There can be little argument that the genre of crime fiction, whether in book or film form, is the most addictive avenue of diversion that most readers and viewers long for. To be curled up in bed on a cold and wet evening, thumbing through a P.D. James or a Dorothy Sayers mystery with a mug of hot chocolate is a consummation devoutly to be wished, to employ an expression culled from Hamlet’s most celebrated speech. Depending on personal preference, it could also be a Sherlock Holmes or an Inspector Morse that you might take a shine to. One is spoilt for choice when it comes to crime. There are still others, if crime is not your bag, who might plump for a light-hearted Jeeves and Wooster caper, as I often do myself but for the moment, I am focused on crime, as I have some pertinent, if offbeat, views to share. Do I see a hand going up? No Sir, nobbling Lord Emsworth’s noble sow, the Empress of Blandings does not qualify as   serious crime. Not in my book, anyway.

I have lost count of the number of crime-related movies or television serials I must have watched. Books as well, and for the purposes of this essay, the terms books and films can be used interchangeably. Brilliant as most of these films are, they tend to fall prey to a clutch of well-worn tropes which is pretty much unavoidable, but pose interesting questions. Incidentally, as an entertainment form, the British do crime with greater subtlety and finesse than anyone else, and not too many people will take umbrage with that assertion. Getting back to the cliché, imagine if you will, the following scene. A murder suspect has been brought in by the police for questioning. He is anxiously waiting in the interview room, chewing his finger nails, sweat beads beginning to form on his brow. That is exactly how the inspector and his deputy want him, as they watch the probable killer through the one-way mirror, before entering the room. It would also not have escaped anyone’s attention that the inspector’s sidekick is invariably portrayed as one who is slightly challenged intellectually, is patronizingly put upon by his boss and thus carries a sizeable chip on his shoulder. Once in a rare while, he gets his own back, which adds greatly to the charm of the narrative. Holmes’ Watson and Morse’s Lewis are fine examples of this genre of underlings.

The following exchange then takes place, after the junior police officer formally records the interview formalities. For the sake of verisimilitude, I shall dub the pair of police officers Morse and Lewis. With due apologies to their creator, Colin Dexter. Inspector Morse opens the proceedings, addressing the suspect in the time-honoured fashion, ‘Please state your full name for the record.’

 ‘Hyde, Edward. Inspector, you have got the wrong man. I was nowhere near the scene of the murder.’

 ‘So you say, Mr. Hyde, so you say and I don’t, for a moment, believe that is your real name. Tell me, where were you on the evening of the 27^th of July between 6.30 and 7.45 pm?’

I have yet to come across an episode without that question being posed to the suspect. Bear in mind that this interview is being conducted roughly three months after the date of the murder, and the suspect, who allegedly committed the dreaded deed, is initially out of his depth faced with this query, but rallies well and is equal to the task.

 ‘With respect Inspector, I can hardly remember what I was doing yesterday afternoon, leave alone something that I am suspected of having done three months ago. Have a heart, Sir. Come to that, can you tell me what you were up to on the 10^th of July between 7 and 9 am? Hmmm? Foxed? I rest my case.’

Inspector Morse bridles. ‘Now look here, Mr. Hyde. I ask the questions around here, so let’s have none of your cheek. “Rest my case,” indeed! I am talking about a ghastly, premeditated murder, one in which you strangled the victim to death in her bathtub. Surely, anyone would clearly remember the date and time of such an event?’

At this point, Morse’s deputy, Lewis shoves his oar in. ‘If I might interject Sir, ever since Alfred Hitchcock’s blockbuster Psycho was released, murders in bathtubs and under showers have gone up by leaps and bounds; 33% to be exact.’

 ‘Thank you for that priceless input, Lewis. Can we get back to the strangling? I am pressed for time.’ His boss’ sarcasm is lost on Lewis, but he acquiesces.

At this point, the suspect pipes up. ‘Alleged strangling, Inspector, alleged. You are forgetting your police etiquette. I am here as a suspect, an innocent victim of mistaken identity. I have the right to remain silent, but I am cooperating. You are going to be the laughing stock with the judge and the public at large when we go to court.’

 ‘We shall see about that. And you talk too much.’ With that Morse flounces out of the room, Lewis in tow.

That was an impressionistic sketch of a situation I have frequently come across in crime fiction, where the cops have invariably been found to come up short against a fast-talking suspect who is probably guilty, but knows there is no concrete evidence even if his own alibi is dodgy. I harbour a sneaking sympathy for the suspect, because I can never recall what I had for lunch a couple of days ago, if called upon to reveal the menu. Which brings me to another situation in the police interrogation room, in which the suspect’s solicitor plays an active part.

Inspector Morse opens a fresh line of attack. ‘Mr. Hyde, you were seen loitering with intent in the vicinity of the crime just an hour before the murder took place. What do you have to say for yourself?’

