The prettiest things right in front of our eyes often go unnoticed, sometimes literally too. At the tulip festival of Kashmir the milling crowd rarely took a second look at the nearly 20 lakh blooms spread over 30 hectares of lush acreage sweeping into the foothills of the Great Himalayan range. Instead, they busied themselves taking photographs of each other in insta-like poses and I was occupied watching them, marvelling at the brazenly doting couples in a normally conservative place. Newly-weds and lovers went to the farthest corners of the
The compact speaker had seen better days, been on many treks and taken several falls. It was rusted around the edges but continued to play with such high fidelity that it was easy to see why my friend took it everywhere with him. Right now it was tucked into the cradle of his arms and belted out Lateralus by Tool as we walked along the Mall Road in Nainital. Over thinking, over analysing Separates the body from the mind The steely night was pricked by street lamps flickering because of
A man goes to a shrink to check if he has gotten over his ex. Shrink: Do you get jealous when you think of her with another man? Man: But I have always wanted to see her with other men. You get the drift when the jokes go like this. We were three guys, slightly drunk or stoned, or both, all of us caught in challenging phases of relationships – jilted, starting off or in one. Connected by different aspects of filmmaking, we used to bump into each other at
#instatravel #motorcycling #heritage #dhaba #nh2 #royalenfield #incredibleindia #travelogram And finally The city gives up. Hauz Khas, where I stay, conurbates into more highrises and flyovers, reverberating underpasses and fringe residential areas before thinning out into open mandis – wholesale marketplaces. As I passed by these throbbing centres of humanity, big boned jolies laides were making a beeline to collect the stock of vegetables, fruits and flowers from the previous day that were unsold. These would be, through the course of the day, hawked at traffic signals with snotty kids saddled
As children, our parents kept me and my sisters away from adultery and blaspheme by shifting to English. So we might all be sitting around and talking about the annual day celebrations of our village school in Koko, rural Nigeria, in Malayalam. Suddenly, they would go ‘Mrs Gloria caught Miss Pereira and Mr Okay in a tight embrace in an empty staffroom,’ in English. Or, how Umma, Fr John’s sister ‘was rumoured to have slept with half the congregation.’ We pretended these little loaded nuggets went over our heads so
Toll plazas judder me. I have never passed through any without my mind wrought, eyes blazing, head giddy and generally feeling violated. True, there have been happy occasions where I gave a lift to an old man who was a plaza manager by dint of which I didn’t have to pay not one but three tolls. The ‘toll plaza 1 km ahead’ is where I begin to scan the area for possible circumventing routes; then these collectors have the area fenced in in such a way that would probably daunt
The only woman passenger in the entire coach was furious and scared. Maybe she was furious because she was scared. As she huffed her way to the next, more inhabited, coach on the Patna Rajdhani, she kept taking photographs and venting. “I am going to send it to Prabhu right away. He should see the scam for himself.” She said clicking. One of the photographs, I think, has me in it. I am looking part dejected – she was an okay-looking sort and I was going to miss her –
