Curious case of wife swapping (loyalties)

There are curious reports doing the rounds that sound curiously like that other curious phenomenon called ‘love jihad’ in certain prickly circles. But this time it involves Bengalis and French, more specifically, Bengali men married to French women. These reports seem to have the singular purpose of having the people reported in them come out in the news. Judge for yourself: a posse of Bengali husbands has apparently switched their loyalty from Argentina to France before the final match of the World Cup tomorrow so as to ‘keep the marital peace’ at home. Curiously, there seems to be no Bengali woman married to a French man in the whole of West Bengal who is making such a gesture.

What may be even curiouser is the lack of any Argentinian agency in such a pre-final marital loyalty shift. Rabindranath Tagore may not have been much into football – he, however, did write one surreal piece of writing about a goalkeeper – but his friendship with the Argentinian lady Victoria Ocampo is duly noted by Bengalis as a crucial point for him to make his art work public. So, the chances of Bengali-Argentine couples existing, though rarer than Bengali-French ones, should be investigated. And, if found, has one such spouse moved from Mbappe to Messi just to keep the peace? Very curious, these reported Franco-Bong couples. Very curious, these news reports.