The suspect is about to answer when his solicitor urgently whispers something into his ear and proceeds to reply. ‘My client is not obliged to answer that question on the grounds that it might incriminate him. Furthermore, it was 11 in the morning in a crowded street corner and your CCTV cameras would have captured several other people strolling by in the area. Why should my client be singled out and brought in for questioning? Rather invidious, wouldn’t you say, Inspector?’

Morse was now at his ironic best. ‘Perhaps because he was the only one in that crowded street corner who was seen running away from the crime scene at the speed of Usain Bolt, with a knife soaked in blood in his right hand? And, by the way, you can’t impress me with fancy words. Invidious, shinvidious!’

 Lewis could not let this pass. ‘Sir, invidious means to give rise to offence. In fact, the judge in an earlier case, Carlill vs Carbolic Smokeball, employed that exact word when…’

 ‘My dear chap, can you kindly put a sock in it? I have enough problems to deal with here without your asinine interruptions.’ The deputy crawled back into his shell like a salted snail.

At this point, the suspect butted in, ‘Officer, I was only….’

 ‘Shut up, Hyde,’ snapped his solicitor. ‘I will take that question. Forgive my client, Inspector. He is new to your interrogation techniques. The fact is, my client was helping his friend at a nearby eatery to cut some vegetables and accidentally cut his middle finger which started bleeding profusely. Your cameras caught him when he was rushing out to get some urgent medical attention and first aid at a nearby nursing home. He was in such great pain that he even forgot to leave the kitchen knife behind at the eatery.’

 ‘Left or right?’

 ‘Pardon?’

 ‘Which hand?’

 ‘Er, the right hand. Are you playing mind games with me, Officer? Surely, you can see that from the CCTV cameras.’

Morse’s brows furrowed. ‘Curiouser and curiouser. Nice try, my friend. And you call that a bandage? Let’s get serious. I want the name and address of this fictitious eatery.’

And so the long day wears on, the police team is unable to break through the suspect’s defences. Here’s the thing that always tickles me. What exactly is behind the legal mumbo-jumbo in saying, ‘I won’t speak on the grounds that it might incriminate me?’ I have never understood that. In my books, just saying that alone should indicate that you are trying to hide something, which sounds extremely incriminating. I am sure some legal boffin would put me right on that, but speaking as a layman, it has always been something that puzzled me.

Finally, I touch upon the ‘no comment’ scenario. When all else fails, and the suspect is had by the short and curlies and has nowhere to hide, he falls back on the tried and tested ‘no comment’ strategy.

 Inspector Morse goes for the kill. ‘Mr. Hyde, the murdered victim was a very wealthy man. How do you explain scanned copies of his last will and testament and bank statements turning up in your laptop?’

‘No comment.’

‘We found traces of the victim’s blood on your shirt sleeves. Would you care to explain? And don’t give me some applesauce about tomato sauce from your friend’s kitchen.’

‘No comment.’

‘Mr. Edward Hyde, what is your name?’

‘No comment.’

Lewis is amused. ‘That was quite funny, Sir.’

‘We are not amused,’ says Morse in regal fashion. ‘For the last time Lewis, cease and desist or I will order you to leave the room.’

The detective inspector again turns to the suspect. ‘Mr. Hyde, let me caution you. There is a limit to exercising your right to remain silent. You are not a trappist monk. For the last time, this ‘no comment’ tactic will not help. My assistant and I are going to leave the room for ten minutes. I strongly suggest you consult with your solicitor and come up with some answers. I expect a full confession.’

That is about the size of it. When a suspect goes on repeating ‘no comment’ like a well-trained parrot, it kind of stymies the long arm of the law. What kind of defence is that? Clearly, from a legal standpoint, there is more to this than meets the eye. Like the earlier examples, this too had me struggling for answers. On balance, it is not the worst option to take a leaf out of the suspect’s book and stick to ‘no comment.’ Seems to work wonders for criminals. A lawyer might disagree. After all they are, likely as not, paid by the word. As Franz Kafka observed, ‘A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a brief.’

 The flying kiss, a largely fashionable western affectation (though also fairly common in elite social circles in this country), is suddenly in the news here in India that is Bharat Mata. The airy gesture, also known as an ‘air kiss’, was provided by none other than the tallest leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi earlier this week. Not that he is awfully tall or anything, quite to the contrary in fact, but you get my drift. Before I go any further, let me elucidate that most respectable dictionaries define a ‘flying kiss’ as a symbolic gesture given by kissing one’s own hand, then blowing on the hand in a direction towards the recipient. As gestures go, the flying kiss is quite harmless and friendly and we see sportspersons, particularly cricketers, do it all the time when they reach an important landmark like a century or a five-wicket haul. In other words, on the face of it, one cannot divine anything objectionable in the act itself. Which naturally begs the question as to why there was such an almighty ruckus in India’s lower house of Parliament when Rahul Gandhi blew his now infamous airborne kiss as he was leaving the House while the speaker from the treasury benches, the feisty Smriti Irani was warming to her response to Gandhi’s opening remarks.

