PRATAP: Oh, what a hotel.
SEKHAR: They say it’s the best.
PRATAP: To begin the stay with Glenfiddich.
SEKHAR: Welcome toast from a U.S. citizen
SFX - Setting the table for a drink and the creaking sound of breaking the seal of Glenfiddich bottle. Clinking sound of glass as the friends set out to drink.
PRATAP: Cheers to Mera Bharat Mahan.
SEKHAR: Cheers to P.V the P.M. who made it possible.
PRATAP: Why disjoint the mind Manmohan Sing?
SEKHAR: What to cheer about him now?
PRATAP: Why?
SEKHAR: Means you’re not up to date. P.V’s chela is now Sonia’s chamcha.
PRATAP: Politics can wait tell me all about you.
SEKHAR: Why the protocol of a hypocrite. Let’s begin with Vimala.
PRATAP: Oh, you.
SEKHAR: Enough of close to the chest, show your love-card.
PRATAP: Printed in the press of Sarat’s Devadas.
SEKHAR: The classic of an unfulfilled love.
PRATAP: Pending the ending, our life had run the fictional course as we grew up together. Like Devadas and Parvathi we too became fond of each other and to the same affect. Vimala’s dad said no, I got into depression and my uncle too me to the U.S. Devadas embraced Bacchus but I latched on to Mammon. But our beloveds got glued to their respective spouses. Now the story seems to fork. Devadas might’ve died unfulfilled but I’ve a possibility, of possession.
SEKHAR: Is there a Chandramukhi you had spurned?
PRATAP: If I were Devadas, I wouldn’t have been a stupid to slight such a lover.
SEKHAR: But you married any way.
PRATAP: My wife failed me emotionally and I dulled the pain with materialistic malady.
SEKHAR: If I’m not curious ….
PRATAP: Martha is her name and no faulting her. Why, she had her own expectations of life. We were childless, but that was not the hitch. Well, there is a price to pay for the so-called progress. And that’s interesting. What the primitive man could’ve expected from life than food and sex. Maybe they were better off for that.
SEKHAR: Better off or worse off, what’s life without progress. What more we had than a girl’s furtive glance in our teens? See now, every fool has a girl friend. Oh, how I wish we were teens these days.
PRATAP: But still parents remain spoilers.
SEKHAR: At least not in the educated classes. Thank the laws; they are scared of saying no for the fear of being booked.
PRATAP: What of women’s lib?
SEKHAR: Why, Vimala wears her bindi.She says husband’s death can’t take away woman’s birth rights.