ME, SHE AND MY FRIEND

Two years back in the midst of all the pre-, intra= and post - Puja  greetings and pleasantries, I reconnected, after a hiatus of 12 years, with a friend - a medico who was my colleague when I was working - my first "job in the private sector" (1994 : Kothari Medical Centre, Alipore, Kolkata). I was especially pleased to see that the son of a gun had posted all the way up from Queensland.


He was one of the most vicious animate objects to engage in any conversation with. An inborn armoury of the blackest humour that supplemented a tongue that turned increasingly caustic over the years, built for me, a repertoire of sharp one-liners, each new and fresh, that could jab and stun, more than an Ali or a Tyson.

Anyway ...

He had written in our regional language Bengali in his own inimitable way. The first sentence was not a statement. It was a question. It, if translated in the Queen's Language, crystallizes to : "ANI, HOW'S SHE?" (the rest of the words, mere reinforcements to the query don't need translation. And shouldn't, too. 

The first question is this! Yet I wasn't surprised or shocked at all.

There was a time when She was in both of our lives, simultaneously.. She, at that age, had captured our fancy, both of us. And Boy! Did she seduce us! She played second fiddle at times, and dominated at times. We just gave in to HER. Soon She 'Had' us.

She bedded us both, giving us our First 'Taste'.

She did it endlessly, almost like a Maniac, like a 'she-dog', with an Obsessive Passion -- which neither I nor my friend could override even once.

Both of us were frank about our privacy, talking about HER Promiscuity, and Jealousy or Masculine pride never intervened. In fact, we did empathise handsomely, while sharing our Amorous episodes. How She would get us 'Up and High' like never before, only to get us slumping and dropping dead, exhausted completely.

Her Passion simply overpowered us, and none of us had the masculinity to 'subjugate' her, to a slave, with whom we would have in our way, the way the Primordial Primal Primates -- our forefathers --- would have done eons back.

So after all these years, as my old friend asked 'how is SHE', I smiled wryly. I wondered how passionately deep she'd controlled us that he remembered her so as to ask about Her, ahead of all other questions which we both wanted to know, about how things have been since.

I remember a casino waiter asking : "Shaken or Stirred?" to which Daniel Craig muttered coldly, "Do I look like I care a damn?" no wonder....  I wrote back, " LIFE IS STILL A BITCH..."

** Note: the title of this note is the English translation of a Bengali movie. I did it myself, and have not checked about 'Copyright Issues'.