Therein lies the rub. Now the television cameras did not actually show the viewer Rahul Gandhi’s gesture. Perhaps they felt, probably wisely, that discretion was the better part of valour. The optics would only have exacerbated an already simmering tension. However, there can be no question of denying that it happened as there were enough official and unofficial mobile cameras clicking every little move of the relatively young leader. One of the news channels even led with the kissing story, continuously showing a grainy grab of the Congressman’s gesture.

So much for what transpired as regards the flying kiss. It is what happened afterwards that led to all the consternation and bad blood. Blood was never good to start with between the rival factions in Parliament, but this incident gave ample opportunity to a host of people in the ruling party to label Rahul Gandhi as a misguided misogynist. The scion of the Gandhi family has a history when one recalls some of his past acts in the Lok Sabha. The hugger of a startled Prime Minister, a mischievous wink at some of his party colleagues and now, the flying kiss into the middle distance, they all tend to add up to a mountain even if the source is only a molehill. I have no wish to go into Rahul Gandhi’s opening remarks, or indeed Smriti Irani’s fiery riposte and finally, Home Minister Amit Shah’s last and exhaustive word on the day’s proceedings. This short piece is concerned with the pros and cons of the reaction to Rahul Gandhi’s gesture and, indeed, to the wisdom of that air kiss in the first place.

Politics is all about making capital out of an opportunity. Rahul Gandhi, whose speech was unexpectedly short both in length and in content, could still have scored a few brownie points with his emotionally charged peroration on the Manipur situation. However, when Smriti Irani began her response, Rahul Gandhi decided to leave the House, which meant he also skipped Home Minister Amit Shah’s speech later that evening. Some might have characterised his walkout as a discourtesy but nothing more. He did have rally engagements elsewhere. However, his strategic departure accompanied by the needless flying kiss, that too when a lady was speaking, was not lost on members of the treasury benches who made a nine-course meal out of it. The misogyny allegation was repeated ad nauseum. A section of the ruling party’s ladies issued a formal declaration to the Speaker in protest, demanding action against the ‘offender.’ However, the Home Minister made no reference to Rahul Gandhi’s faux pas, which would have only made an awkward situation more embarrassing.

The instinctive, if misplaced, gesture by Rahul Gandhi, threatened to reduce the seriousness of the no-confidence motion against the ruling dispensation to a slapstick sideshow. Mercifully, a bit of tact and savoir faire was displayed, at least during the rest of the proceedings and life went on noisily as usual. This is not to say that the matter will die a natural death. A section of the ruling party will doubtless keep harping on the incident on television news channels to portray the young Congress leader as an immature parliamentarian, who is yet to cut his teeth in national politics, particularly when it comes to minding his Ps and Qs in the ‘temple of democracy’ viz., the Lok Sabha. Unfortunately, India’s answer to the fabled Quick Draw McGraw keeps the door ajar to let his carpers get a foot in with their trenchant criticism.

Having said that, obstreperous members of the ruling party should temper their tendency to go overboard on an issue that was, in relative terms, a minor solecism. However, in our dog-eat-dog world of politics, that may be too much to ask. I personally expect this incident to provide a few cheap thrills for the ruling party to gloat, and make some of the members of the Congress Party a shade red-faced. Beyond that, the flying kiss incident is a bit of a non-issue that will have its moments under the sun for a few days, then peter out altogether. At the end of the day, to the overblown incident of Rahul Gandhi blowing a flying kiss in Parliament, the question is, has he blown it?

Deccan Chronicle August 11, 2023.

This week my thoughts turn to an aspect of sport that we do not often talk about. At least, I have not come across much editorial space being devoted to that part of modern sport, details of which I am on the verge of divulging. ‘So why don’t you get on with it, without faffing about it endlessly. We don’t have all day you know,’ I hear you complaining querulously. Your ire is well taken, but you will have to bear with me while I formulate my thoughts clearly. I am not serving instant 2-minute noodles here. More like some cheesy, baked offering with all the garnishing and trimmings. On occasion, not always, I write as the thoughts occur to me in a random, stream-of-consciousness flow. Blame it on James Joyce, whose Ulysses I pick up to read every once in a month or so, but even on the instalment reading plan, I am yet to get through the first 100 pages. This is no reflection on the great Irish novelist. Better men than I have struggled with Joyce.

