(At home during the Corona lockdown, I decide to do some spring cleaning and come upon a bunch of albums where termites are having a ball. These happen to be of my folks from their years when they were younger than I am and dapper than I ever will be. As I show them the cleaned photographs, some make them visibly excited while some a little poignant, memories flooding of people close to them who have passed on. This article is also a note to myself that nothing remains –
Some people will tell you that slow is good – and it may be, on some days – but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I have always believed this, in spite of the trouble it has caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba… Hunter S Thompson, ‘Song of the sausage creature’ It was in the way he announced it. The Wall Street attitude and related
Riding through a manufacturing belt has its rewards – the roads are laid out like duvets, nary a wrinkle; crouch a bit low into the wind and you can open throttle till your heart reaches your mouth. But there is a price to pay – vast swathes of the landscape, what would have once been picturesque, are windowless concrete warehouses or manufacturing hubs with all the scenic value of toppled matchboxes. ‘You can’t have it all’ you console yourself and thole on, racing the wind. Dawdling trucks of unending lengths
Love People who are getting ass always think it is funny when somebody else isn’t. Bukowski, Notes of a dirty old man ‘Quaranteens’ was a joke I received over WhatsApp. It was defined as ‘the generation of children born from quarantining entering teenage by the year 2033.’ I found it funny that is till I received the ‘I want to make love to you’ message. From an ex. She had arrived from abroad after a nasty divorce, giving up custody of a kid to pursue a career in acting. A
The Gangaur Ghat rose resplendent in the path of the sun. The waters of the Lake Pichola on whose banks it loomed stood still awed by the grandeur that surrounded it – and in its midst. Pigeons cooed gratitude for tourists strewing popcorn, rising shortly in hordes indulging the Instagrammers among them. A gaggle of old ladies sat on the steps, pallus covering their faces, getting ready for the evening arti or prayers with lit lamps. Tourists and local vendors swarmed the landing, the latter with their portable vending stands
She is probably the reason we are a nation of tea drinkers. A comely smile connects cherry-tan cheeks, a mop of lustrous black hair peeps from beneath a colourful headband that holds aloft a polished cane basket and between her dainty smooth fingers a rain-washed tea leaf. All around her the supernal green glow of her sun-kissed workplace undulates in every direction. The trepidation in her eyes is alluring – one can easily change the leaf for a bitten apple. She is variously the quintessential worker adorning the cover of
Our eyes glowed and cheeks were radiant, laughter rang and words flowed wise. Actually it was like any other table of middle-aged drinkers where a lot of wine has been consumed. The dinner I was hosting for my friends who were musicians from Greece and XXX – whom we will get to know in time. We sat in one of the better restaurants overlooking the sea along the cliff; I call ‘better’ because it had real plants, even on a wall garden and a library. Books, especially mouldy ones, make
The Rosa Parks moment was when Shaheen Iqra sat on the road flanking Shaheen Bagh which connects Kalindi Kunj in southeast Delhi and Noida blocking the busy traffic on December 15, 2019. Earlier that day police had forcefully entered the Jamia Millia Islamia University nearby and brutalised students in retaliation for a massive protest they undertook against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. As the cold dusk crept in early, Iqra exhorted others with a handheld microphone to join the sit-in. In the peak of Delhi winter, the coldest in over a
The urge to be ‘out there’, to be surrounded by vast open spaces, is as old as mankind itself. Making his argument about why it is not exactly a ‘concrete jungle’ but a ‘human zoo’, English ethologist Desmond Morris writes in ‘The Human Zoo’ that man ‘Trapped…by his own brainy brilliance, has set himself up in a huge, restless menagerie where he is in constant danger of cracking under the strain.’ Conditioned over millions of years to be on the move, to hunt and colonise new territories, we are living
It is not just our sins Pappanji has to grapple with – and eventually burn for, of course – but also how his looks are taken. If he was perceived to be too cheerful in 2017, the year when Cyclone Ockhi ravaged Kerala, this year it was alleged that he bore a close semblance to Prime Minister Modi. The organisers had a tough time mollifying belligerent bampots who decried it as a malicious attempt to malign in a region that was already seething with public resentment against the newly introduced
