invited by any organization with proper funding and networks. God knows why his own department chose him to be his discussant.

Must be that professor whom I insulted the other day, he thought. But what could I have done? He stole my paperweight. I am not one of those who would accept injustice like that in silence.

‘Having said that, I must congratulate this young man for coming up with such a ground-breaking concept.’ He became alert. ‘I’ll recommend him as a future member of the research council.’

Everybody clapped. What a great man, he thought, we need more like him in our generation. We are becoming a closed-minded cohort of selfish bastards who create raucous over a mere paperweight. What a shame!

They served lobster at the dinner.   

3.

The lights went out just when the power-point presentation was about to start. ‘This is a problem with these small institutes. They don’t even pay their electricity bills in time,’ said the chairperson and announced a short break.

Most were out having a smoke. Few students who were forced to stay in the room were having a laugh about how stupid an earlier session was. A girl was humming to herself a sad tune. He waited till she stopped and asked, ‘Why such a sad song?’ ‘My mother died today four years ago.’ ‘Oh,’ said he and moved away, slowly. What a complex woman, attending a conference on her mother’s death anniversary!

When the lights came back, the room looked reasonably empty.   

4.

When the snores compounded, he had to stop. He looked sideways and found his discussant was also dozing. His co-author consoled, ‘It’s not you. It’s the AC.’ Sounded like my ex, he thought.

He looked in front of him. An old man was sitting still, rage in his eyes, about to take him by his throat. ‘You should finish and give him a chance to start,’ the senior co-author whispered. ‘Who is he?’ He asked with relative innocence. ‘Oh, he used to be a great scholar. Now half-dead.’ ‘Really? What happened?’ ‘Post-structuralism,’ the co-author informed.

By the time he finished, the old man had fallen asleep. ‘He must have had something to say, but this stupid AC,’ the co-author sighed.

He was feeling cold himself, but didn’t let anybody know.