However, I can relate to one of the novel’s protagonists, Leopold Bloom, who wanders around the city of Dublin, being very abstruse and somewhat incomprehensible. Any writer who casually keeps dropping phrases like ‘All Moanday, Tearday, Wailsday, Thumpsday, Frightday, Shatterday’ or ‘Love loves to love love’ needs close watching. As does Joyce’s compatriot, Irish music legend Sir Van Morrison who was so inspired by JJ that, just under 50 years after Ulysses was first published in 1918, he introduced this line in his song Madame George from his iconic album Astral Weeks – ‘Oh, the love that loves, the love that loves to love the love / That loves to love the love that loves to love.’  Take it from me, those lyrics make more sense, just about, when Morrison sings them.

I shall now jettison all literary pretensions and get down to the res. Where was I? Ah yes, sport. Without being conscious of it, for several years now, I have been wondering about how sportsmen, across various genres, celebrate victory and mourn defeat. It is an interesting area of speculation. In order to assemble my thoughts on this subject without getting into a needless tizzy, I shall concentrate on just two games, Cricket and Tennis. The capitalisation (just this once) is intentionally done to give those two forms of sport the importance they so richly deserve. I could touch on football, The Beautiful Game, in passing but two will suffice for my needs.

I have been watching international cricket ever since the early 60s. Some of them live at the venues, but in more recent times, mostly on wide-screen television. When the first, hesitant stirrings of an idea for this article came to me, I was watching the live telecast of the just concluded 5^th and final Ashes Test at the Oval, Australia and England going hammer and tongs at each other at the end of a nail-biting series. I shall not go into the actual details of the game as they are not particularly germane to this piece, and those of you who follow the game know what transpired anyway. I was struck by the surfeit of uninhibited, celebratory joy that was exhibited every time a wicket fell. I am not referring to the mostly inebriated crowd here, but to the on-field players. Mind you this is nothing new, but it has become frenetic during the past couple of decades. It is a commonplace to see players hurling themselves over each other in a heap, hugging, kissing, running all round the field like they were being pursued by an angry swarm of bees. Incidentally, bee or locust invasion on a cricket pitch is not an unknown phenomenon. In a nutshell, everything short of indulging in an orgy of lovemaking is on full display. My heart goes out to the poor bowler who lies at the bottom of the heap under that mass of well-meaning humanity. Footballers are a class apart in this regard. Some of them (unique to Brazilian footers) even mimic the arrival of a baby in swaddling clothes after a goal is scored! The question ‘did you score?’ has more than one connotation. It is a wonder the players do not inflict on themselves serious injuries what with all the hurtling, flailing and jumping around.

Contrast this with something I was watching on YouTube. England’s magnificent fast bowler, Freddie Trueman, getting his 300^th Test wicket at the Oval in August 1964 against the old enemy, Australia. He was the first to reach this amazing landmark at the time. He and his English team mates had every right to go bonkers and celebrate, losing all sense of decorum in the process, like their present-day counterparts. Instead, what we see on the grainy, black and white film clips are the players gently ambling up to ‘Fiery’ Fred and politely shaking him by the hand or avuncularly patting him on the back. That includes the opposing batter just dismissed. Trueman, in turn, graciously doffing his cap to the crowd in modest acknowledgment, as if to say, ‘It was nothing lads. All in a day’s work. You can buy me a pint.’

The same could be said of Bradman and Hutton, or even more recently of Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, reaching important milestones in their storied careers and not making a song and dance about it. It must be added here that skipper Gavaskar did blot his copybook when he had unseemly words with his opponents in Australia and almost forfeited the game in a Test match, but that was an exception, goaded by extenuating circumstances, and not the rule. What is more, when a batter was given out, without the benefit of a referral to the third umpire, rarely did he even register the mildest questioning look at the ump. Just walked. As one English coach from yesteryear told his ward who was fuming, ‘I was not out.’ ‘Really? Just look at the scoreboard, lad.’ One realises there is much more at stake these days and emotions run high. Nationalistic fervour, hubris, and above all, obscene sums of money, come into the equation. Among present day stars, I can only think of Zen Master M.S. Dhoni, whose facial expression rarely betrayed any emotion, whether he had just lifted the World Cup or been soundly thrashed. Still and all, it is a matter for reflection. We can keep harking back to times gone by with a nostalgic sigh, but we cannot bring it back. As James Joyce puts it, this time in a way we can follow, ‘Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.’

