Fool on the hill

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 ...

Clouds play chiaroscuro with the hills, kids play hop scotch. Mist covers the valleys beneath, a thick white wall erases all. That was Darjeeling, a decade back. Daaju gets me a steaming hot cup of tea. Cha, shaab. I am huddling myself into a ball, hood tight on the head. The tea warms my insides. I light a cigarette. Dark clouds force the mall into frenetic activity. Quick last minute deals and ponies trotting back to their shelters. A girl, shivering in the cold, emerges from the mist and hurriedly enters the tea shack. She is in a red pullover and jeans. And asks for a cup of tea. I can see her companions across the road, buying woolens. Quite cold, I say. Yeah, and it’s going to rain, she says, looking at the ashen sky. You’re from Calcutta? Yes, and you? Calcutta. An uneasy pause follows. I think hard what to say next. I remember rainy days in Calcutta. Moss green walls. The Lake, full to its brim. And I remember my days in Ranchi. The small black hills and the lolling heath-like ...

damp desolate corners in decrepit rundown houses make me think of love… spurned

I don’t know what a tag means. But here I am, tagged by Marauder’s Map . I have to do what my tagger has asked me to. So, here goes: Seven things I plan to do: 1) Grow hair on my scalp. SOS Dr Sarkar of the Arnica-trioffer fame. 2) Be more articulate. 3) Have a proper English breakfast on a sunny Saturday morning 4) Play cricket with gay abandon, like I used to do many, many years back, and bowl toe-crushing inswinging yorkers. 5) A road trip down the Malabar coast, preferably from the northern tip of Goa to Trivandrum. 6) Time travel to the sixties and tour with The Beatles. 7) Flush and pee, and finish before the flush whirl ends. Seven things I can't do : 1) Grow hair on my scalp.. alas 2) Deal with things financial like investments and filing returns. 3) Put an end to the compulsive habit of zapping mercilessly, and then getting stuck at Fashion TV. (I really like the fine cut and the fall of the outfits) 4) Understand the Eric Segal phenomenon. 5) And the brouhaha over graphic...

It all started one day when Rituparno Ghosh asked Mrs Moon Moon Sen, the mother of all bong boudies, in that coy tone of his: “Moon Moon Di, toke shobai naeka keno bole re?” The goddess of voluptuous said: "Achha, Ritu, tui naeka’r definition ta bol to…" A snapshot from the Antarmahal floor: Act I Sc I: Love-making scene between Jackie Shroff and Soha Ali Khan Rituparno Ghosh (RG): Ei Jaaggu, shon! Tui na, laav-making’er scene ta ektu Rangeela’r moto kore dichis. Amra janish, oto overt hobo na! Eita art house cinema, toder Bollywood bioscope na. JS (Jackie Shroff): R se Ritu Da. Ch se cho**n dekhalei shudhu hobe? Ektu..Ch se chulkuni na hole ke hobe? (Aside: Na se Naeka ch**a, saala. Bombay te role pachhina bole ei Pa se panpenani sojhho korte hoche) RG: Ki shob je bolish. (blushes ruddy). Chhhi. (Bites his fingers) Jaai hok. RG: [Picks up the megaphone and simpers into it] Soha, tui shuye por. Jaaggu, tui or opor chor. Soha: Ritu Da, maa je bole pathiye chilo dummy diye kora...

Delhi grows on you. It is an acquired taste. Like whiskey or like seafood. I used to hate the sprawling metropolis like anything when I had begun my professional life there. But now I am in Bangalore; and there are times when I miss the earthiness, the unpredictability of the whore-city. The first sight itself in the morning as the train cut through the NCR suburbs was revolting. Banal station names that had no poetry. Like Shakur Basti or Buradi. Far from the tintinabulating Chinsurah or Dankuni. Walls splattered with the ubiquitous Dr Kothari peddling quack treatments for sexual dysfunctions. Or, just the brown scrubs that seemed to grow everywhere. They were so depressing. And then the heat, the ungainly jaats (whom I later came to admire, another acquired taste!) and the marauding blue-lines. But the city grew on me. The wide roads, the vast stretches of open land and the winters. Fog rolling down the Noida link road, over the Yamuna. The few days of rains were magical – roasted co...

Shoshti… The smell of new tailor-stitched jama ; running around in the pandal with a gang of friends, bursting rollcaps. Spending pocket money on cheap lozenges. Saptami… Adolescence. Cracked voice. Wearing the first pair of jeans. And North Star sneakers. Egg rolls and Gold Spot. Furtive glances at girls… Ashtami... Pandal-hopping (how I hate the word) with college crowd. Loud, risque jokes. Cigarettes. Yapping till the wee hours. Nabami… French leave. Pujas in philistine Delhi. Thakur dekha. Bhog khawa . Anjan at CR Park. Feel strangely youthful. A bottle of Old Monk and the close circle. Reminiscences. Dashami… Aashchey bochor abar hobe!

Ever bought air? Hollywood hottie and Welsh beauty Catherine Zeta Jones does. Read about it here . How about some bottles of early morning air collected from a Himalayan village, laced with dung smoke and the smell of dew-soaked ground?

