Three To A Tango

The three men sat in their chairs almost forming a triangle. The younger men sat close facing each other while the older white haired man sat a bit further away. He was glancing through a thick file. Of the other two, the taller man was smoking incessantly. He looked at the man across him, who would have been a real macho man had he been a few inches taller. As usual he had turned up in stylish clothes. The tall man looked at his clothing. He had a pretty austere dressing sense. But he liked it that way.

The shorter man was busy immersed in his laptop. Or was he? To all outward appearances he was busy working on his computer. But his thoughts were elsewhere.
He was going to work again with the taller man across him. It was a long time since they worked together. Their working styles were very different, but somehow they had hit along well. But after a point it had become monotonous. And they parted as friends. Over the years each had developed and mastered his own style of working. Now working together again meant that both would have to adjust a lot. Somehow he was not very sure whether this would work. But he could not say no to the old man who sat a bit further away reading. He owed a lot to him.

The tall man lit another cigarette. He stared aimlessly into space, occasionally nodding his head to acknowledge people he knew. He had not revealed it to anyone, but he felt very apprehensive about the project. It was not that working with the shorter man was beyond him, but he somehow felt that it would not work this time.
But again, he knew the old man sitting a bit further away was capable of all sorts of magic. If not for him, he might not have......... The ringing of his phone interrupted his thoughts.

The shorter man closed his laptop and stretched his legs. He felt older than his fifty two thanks to the events of the last two years, what with every project of his facing some problem or the other. The taller man had been some moral support to him in those troubled times. Things had not always been smooth sailing though. The taller man was too different from him. He could not agree with many of the tall man’s activities. But then neither would the tall man agree with his own beliefs and opinions. He got up to leave for the rest room. As he got up, his eyes met the taller man’s eyes. The tall man smiled, catching him unawares and left him a bit dazed. “The simple honest smile of the other still had its charm”, thought the shorter man, as he walked to the rest room.

The tall man kept watching till the other man disappeared into the rest room. “If only he had the excellent physique of the other”, thought the taller man. But then he was never the fitness freak that the shorter man was. Neither did he share the other’s passion for work. He liked his job, while the other loved it. Therein lay the difference. And they disagreed on most things. But irrespective of whether he agreed with the other man or not, he owed a lot to the other man for his present position. It was the other man who stopped him from getting lost in the crowd in Bombay.

“One cannot find two men more different than these two anywhere”, thought the old man, sitting some distance from the two men. He had stopped the perusal of the thick file by then. But neither would one find two people more dedicated and sincere to their job. Therein lay their similarity and probably that is why they could get along pretty well with each other, thought the old man. He did not know whom he liked better. Both were his findings, both were immensely successful and both were loyal to him.He had stopped making comparisons a long time ago. Anyway, he was very glad that he was to be the man to bring them back together. Almost patting himself on the back for that, Balachandar went up to the two men and said,
“If you both are ready, we can go for the first take”.
Both Rajini and Kamal said ‘Yes’ together and followed the sprightly old man.





There was a rumour sometime back that the BIG TWO would reunite in KB's Poi. I used that to write this piece up. I have essentially stuck to the generally accepted perceptions about these two men.