Art & Creativity Quote by Alvah Bessie

A dirty joke disguised as a love letter, and that disguise is the point. Bessie stages the line as working-guy banter - the soldier or drifter playing innocent while smuggling in a punchline about access, empire, and convenience. The sweetheart’s question is pure romantic accounting: what does the other woman have that I don’t? The reply performs devotion (“Nothin’, honey”) and then immediately detonates it with geography: “Only she’s got it here.” Desire isn’t portrayed as a grand betrayal; it’s treated as logistics.

The intent is less to scandalize than to puncture the sentimental myths that keep people comfortable: fidelity, exotic temptation, the notion that love can be measured against novelty. The “gal in Bombay” is almost interchangeable - she’s a location marker more than a person. That erasure is part of the subtext. Bombay functions as a permissive elsewhere, a colonial waypoint where consequences thin out and the “sweetheart back home” becomes an address, not a partner. The line reduces intimacy to proximity, and in doing so exposes how easily “home” becomes an abstraction once distance and power enter the picture.

As a screenwriter, Bessie also knows exactly how this plays on an audience: it’s a laugh that catches in the throat. The phrasing mimics plain speech (“writes to me,” “says”) to make the cynicism feel vernacular, even inevitable. What makes it work is the double-talk: tenderness as cover for opportunism, honesty delivered as a punchline.