Yet another exercise

This was the exercise set for us this week at the company:

We shall play at being a shrink - a psychiatrist. Imagine yourself as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyse a member of this board whom you know well or whom you are sufficiently close to, based on ANY ONE of the following three statements your patient or subject makes to you:

1) Doctor I hear voices in my head/
2) Doctor I see little green men all the time
3) Doctor I think I have a peculiar problem, I see two of my husband/wife in bed.

RULES:
1) Your analysis MUST BE FUNNY.
2) You MUST NOT BE RUDE OR OFFENSIVE TO/ABOUT your patient/subject.
3) You MUST NOT GET PERSONAL OR REVEAL PRIVATE INFORMATION about your patient/subject.
4) You MUST SOUND SUITABLY PROFESSIONAL - in other words, you must sound like a shrink.

Mental health being a topic which has not always been one of my strengths, I was loathe to participate in this exercise. However, the time limit has been extended due to paucity of entries (others similarly constrained as me?). Moreover the context of many of the thinly veiled references would be apparent only to the members of the exalted company, but as this is my writing exercise in tongue-in-cheek creativity, I'm posting in the blog too. So here goes...

This is most irregular, I muttered to myself under my breath. Highly unprofessional too. How did I get conned into such an arrangement? How could I see anyone at the end of my working day, outside my hours and at a café at that! I walked in through the dark doors into a dim lit environment reeking of smoke and other such vapours proclaiming it a vapid locale. But such is my noble profession that I often recall the Hippocratic Oath and work the extra hour and walk the extra mile for a patient!

Scanning the tables where just about everyone looked queer, I stumbled onto one where a particularly strange specimen had the solitary seat. JJ?, I asked even as I put out my hand to get a good grasp of him. And you are --- ? he asked abruptly and suspiciously though the manner was quite sane. I'm Doctor Shrinkari- I introduced myself and sat down facing him. Sizing him up cursorily I was pleasantly surprised to note the attention to detail in matters of couture and coiffure. Was he really hearing voices in his head as he had said to me over the phone while seeking an appointment? Or was this a ruse to have an evening out with me? I am, quite assuredly, another man's wife and in all my years of psychiatric practice, I have come across many men who like to fall for women as soon as they don the mantle of matrimony- with other men.

The mystery of his excellent turn-out was soon revealed showing a foreign connection. Italian, none less! In his extreme relief at having actually made the effort and reached out to a medical professional, JJ started urburdening himself. He began with his many personas- some know me as Murphy, some call me SMS and yet I am none of those, I am as I told you- JJ aka James Joyce (a very Irish name for one seeking an Italian persona, but thats that). I was feeling quite relieved by the pleasant urbane manner and his all personable personas. But why did you insist on a sitting here in Ciggy's, I asked. I constantly crave coffee like any self-respecting Italian (Irish?), he claimed. I was sure that my office premises would not be more noxious than this café. But he clarified further, "You see this is the headquarters and I must not step out as I am on call all the time." So what is this work which keeps you stuck here, I pried. He drew himself to his full stature, gave a dramatic quiver to his beard (sharp as it was, did it have any arrows, I wonder?) "I am the Consigliore of the Ess and Company. My Donna is in faraway New York and I control the Bangalore mafia of the Company", he said. With each word, he seemed to transform. From a mild mannered and yes, definitely suave gentleman (a more catty woman may have called him natty) he grew coarser and worse till he resembled an Italian head hood! By the minute, I was getting worried for my own safety as I didn't know what arms he may be carrying upon his person. All around me, the Ciggy environment seemed to come to a stand-still as the old men and young women seemed to sense the transformation. The regulars of the institution (it is surely worthy of being called that) wore their mask of cynical disinterest even as they tensed with each note of his crescendo.

Thank God, I had the foresight of asking my Head Shrink to come by later. As I had planned it, some reinforcements may be handy in dealing with a patient in an unusual setting and in case they were not required, and I had handled the case on my own, we could imbibe some shots of caffeine in collective celebration. My worthy Head, Doctor VM came along just as I was getting truly overwhelmed.

"Hullo Doc, this is JJ", I said by way of introduction. He sat down around that wooden table and the man went absolutely berserk! He shed all pretensions of sanity and collared the seated Doc. "Now I have caught you- shan't let you go of you, you scoundrel. There is something known as Honour. I have lived by it- and you shall die for it!" Immediately it dawned on my superbly attuned medical mind that the object which was offending JJ most was the bottle of a caffeine laced beverage popularly referred to as a Cola which had been handed to the good Doc by one of the passing regulars of Ciggy's. As I shattered the bottle with all the power at my disposal in one weighty and well-aimed blow of my handbag, JJ collapsed gratefully back into his chair. The relief was palpable. Even the foreign personas seemed to fade. "No more of those battles of the bottle, no more voices in my head Doctor". "Thank you Doctor Shrinkari, you have shrunk my woes."