On to tennis. We talk about the G.O.A.T. Is it Federer, Nadal or Djokovic? Or will it be Alcaraz? Are those full stops between the four letters that spell ‘Greatest of All Time’ redundant? Are those full stops between I.N.D.I.A. a clever ruse? Who can tell? Not even Joyce, I suspect, but here’s the thing. When the immortal Rod Laver won the calendar Grand Slam on two separate occasions between a 7-year gap (1962 and 1969), he merely essayed a happy hop and a skip, trotted across to his opponent at the net, shook hands, and probably walked off for a beer and a simple pub meal with friends. For the past 20 years or so, we have watched one of those three G.O.A.Ts, great players all, do some or all of the following when match point is done and dusted – fall flat on their backs, get down on their knees and give tearful thanks to the Almighty, chew contemplatively on a blade of grass (if it is Wimbledon and if it is Djokovic), cry when you win, cry when you lose, clamber up the spectators’ gallery to your box, be hugged and kissed by about twenty people, cry some more and finally, when you have to say a few words as winner or runner-up, break down completely. Catharsis. A lady champion is also allowed to lean on Royalty’s shoulder and weep, if said Royalty happens to be the Duchess of Kent or the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton. Cry and the world cries with you. Tears of joy and sadness witnessed in equal measure. All in all, a lachrymose affair, the prize distribution ceremony.

Which only leaves me with one question. Were players from previous generations impervious to emotion? Were they so philosophical that they took victory and defeat with stoic equanimity? I shall conclude with, no, not James Joyce you will be relieved to note, but with an edited Rudyard Kipling quote which meets the case admirably. ‘If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue / Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it / And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!’ In those days, the term Man was employed generically to denote humankind (as opposed to mankind), so ladies kindly hold your horses. I cannot speak for the term ‘son.’ Only Mr. Kipling can answer to that and proffer an adequate explanation from his eternal resting place.

I have a true confession to make. I am ashamed to admit that I have not heard a single song by Taylor Swift. At least, not till I decided to write this column. I blush to disclose that the lady’s name passes by me as the idle wind. Her records have broken all manner of records, the number of ‘hits’ she generates on Spotify, Amazon Music and other similar portals have hit the roof and gone to stratospheric heights. The Beatles and Ed Sheeran can step aside, else Taylor Swift’s boots will walk all over you. Money, money, money / Must be funny / In the rich man’s world, sang Swedish moneybags ABBA, all those years ago, but even they must be gagging on their Köttbullar (Swedish meatballs), when they get to cast their eyes on Taylor Swift’s bank balance. I say this as a person who voraciously consumes all genres of music from both western and Indian sources. Pop, Rock, R&B, Jazz, Musicals, Classical from the western hemisphere, and from my motherland, Carnatic and Hindustani classical to Hindi and Tamil film songs, particularly those released during the 60s and 70s. That is a pretty full plate and difficult to do adequate justice to, but one does one’s best within the 24-hour time cycle.

Essentially, it all boils down to a generational thing. Taylor Swift represents a generation and a brand of music that I have had neither the time nor the inclination to sit and listen to. Or perhaps, dance to. I also realise that it is not fair to make a virtue out of a lack, and felt, that I ought to listen to the young lady at some length before I pass judgement, one way or the other, on the quality of her music. I should also quickly add that Taylor Swift, for the purposes of this essay, is a symbolic representation of other contemporary musicians like her, most of whom I have not had the pleasure (dubious or otherwise) of listening to, and cannot readily affix names to.

After all, when I was going through my adolescent years, playing The Beatles’ I wanna hold your hand and She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, 45 rpms on our Grundig radiogram, my parents were, to say the least, not best pleased. My mother went so far as to say that these were sounds emanating directly from hell and that her sons were doomed and headed for purgatory. In order to steer me back to the straight and narrow, she would make me sit down and take Carnatic music lessons – first from her, and then from a qualified music teacher. Though to be fair to her, she looked more charitably upon Dancing Shoes and Bachelor Boy by Cliff Richard. He was more melodic and pumped less adrenaline and testosterone.

And so it came to pass that it was time to get an earful of Taylor Swift. I simply had to know what magic she imparts that makes her the most sought-after, or perhaps bought-after musician today. Fortunately, one does not have to spend money these days to access her music. It is all there on YouTube or Spotify, not entirely free, but reasonable annual subscriptions do not make that much of a dent in one’s meagre cash reserves, giving one the illusion of getting it all on the never-never. Incidentally, if you are new to Spotify, please dole out a little extra cash and take the ‘no ads’ option. Otherwise, your listening pleasure will be ruined by periodic punctuations of silly ad messages right between your favourite tracks. Take it from me, it is no fun being rudely interrupted by a high-pitched male or female voice urging you to buy this or that brand of insurance, right between the 1^st and 2^nd movements of Bach’s 3^rd Brandenburg Concerto. Sacré bleu!

