Play your cards close to you chest — a young man is advising his partner. They are seated in a quiet semi-dark corner at a coffee place, in India. Two regular-size take-away cups of cooling cappuccino sit on the table before them. The place is awash with college students. A few lecturers somewhere are, for sure, having a cushy time addressing empty classrooms. The peeling back of layers of literature can wait. There’s coffee to be drunk first.

Over the general noise it is hard to hear the young man’s partner’s response. I myself am seated at the very next table in the same semi-gloom. In one way I am doing no different from the two youngsters: I am sipping coffee, too. (A rather disappointing latte because, despite my request, it has been made too strong.) In another sense, however, I am doing the opposite: I am placing my cards firmly on the table.

“Daruwalla is a poet,” I say, with a hint of firmness in my voice, “Mahapatra is a poet. I am merely a writer.”

“But you have written nearly 500 sonnets,” my drinking companion replies, shaking a sage head, as if that will negate my stubbornness, “How can you possibly say you’re not a poet, too?”

Now, for decades I have drunk my coffee with no sugar in it. How that came about is another story for another column later, but suddenly, here in this coffee place, the latte I am sipping appears to taste sickeningly, saccharine-sweet. Blatant flattery, I know, can do that. I’m tempted to trot out one of those cliches and tell the person opposite me that I wasn’t born yesterday. But even that, I fear, might sound a tad poetic. Something more prosaic, perhaps, such as, “What exactly are you after?” Get to the point.

Now, for those who may not know — and nearly everybody I reckon doesn’t — I have just had a book published. A rather rare novel, I agree. A story in verse. Art for art’s sake, not written for money, I tell all those who receive this news with raised eyebrows.

My drinking companion, who is by the minute growing more distant from me in my eyes, also knows that I’ve published a book. This person also may have heard my, “Not for money” quote. From the next table a sob is heard over the general hubbub of voices. The young lady who has been advised to keep her cards close to the chest is leaning her head on the chest of her male companion, thereby denying him a place to hide his cards. So, thus denied, he puts an arm around her shoulder and whispers something.

“He’s soft-soaping her,” says my fellow-drinker, taking in the scene while pretending to sip some coffee, adding, “trust me, these types are always after something.” Which strikes me as ironic, really. Freudian, even. For this very person is, primarily, after something. I can sniff it over the strong aroma of Arabica wafting through the place. All this camaraderie and faux literary worship is a facade.

“They’re planning to elope. Mark my words. He’s trying to get her to be strong.” In the midst of this, while my attention is diverted, I hear the truth, also whispered: “55-45.” What? “I know, it sounds an awful lot, but we have overheads, you know.”

I remember reading some time back that the band Wham! earned a pittance from their early material because they rather naively signed up with a company that paid them tuppence for their efforts.

“Thank you,” I say, as politely as possible, “but I am not interested in making a deal at all.” My companion receives this with downcast eyes even as I’m reminded of some lines from Can’t Cheat Karma by Zounds: ‘You don’t trust me and I don’t trust you/you wish you did and I know I do.’

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.