“If ever you get to invent one, I don’t see any takers for it and that saves the bother of patenting it.”

“Surely sense of humor helps,” he said trying to get up from his chair to reach the bureau. “How I forgot I needed crutches, don’t I have the ghost leg still? Even after exorcizing the devil of wealth, I may have to put up with it for long. And that speaks about the power of habit that is the bane of man. Didn’t I develop the habit of making money to impress Ruma, only to go down on the road of doom? Wasn’t my sense of insecurity to retain her love that was behind all that? But then, how admirably did Anand lead his wife Anitha through the travails of life.”

“If you don’t mind my being frank with you,” I said involuntarily, “your tone betrays your jealousy couched by the admiration of him. It’s also clear that you wished Ruma was cast in Anitha’s mold.”

“I like your perceptivity, the acme of sensitive writing,” he said and added reflectively. “Don’t I know you aspire to be a writer? Your muse willing, maybe my life can inspire you to make a memoir of it. If so, pray not give away those who came into my life and I too, but for a slip of the tongue, won’t name any save those you are already in the know. Name them as your fancy suggests, and what’s in a name as Shakespeare had said.”

“Why it’s an idea, and as Abhishek Bachchan says, it can change one’s life,” I said enthusiastically. “Let me take notes,”

“Why not you give it a try as I glean through the glaring show of my life in all its myriad shades,” he said handing me a writing pad.




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