unlikely

On a print job in fort (Bombay) and I had three hours to kill before anything came back so I walked into Leopold's. Never been there before and there was no waiting line like always, so I decided to go in. I was asked to be seated opposite a random woman, tall and big eyed, as is done to maximize space in leo's(?) The interior design magazines tell you to add mirrors if you want to create the illusion of a larger room, but they never mention that mirrors also double the number people in the room. When the shootings happened, can't imagine the chaos here.. Back to the table -- I'm seated, I begin conversation. Are you from here? No, Singapore. She has a strange Malayan accent. She looks mostly (South) Indian. She works for the government of Singapore. As a police officer. She's backpacking here, read about it in Shantharam -- look at the books stacked at the cash counter -- evidence. Food arrives. Her Kesar Pista icecream is not green, shame. Ideally, it would've been a green pista base with kesar bits in it, she says. People on every table are trying to get wide angle pictures of the place. She speaks Tamil! her great grandparents were from India. Her Tamil accent is more natural than her English. But it was too strange to continue this game of go on, speak more in that language, so I dropped it. Didn't have too much to talk about really. Almost end of meal I blurt, I'm sorry I didn't get your name. Sindhu. She's smiling. My jaw is dropping. I check again. I explain. We exchange cards. We walk out, eat a paan together. 

A death.

About 200 meters from where I live, a leg of the MRF motocross was being held. The ground where it happened had been vacant for the longest time - a vast expanse of brown soil, baking and cracking in the southern sun. Sometimes one would see boys playing cricket there in the evenings. Then overnight, mounds of soil were compacted and a race was held! This motocross was a bit of surprise. Though Coimbatore is quite famous for car racing (the likes of Karivardhan, Narain Karthikeyan and Akbar Ebrahim.. Have I ever told you the story of Kari? I should sometime. If someone said local legend I'd think of him.) I atleast have never heard of motocrosses being held here. It came and went like a flash.
A guy died there that day. He was trying to pull off a stunt and ended up with his handlebar through his liver. My neighbour operated on him but he didn't survive the injury. When I looked for that story in the papers there was none in the local papers. I finally found it in the Bangalore Mirror (here). Now everything is razed and back to normal albeit a few bumps. Kids play there a lot more now. I leave the house and look at them and remind myself of this incident. Re-flattened ground, erasure of memory.

diesel's latest campaign.

Are Waffles a bad idea at 2 am?

Hunger.