Fool on the hill

Bangalore was under a “terror” attack a few days ago. It had Rajdeep Sardesai standing for almost 4 hours. His channel insists on anchors standing while reading news, precariously holding a piece of paper. Godonly knows why. On NDTV, Vishnu Som was struggling with words and pushing them out before they melted in his mouth. A Reuters journalist wrote towards the end of his story: The gunman was suspected to have escaped from the leafy campus . As if the assailant would have waited for the cops to say, Bengaluru police! Freeze maari! A tired Rajdeep, the verbal pugilist, wanted to break for commercials (sit for a few seconds while his attendants spray water on his face and shove in a pipe of lemonade in his mouth?), but a producer kept him from doing that. A fumbling Rajdeep says, Wait guys, there’s more breaking news, my producer won’t let me go on a break. Great. And AajTak was just like a Laughter Challenge contestant had portrayed it to be: perennially trying to connect with its corr...

That was it, I thought. I had waited for three hours. And saw the sky change from ochre to deep orange to dark red. The last embers of the autumn evening were dying down. The cars and the buses had their lights on. People crowded the bus stop across the road, clambering on to already crowded buses. In a mad rush, the tin buses were darting around, scrambling for passengers. The entrance to the Park Street metro station was in a frenetic whirl. Mostly, people were entering the tube station to head back home. I was sitting on the steps of the Asiatic Society building, a prominent “meeting” place, smoking the last cigarette of the pack. Right across the Chowringhee lay the vast emptiness -- more conspicuous in the growing twilight -- the maidans, and the waste yard of the metro constructions. She had not come. Yes, she had not come to meet me. And now it was almost seven. There was a slight chill in the air. I was shivering. ********************************** The taxi lunged forward, cutt...

Another meeting, another place… That was Calcutta, not the distant Kolkata then. Walking down the Park Street on a steamy wet August...Moulin Rouge and The Park... the Oxford Bookstore... the discount basement. Chilled beer and beef steak at Olympia.. What now ? __ said, sipping Foster's. The finals were over. And a blank future ahead. Studies were that comfortable cocoon. I took the last piece of morsel in, and... Here I am, an old man in a dry month, Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain... __ hated impromptu espousals of poetry. It was indeed a rainy day in Calcutta. Late April. When all of a sudden the sky gets pregnant with rain clouds. And for days the humidity reaches astounding levels. Squelchy underfoot and the acrid odour of perspiration. __'s technicolour umbrella was the brightest spot in the whole of Park Street as the neons hadn't come on. We walked down in contemplation. We are going nowhere , she said, visibly miffed. I looked up at the sky – it was dark ...