Fool on the hill

After a whale of an Ashes, the India-Zimbabwe series seems no better that para/gali cricket. And even the commentators are feeling the effect of it. Watching in a post-lunch daze, I heard Sunil Gavaskar exclaim, “Well, that’s a plop ball!” Plop. How well it sums up the series. This is what happened. The voluble Harsha Bhogle and Sunny were jabbering inanities as a soporific session was on. Zaheer Khan bowled a bouncer which rose and then the trajectory wilted till the keeper caught the ball near his ankles. Here is the commentary excerpt: Sunny : Well, that’s a plop ball! Bhogle : Sunny, now what’s a plop ball? Sunny : You see, balls that don’t carry through. It loses steam and the trajectory dips. Maybe, it’s because the soft side of the ball grips the surface. Bhogle : (laughing) So, there must be a quack ball, a plock ball, a schlock ball…. [The inanities go on] Sunny : There is a curve ball, a speed ball, a zap ball… Bhogle : There you go! Another plop ball. (Both laugh) Sunny : An

Learnt here and here that Kolkata now has a KFC and a Subway outlet. What’s more, the other weekend the Subway store ran out of sandwich breads. The article says: Having inaugurated the Subway outlet, US consul-general Henry V Jardine was happy to hear how Calcutta had taken to it. “It is a reflection of how dynamic, changing and cosmopolitan the city is today,” he said. I'm sure it’s for the good. But, are we losing our Waldorfs, Tangra, Flury’s, Shirazs and Amenias? And the neighbourhood roll stalls and phuchka wallas? Till date I’ve never had better biryani or better hakka chowmein outside of Kolkata. Au contraire, I had decent paturi/muittha only outside of Kolkata. Can anybody solve the paradox? Read India Uncut’s take on this here .

Just when I had thought all the punners had quit TOI and joined DNA, I was proved wrong. I almost hit bullseye when I had predicted on the eve of the Sania Mirza-Maria Sharapova US Open 4th round match that TOI was sure to carry the headline: Sania, yet so far . Next morning I was disappointed. The headline said something very tame. But I reconciled myself to the fact that the match ran late into the night and the chief punners might have left for the day. However, yesterday I was vindicated. The paper's esteemed supplement carried the headline: Sania, not so far . Inverting the legendary Outlook (?) headline: Sonia, yet so far . So, the punners are still there, alive and kicking the hell out of clichés. This reminds me of a wonderful post Tridib had written about how headlines reflected the tone of newspapers. The talking point was Bush winning the second term. Taking cue from the post , I am woolgathering on how some of the papers must have tackled the Sania-Maria clash. The Tim