In recent months, I have been shadowing two of my senior-citizen, nodding acquaintances (they are no more than that), as they take the air of a pleasant morning at a nearby park in our leafy Bangalore suburb. Their conversations, while they go about their lung-filling, oxygenated perambulation, oftentimes can be quite riveting. When I am …
Author Archives: sureshsubrahmanyan
Drown a rat, go to jail
‘You dirty, yellow-bellied rat…’ James Cagney in Taxi Let me state, straight out of the box, that I am not terribly fond of rats. That goes for mice, bandicoots, hamsters and other representatives of the rodent species. I could add lizards to this list but they are not rodents. It is rats that I am …
Bling it on!
Money, money, money / Always sunny / In the rich man’s world. ABBA. Here is a simple question. Would you pay a tad over Rs.52 lakhs or even Rs. 2 crores (not that it matters), as some sources will have it, for a lady’s handbag? You would if you happen to be an Ambani and …
IPL turns up the sound and light
India’s cricket-mad public can never get enough of the game. There is no such thing as ‘too much of a good thing’ in their lexicon. Mind you, one can debate endlessly on whether excessive cricket watching is a good or bad thing, but let us put that to one side. Only recently, two nations from …
This and that over a few beers
The other day, at the local club, I ran into an old friend of mine. Old friend, meaning we have known each other for a very long time, also that we are both pretty long in the tooth. Not that I wish to compare ourselves with the equine species, but you know, just saying. All …
Naatu Naatu in step with Baby Elephant Walk
For the past few days, I have been wracking my brain trying to make a modicum of sense out of Naatu Naatu, the whirling dervish of a song-dance sequence from the film RRR, a fictitious period piece set during British colonial times. So much so that my brain has become addled and frazzled. If you …
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Idioms for idiots
I do not believe in pure idioms. I think there is naturally a desire, for whoever speaks or writes, to sign in an idiomatic, irreplaceable manner. Jacques Derrida. The word idiom, if one were to be pedantic, means ‘an expression whose meaning is different from the meanings of the individual words in it.’ I picked …
Calling out names in Meghalaya
The assembly election results for three important north-eastern states of India, namely, Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya are just in. And surprise, surprise, the incumbent BJP has come up smelling of roses in all the three states. They won by a comfortable margin in Tripura and Nagaland, bagging the requisite number of seats, along with their …
To ‘Sir,’ with reservations
The Oxford dictionary defines the respectful appellation of ‘Sir’ as follows, ‘used as a polite way of addressing a man whose name you do not know, for example in a store or restaurant, or to show respect viz., Good morning, Sir.’ The operative phrase here is ‘way of addressing a man.’ From the time …
When the BBC was a three-letter word
Prologue. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been in the news in recent weeks. For all the wrong reasons. From a celebrated purveyor of the news worldwide, the BBC has become the news. Principally, for putting out a two-part documentary on India’s Prime Minister Modi, and not a very flattering one at that. Naturally, the …
Suresh's Corner 