The bridge across furore
Clashing with the police, as anyone who has clashed with the police knows, is addictive. There must be some endorphin involved in the heightened sense of indignation: ‘hey jerk, I am doing your job and you are hitting me?’ Observe the frontline protesters, they are regulars. You will find many of them in gym gear […]
Hippie
The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, I have been told, is a sensory whirl: the colours and sights, smells and sounds waft around you, a gripping menagerie. In Paulo Coelho’s new book, Hippie, it is a phantasm as two women – one high on LSD – weave their way out of the maze. The whole act […]
FRI Day
It’s like John Wick – unless you know the history, you are just looking at a brooding, pretty façade. But under the sempiternal glow of the autumn sun falling unfiltered through a cloudless sky, even the air beholds the sprawling regalia with a breathless stillness. In the boughs and boles, even those afar, one detects […]
Love in the time of flood
Everyone thanked the sand mafia. They said it was their tireless digging up of the riverbed which enhanced its water-holding capacity which in turn enabled additional water from the dams to flow on without incident. Thank you marauders of the earth! They were joking, alright. These jokes, these badly articulated relief sighs, came wrapped in […]
Go ‘ah’
At the O’Coqueiro in Alto Porvorim I sat exactly where the ‘Bikini Killer’ did over 30 years ago enjoying what would be his last meal as a free man for a long time. Hatchand Bhaonani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj, widely known by the last two names, might have been celebrating his latest exploit. Or he was […]
Small bubble, big trouble
Gushing waters froth stories. When set amidst lush landscapes, the viridian violence can give rise to some very haunting ones. Sarojini Omanakuttan remembers a few with moist eyes, though not exactly a shudder – toughened by the wildness of office, nothing is shook enough for her. She pointed nonchalantly to a spot outside the wayside […]
Muttmoiselle
Bitch is a life. Posthumous glory is easy – you don’t really work on it. It is something like Hugh Hefner’s last marriage to Playboy Playmate Crystal Harris, 26, when he was 86 – the world knows you have a good thing going but you aren’t really there. Posthumous glory is a sort of […]
The bawdy shop
The buzz you feel about a place is a collective one – it comes from within the heads of those around. Including your own. The shop had buzz. Talking buzz, loitering buzz, peeing buzz, wide-eyed, quiet, staring buzz, snacking, sneaking, ogling buzz, people-watching, jiggery-pokery, horny buzz. Violent buzz. I loved the buzz, I was the […]
Wading the piracy high sea
Sometimes a bit sticky but eventually rewarding, I have this habit of entering strange places through less-used accesses. Looking around for one in Nehru Place, away from the hawker-choked pathways, I found a secluded stairway. A dark crumbling stretch led down to the subterranean parking lot while a slightly brighter one went up to a […]