Married a second time, with three children, he agrees that the sensitivity he exhibits is not normal for heterosexuals. ``Real men don't talk about this stuff,'' he says, referring to the theme of his latest work The Tennis Partner, a stirring paean to male friendship that is winning lavish praise.

Critical acclaim for Abraham's The Tennis Partner is set to catapult the work into the same category as his earlier My Own Story, which was a finalist for the National Books Critics Choice and rated by Time as one of the five best books of 1994.

Writing is cathartic, says Abraham, a key to his frustrations at work. ``I can't reverse death. I can't get into a patient's mind and think his thoughts. With writing, the boundaries are virtually limitless,'' he said in an exclusive interview with The Indian Express

An earnest, engaging man with an indeterminate accent (A Malayalee born in India, grew up in Ethiopia, and studied higher medicine in the US), Abraham, 44, is as much at ease in literary and journalistic circles as in a hospital.

``I worry that in our technological age, we have many more friends (and cyberfriends) than ever before, but less time to nurture these friendships and relationships,'' he says. ``And yet these connections are at the root of our mental health and our well-being, they make us feel we belong.''

The Tennis Partner has surprised the medical community with its stunning insight into substance abuse among doctors. According to one estimate provided by Abraham, five to nine per cent of all physicians abuse drugs. Suicides among physicians is among the highest of all professions, and it is often drug-related. So sensational was the premise of The Tennis Partner that some publications have commissioned doctors and psychiatrists to review the book.

But for Abraham, cold statistics became a chilling reality when he lost his student, colleague and friend David Smith to a drug overdose in 1994. Smith, an Australian tennis pro, comes to intern at the Texas Tech hospital in El Paso where Abraham teaches medicine. The Australian is recovering from a several rounds of drug abuse; the Indian is suffering on account of a marital breakdown.

Abraham is passionate about tennis, and across a tennis court, the two men forge bonds of friendship awash in the spirit of healing. Tennis becomes a metaphor for their connection as the struggle to rebuild their life.

So moving, lyrical and tender is Abraham's narrative of this male bonding that Publishers Weekly called him a ``master of romance.'' Abraham says the loss of Smith, who suffers a relapse and kills himself, taught him how important it was to ``get the ball over the net just one more time.''