It’s About Sex, Right?

When did she ask me that – fifteen years back? Or, is it twenty? A few days back, I saw a clip of the movie “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being” which is based on the book by Milan Kundera. And yesterday, I picked up that book from a lending library. Probably that triggered this chain of thought.

I had given that book as a birthday present to her. Two years later, I gave her “Love In The Time Of Cholera” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It was when we met a few years later that she asked me the question “It’s about sex, right?”. I did not know how to reply. That year, I got her an omnibus edition of Daphne du Maurier’s novels. I did not know then that that would be my last gift to her.

The next time I heard that same question was nearly half a decade later, and from a friend from erstwhile Soviet bloc. A mutual colleague had given to her Philip Roth’s “Sabbath’s Theatre” which I had read around that time. And by sheer coincidence, we were reading the latest from John Irving “A Widow For One Year”. Must have been around 7:45 on a winter morning, temperature well below freezing point, while we warmed our hands with a cup of hot coffee and before we got on with our work, and we were discussing the books we had read recently. And she asked me “It’s about sex, right?”. I did not know how to reply.

Even now, I wish I knew/know how to reply.