Says Bipin, with the rest of the group nodding silently, “I think we are going for dinner without you. You’ve become a complete bore of late. All you talk about is baseball or Leonard Cohen. I mean, Cohen may be a genius but you don’t have to go on and on about it.”

“But,” I protest, “Cohen’s music is the best thing that I’ve heard for a long, long time. His ‘First we should take Manhattan’ should be declared the anthem of the 21st century by the UN. His ‘Everybody knows’ is a mellow indictment of the way we live now. His ‘Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin’ is the best love ballad I’ve heard and ‘Suzzanne’ is simply fab.”

“There you go again,” scoffs Bipin. “For someone whose knowledge of Rock ended with the Beatles, you really have some very strong views on music.”

“He’s simply the best,” I say to their retreating backs. They go and I put the ‘Leonard Cohen Live’ CD into the player for the nth time. Dance Me to your beauty with a burning violin... Cohen sings, and I tap my foot to the music.

Then I think, maybe, I should call up M. M is twenty-something and lovely. I have this unbearable urge to impress her. “Hi,” says M, “What’s up?” I ask her if she has heard Leonard Cohen. “Leonard who?” she shoots back. “Cohen. Great singer. Deep voice. A poet who is a singer. Simply the best. I’ll send you a CD tomorrow,” I say.

... contd.