“…More and more city brides are hiring detectives to find out if their man is straight or gay…” Times of India, 30th June

“Hiya!” I said as I saw my friend Mohan entering the park, and got ready to give him the usual mandatory bear hug.

“Don’t touch me!”

“What do you mean don’t touch me?”

“That’s what I meant don’t touch me!”

“You becoming touchy about touching?”

“I’m getting married! Don’t want her to think I’m gay!”

“Okay,” I said, offering to shake his hand instead.

“Oh no! No touching, no handshake, no talking also!”

“You going to keep silent?”

“With men, I don’t want her to…”

“Think you’re gay!” I completed for him.

“Yeah, yeah Bob, don’t want to start on the wrong note, you know what I mean?”

“No!” I said and watched Mohan for the next few days as he skipped talking to any of his men friends and moved instead onto the fairer sex with whom he was soon seen to be into very animated conversations everyday. “Nothing to straighten out any suspicions than showing you are straight to the core!” he chuckled to me as he chatted up a woman who had just entered the park.

It was a few days later that I saw her, quite a pretty young thing and wondered what she was doing as she searched the length and breath of the garden looking for someone. “Looking for anyone?” I asked politely.

“Yes, Mohan! I’m his fiancée!”

Now who was I to tell her that the over zealous Mohan in his attempt to project his ungayness was at this very moment in close conversation with a bevy of young walkers who were of another gender than mine.

“Where is he?” she asked worriedly, “I thought I’d come and meet his friends! Are you one of his close friends?”

“No, no,” I said hurriedly, “I’m not close to him at all, nor is Jim over here, or Gopal or anyone of the men!”

“He’s not close to any one of you?”

“You can rest assured he is not that kind of a man!”

“Then what kind of a man is he?” asked his fiancée quietly as Mohan emerged with a cluster of women round him, “So this is what you do over here is it?” she screamed to Mohan, “You come here to play around with these girls? You womanizer!”

Mohan was at the park the next morning and gave me a bear hug and shook hands with the rest of us guys, “You can’t win with women!” he said, as we all nodded in agreement and then watched as his fiancée walked in and Mohan gave us all another bear hug each, “Does he always hug you guys like that?” she asked suspiciously as we looked skywards and shook our heads in bewilderment.