It all started when the wily Harbhajan Singh hit a massive six that almost cleared the stadium. The ball could not be retrieved. The commentators – Mpumelelo Mbangwa and Arun Lal -- got some breather from Harbhajan’s adrenalin rush. Here’s the gem of a conversation: Arun Lal : Here comes the third umpire with his basket of old balls. Mbangwa : It will be difficult to replace such an old ball. They are already in tatters and, anyway, 80-over-old balls do not extract any “juice” from the track. Arun Lal : I wonder how they maintain 80-over-old balls. But these are red and I guess that’s okay. In a one-day scenario, it must be really difficult to replace a white ball. [The umpires decide on a ball] Mbangwa : This ball is in a really bad shape. [Has got quite a humping, is what he must have meant] Arun Lal : The new old ball, you mean! [Both laugh] Arun Lal : Coming back to the one-day scenario, I wonder how they find 45-over old balls. [The ball fixation is getting worse. Needs a shrink]....

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...

Fellow blogger J.A.P ., in a comment on a previous post, rekindled an old debate that’s very close to my heart. He said he could not wade through Salman Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet . Neither could I. It would be wrong to state that I was a Rushdie fan. Actually, I used to be a Rushdie fanatic. But then, he fell by the way, and so did my love for him. What beggars belief is the slovenly denouement in the genius’ literary career. It somewhat reflects the climax of his magnum opus, Midnight’s Children , which shows the protagonist, Saleem Sinai, disintegrate – alluding to the fractious state of the Indian republic. Rushdie, too, disintegrates after completing the novel -- the death of the artist as a philanderer, a controversy-mongerer… Shame was so similar to Midnight’s Children that I didn’t bother to flip beyond page 5. The Moor’s Last Sigh was somewhat palatable. And the less said about The Ground Beneath Her Feet , the better. Fury was too convoluted, couldn’t finish even...

Even for a dilettante blogger like me, I find my comments list populated by nameless people selling debt consolidation loans and ways to EZ wealth. And, guess what, even enquiring after the kitchen leak! Strange. But what it more strange is the fact that I did have a kitchen leak last month! Orwellian nightmare?

For quite some time, I have been commenting on other people’s blogs without having a blog of my own. I used to get a vicarious kick from my anonymous commentary. It was like… watching stray dogs mate from behind bushes as kids. Anyway, there was quite a guessing game over the identity of this pesky commentator and I relished every bit of it. My comments were commented upon and I commented on other people’s comments. I commented on a despairing blogger’s anguished cry over the lack of comments on his blog. Commented on a blogger’s humble acceptance of the fact that he had received 0.765 comments per post. Added my two-paise bit to a debate on Satyajit Ray kicked off by a venerable but imperious film-buff/critic. Commented on a would-be novelist’s bathos-filled comparison of upright fir trees in Cooch Behar with Nutan (Yes, Nutan). I also goaded fellow non-bloggers to comment copiously. I was on the verge of starting a mass-movement. Give me blood and I will give you comments! Very soon ...

Watched Sudhir Mishra’s Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi during the weekend. Over the years, I have come round to the view that one should divest oneself of the baggage of expectations before watching an Indian film. The Rising rose to deceive because it wilted under the baggage of 4 years that went into making it. And, of course, Aamir Khan’s reclusive ways, which always whet the media’s appetite. Why expect an epic before you enter the theatres? Chances are that you’ll come out disappointed. Enter the theatres with a blank mind, a tabula rasa, and the film will itself etch its glorious moments as well as its failings on the mind. I feel this is constructive film-watching. Coming to Hazaron… , I didn’t have any expectations from the film. Watching it on a lazy Sunday afternoon, the film took me by surprise. At the outset, the director makes his intentions clear when he points out the horological mistake in Nehru’s freedom speech. How stupid to say: “At the stroke of midnight, when the world s...

Day after day alone on the hill, The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still, But nobody wants to know him, They can see that he's just a fool, And he never gives an answer, But the fool on the hill Sees the sun going down, And the eyes in his head, See the world spinning around. The Beatles (Magical Mystery Tour) Paul McCartney wrote the lyrics for the song. One of my favourite Beatles track. It has a story to it: "One morning, Paul was walking his dog Martha on a hill. As he watched the sun rise, he noticed that Martha was missing. Paul turned around to look for his dog, and there a man stood, who appeared on the hill without making a sound. The gentleman was dressed respectably, in a belted raincoat. Paul knew this man had not been there seconds earlier as he had looked in that direction for Martha. Paul and the stranger exchanged a greeting, and this man then spoke of what a beautiful view it was from the top of this hill tha...

One may wonder what the URL of my blog is all about. Wasn’t all pre-meditated, I must admit. Thor’s Wheel is from a comic strip that I adore, and till sometime back, was addicted to – B.C., by Johny Hart. The strip is set in a prehistoric age as the name suggests. But it has humans, as intelligent as ever, co-habiting with talking ants going to anthill schools with the US flag on them, bludgeoned snakes and Miss Know-It-Alls. The wry and cynical humour will certainly get you. I can vouch for that. Coming to Thor’s Wheels, it’s a makeshift shop selling - you guessed it – wheels. Mankind’s last great invention. Okay, I concede. With the exception of latex. The wheels are simple rolling stones and one cannot miss the satire on the marketing brouhaha associated with today’s automotive industry. The connection? The day I was creating my blog (a surprisingly easy process), I had another window open where I was reading B.C. And bingo!

My long-delayed entry into the blog world. An advisory to start out with. All views expressed here are my own. Maybe molded. But mine, definitely. And yes, copyright protected. So, please do get in touch with me if you want to reproduce extracts for commercial use or for unacknowledged distribution. Welcome to the Fool on the Hill .