In Praise of Bipasha Basu

By John Cheeran
If men are the salt of the earth, women are the salt of West Bengal.
God must be a Bengali, for he always moulds Bengali women the most gorgeous. From Suchitra Sen to Sharmila Tagore to Moon Moon Sen to Kajol; from Aparna Sen to Sushmita Sen to Rani Mukherjee to Tanushree Duttas.
And, the biggest of them all is Bipasha Basu.
Beauty may lie in the eyes of the beholder, but in Bipasha’s case what you see is what you get.
Rest of India should burn in the fires of envy, while beholding Bengal’s pride and joy.
Beauty lies in the eye of beholder (hang John Keats for having wrote it), beasts lie between the legs, but there can be no debate about the mesmerizing hold Bipasha has over Indian men.
Men can be dissatisfied with Sourav Ganguly’s figures, but Bipasha’s figures have stood up to the Tests of time, and tests of all tastes.
One should admit that Ganguly plays anything below the waist brilliantly, but Bipasha’s ability to meet challenges head on is legendary.
West Bengal has many virtues; West Bengal has many virtuous men. What it lacks right now is heroes.
Ganguly was the first macho hero West Bengal found since Subash Chandra Bose went missing on air.
The desperation with which West Bengal clings on to its last hero, Ganguly, can be considered only with pity.
In football, Calcutta’s last son-of-the-soil hero was Kishanu Dey (my Bengali friends emailed his name) and then they were left to wonder at the feets of guys such as IM Vijayan and Baichung Bhutia.
Sprawling Eden Gardens and Salt Lake Stadium should have supplied India many heroes; but heroes these days come from outposts such as Baroda, Cochin and Ranchi.
No wonder then that Bipasha met her match in John.
As they say in Bible, she lies in the laps of Abraham, John Abraham.