What is it about Taylor Swift that every time I attempt to start writing something about her, I get side-tracked onto something else? Part of the reason can be ascribed to my lack of adequate knowledge of her evidently impressive body of work, the other part being a deep-seated reluctance to make the effort to get to know exactly what makes her tick. Somewhere in the dark and biased recesses of my mind, I am sub-consciously worrying that I might actually get to like her passionate outpourings, which could very well be the thin end of the wedge. That may not be an entirely undesirable thing, particularly if I run into a group of adolescent teenagers who are sold on Ms. Swift. I could keep the conversation going for a while, if not actually impress the hell out of them (‘Uncle, you are so cool’). That being the case, a crash course on the music of Taylor Swift was in order. ‘Greatest Hits of Taylor Swift,’ I googled. As ever, Google obliged with 30 of her smash hits for me to savour.

At which point I discovered that Taylor Swift was not just about songs and music. It was about short films, lavishly and expensively made, over which her songs were played and she acted, sang and danced with gay abandon assisted by a ‘cast of thousands.’ Songs like Love Story, Shake it Off, Blank Space, You Belong with Me, Anti-Hero and All Too Well: The Short Film. The last named goes on for a full 15 minutes, where our protagonist shows off her acting and singing skills. In other words, you do not merely listen to Taylor Swift (you can if you close your eyes), but you must necessarily watch her as well in order to derive the full benefit and impact of her talent.

 After a while of ‘watching’ this I felt like closing my eyes. None of those songs meant anything to me. They do not easily roll off the tongue like Imagine, Mrs. Robinson, Yesterday or My Way. If anything, Taylor Swift reminds me a lot of a souped-up version of Madonna from the 80s. Not that I had much time for Madonna either. The problem is, I am searching hard for the music, based on which these ladies have been raking in the shekels like you wouldn’t believe, and I am not finding it. If there is a smidgen of melody in any of these songs, it is being kept a closely guarded secret. Rhythm, there is plenty of I admit, but too much of an insistent, driving beat can only result in a splitting headache. I could be inviting howls of protest from the hordes who are yet to obtain their driving licences, but that is a chance I am going to have to take.

It is easy for me, long in the tooth as I am, to sit back and be hyper-critical of a present-day superstar who, with hardly any effort, can sing her way to the top of the charts even if she merely mouthed Baa-baa, black sheep. When I came across Swift’s Love Story music video I thought, ‘Ah, at last she is doing a modern-day cover of that lovely Andy Williams classic, Where do I begin? from the 1970 Hollywood tear-jerker, Love Story. Such, however, was not the case. A false dawn. This was Taylor Swift’s original version which bore no resemblance to the 1970 hit release. More’s the pity.

There is a school of thought that with some songs, a single listening won’t do justice. You need to play it a few times before the song sinks into your consciousness and grows on you. Other songs click instantly mainly because of a catchy hook or tune. Thus, I went back and watched / listened to Taylor Swift’s hit songs three or four times. I put them to the litmus test of going to sleep on them, waking up the next morning to determine if I could still recall the tunes. No dice. Complete blank. Which led me to the ultimate conclusion that Taylor Swift and her ilk have a massive fan following but clearly, I am not of their number. As I said before, it could be a generational thing, but I wouldn’t be holding my breath on the assumption that these songs will still be remembered and sung 50 years from now. Like Strangers in the Night or Autumn Leaves, for example. Something like Swift’s Blank Space is in the now, for the moment, purely ephemeral with no thought of the morrow. Her bank balance, however, could last several generations. Provided she does not spend it all on her wardrobe and make-up. Not to mention fancy cars and plush mansions.

In sum, I have to say that my not being able to appreciate Taylor Swift’s music has nothing to do with her performing skills. She is strutting her stuff and is adored by her millions of fans who are singing her praises. More power to her shapely shoulders. I have to look inwards and psychoanalyze why I am unable to rise to the level of musical sophistication being demanded of me by Swift’s oeuvre. As Shakespeare, who couldn’t help commenting on anything and everything under the sun, succinctly put it, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.’

Postscript: Taylor Swift’s recent performance at a Seattle stadium generated seismic activity equivalent to a 2.3-magnitude earthquake by the dancing fans. As Carole King sang all those years ago, I Feel the Earth Move Under my Feet.

Of late, I have been receiving a few friendly comments from a handful of readers who have my best interests at heart, to the effect that my columns tend to be a tad too long. Happily they are in the minority, but I tend to take any feedback seriously. I reflect. If not exactly riddled with self-doubt, I contemplate and cogitate. Rather like Macbeth, I am not even sure if it is a dagger that I see before me or something less lethal. Do many of the others in my circle feel the same way, and are only keeping their counsel out of a sense of propriety? The very fact that someone has bothered to write in and comment at all, is generally a welcome sign. In order to be even handed, I should also mention that there are many who write extremely nice things about my blogs, and thank you very much indeed. You know who you are. You buck me up no end.

Getting back to the vexed issue of the length of my blogs, I responded to one of my good friends’ comments about the piece being too long with a snappy, philosophical, almost Kierkegaardian ‘how long is a piece of string?’ To his credit, he responded with a terse ‘long enough to become a noose.’ On my part, this was not taken amiss. This is good-natured banter, but he had given me food for thought. Not that I had entirely agreed with him, but still, something over which to chew the cud.

Now here is the thing. On average my columns tend to weigh in at around 1500 to 1600 words. I go in for what is fashionably called ‘the long form essay.’ I could add here that, as long-form essays go, mine will come under the shorter version of the category. There are many distinguished, and some not so, writers who think nothing of spitting on their hands and dashing off four to five thousand words! Without batting an eyelid. Almost the length of a not-so-short story. So, I repeat my cardinal question, ‘how long is a piece of string?’

In the past, when I used to contribute regularly to a few newspapers, I had to cut my coat according to my cloth and restrict the verbiage to around 1000 words or less. Which is not something to be sneezed at, but one was constantly worried about having to curtail one’s natural instincts to spread oneself high, wide and handsome, in a manner of speaking. On the odd occasion that I erred in length, to employ a cricketing terminology, I darkly visualised some junior sub sweating under a naked light bulb in front of his desktop till late at night, burning the midnight oil and resenting the fact, sadistically wading into my piece with a hatchet. Apostrophes going haywire, semi-colons where none should exist, transferred epithets being re-transferred ruinously, sentences and paragraphs getting mixed up. It was a nightmare. Next morning, I would scan the broadsheet with trepidation. Furthermore, it did nothing to enhance my reputation when folks opened their newspapers of a morning with their hot cuppa. At least, now if a hawk-eyed reader swoops down on a clumsy mixed metaphor or a grammatical solecism, I can gallantly put my hand up and say, ‘mea culpa.’

Back to the topic on hand. You see, that is another thing. One aims to stay on the straight and narrow path sticking to the essentials of one’s subject, but every now and then, the main path leads us on to some interesting side roads, turn-offs and alleyways that require a bit of explaining. That is how, without even being conscious of it, the words tend to multiply. I could, of course, suggest to some of my readers that if ploughing through 1600 words feels like a steep climb, perhaps they ought to read my burnt offerings in two easy instalments. 800 words a day should be a leisurely stroll in the park. The downside, however, is that the suspense involved in the wait to get at the second instalment might be too stressful. Was it the butler who put the strychnine in the soup or was it the housemaid? So much simpler to read the whole, damn thing in one go and get a good night’s sleep. Incidentally, it was the squint-eyed gardener!

I am not sure how many of you have heard of the late Miles Kington. He was on the editorial staff of Punch and contributed prolifically to many of Britain’s leading newspapers and magazines. His stock-in-trade, as one would expect of a Punch staffer, was humour. I discovered him during my early days in a reputed advertising agency in Calcutta, where the librarian had the good sense to subscribe to Punch. More for the glossy adverts than anything else. I devoured the magazine and Miles Kington was my favourite columnist. In more recent times, I have been fortunate enough to access his books online and not a day passes when I don’t read and re-read his delightful musings.

The reason I brought his name up was that he apparently wrote a column a day, anything from 1000 to 2000 words. Yes, you read that right. For nearly forty years, almost till the day he breathed his last, this indefatigable humourist wrote a piece every single day! It would greatly surprise me if he is not featured in the Guinness Book of World Records. What is more, his editors swear Miles’ quality never wavered, and his choice of subjects could be just about anything under the sun or nothing at all. So here I am, wondering how to manage to write one column every week, huffing and puffing, without being gently rapped on the knuckles for contaminating my mailing list’s inboxes with tiresomely long pieces, when good, old Miles Kington could do it on a dime.

There is a personal postscript to the Miles Kington story. A story I might have told before, not that anyone will recall, and at my age, repeating myself is an occupational hazard. In my callow, ad agency days, people like Miles inspired me to write little snippets purely for my own pleasure. On one occasion, I decided to write a longer snippet, if that is not a contradiction in terms, and in a rash moment of bravado, dispatched it par avion, by registered post to Miles Kington ‘for favour of publication in your esteemed magazine.’ Which, of course, was Punch. We are talking mid-70s here. The post office charged me a pretty penny for the stamps to London. Rather ambitious, you might say, but what the hell. Young blood. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Or, if you prefer, in for a penny, in for a pound.

Nothing was precisely what I heard for quite a few weeks. Just when I had all but given up the ghost, a light blue envelope with a postage stamp bearing the Queen’s silhouetted bust arrived. Next to that was franked the Punch logo in black. My heart leapt upstream like a young sockeye salmon in season. I opened the envelope with great care, lest I should inadvertently damage part of the precious contents, took the letter out with trembling fingers and opened it. There it was, a Punch letterhead with a brief, handwritten note from none other than MK himself, which I reproduce from memory. ‘Dear Suresh,’ it read. ‘I found your contribution most interesting, but the format needs some working and as such we will, regrettably, be unable to carry it. Keep writing. Best wishes, Miles.’ A bit of a blow of course, but I do not believe I have received a regret letter that made me happier than this one. It is preserved in aspic. If only I could find it. For what it is worth, that article which Punch declined to publish carried approximately 1600 words. As you can see, I am wearing Miles’ polite nolle prosequi like a badge.

Eliza Doolittle, the charming, Cockney flower girl from the hit musical My Fair Lady (born out of G.B. Shaw’s Pygmalion) tells off her language guru, the irascible Prof. Henry Higgins with these opening lines of a memorable song, ‘Words, words, words / I am so sick of words / I get words all day through / First from him, now from you / Is that all you blighters can do?’ She makes a powerful point. Today, you switch on your television set to any news channel and what do you get? The Tower of Babel. Perhaps the Tower of Babble would be more appropriate, given how all the participants shout in complete disharmony and we grope to make any sense out of the proceedings. We are on far more civilized ground when it comes to words in the written form.

So, there you are. I had very pious intentions of making this a short and sweet piece, in order to please my friend who first pointed out the lengthy error of my ways. Once, however, I started putting pen to paper, speaking metaphorically, the urge to let myself go was too great. The blog took on a life of its own. You might say it is a kind of affliction, this craving to be long-winded but, as Novak Djokovic said recently, it is what it is. My English teacher in school during the swinging 60s would have approved, but in this day and age of short attention spans, the same teacher would probably have given me detention, six of the best and ordered me to write 500 times, ‘From now on, I shall not write an essay consisting of more than 500 words.’

There you have it. I have crossed the finishing line. Breasted the tape. The verdict is in. 1640 words. Au revoir.

Tennis: the most perfect combination of athleticism, artistry, power, style, and wit. A beautiful game, but one so remorselessly travestied by the passage of time. Martin Amis, celebrated novelist and essayist.

‘Anyone for tennis?’ Why those three words became a cliché for books published and stage plays enacted during the turn of the twentieth century and beyond, is a bit of a mystery wrapped in a conundrum and couched in an enigma. Typically, if you could visualise a light-hearted comedy of the sort Oscar Wilde was so partial to writing, the curtains will part to reveal the main characters going about their lines with all the sophistication and espièglerie you would have come to expect from a Wildean drama. All of a sudden, without any notice, without so much as a by-your-leave, a character will come bounding on to the stage, dressed all in whites, long flannels as prescribed by the sporting wardrobe of the times, wielding a wooden Dunlop tennis racket still encased in its wooden frame, exclaiming ‘Anyone for tennis?’ This unexpected and, let’s face it, asinine entry line leaves the rest of the cast somewhat bemused and befuddled.

The best response one can imagine is for a Lady Bracknell (The Importance of Being Earnest) or some such grande dame drawing herself up to her full height, her lorgnette flashing on all cylinders, ‘Don’t be silly, Algernon, we are discussing your forthcoming nuptials and you are clearly surplus to requirements. So be off with you.’ Thus chastised, poor Algernon does a quick about turn and disappears off stage, muttering something on the lines of, ‘Well in that case, righty ho, pip pip, toodle-oo and all that sort of rot.’ Which of course, is more Wodehouse than Wilde but I shan’t quibble.

That needlessly elaborate opening paragraph was only to impress upon you the fact that I have been completely engrossed in tennis this past fortnight. And if you still have not cottoned on to why that is so, you are more to be pitied than censured. If you are feeling a bit foxed or indeed, befuddled or bemused like the cast of that fictional play I referred to at the top of this piece, the answer is ‘Wimbledon, silly.’ The crème de la crème of tennis tourneys is the one that takes place in this leafy suburb, after which the tennis fortnight is eponymously named. In England’s green and pleasant land, Wimbledon, adorned by its pristine grass courts, is widely regarded as the one all tennis buffs want to watch or follow, and all players want to win above everything else. Not that the Grand Slams held in Melbourne, Paris and New York are any the less in stature but it is all a matter of perception. For us in India, the exploits of the Krishnans, the Amritrajs, Bhupathi, Paes and Mirza will always be inextricably intertwined with and benchmarked against the green, green, grass courts at London SW19.

However, I am not about to embark on a detailed analysis of how the tournament panned out this year. By the time you get to read this, Wimbledon will be on the verge of bidding a tearful goodbye to fans, players and royalty – not the money, but the sceptre and crown folk from the House of Windsor. The results will be in and we will know whether the human machine, Djokovic added yet another feather to his cap or if the precocious Alcaraz, the inscrutable Medvedev or the wafer-thin Sinner held aloft the Gentlemen’s Singles Trophy for the flashbulbs. On the distaff side, I include the likes of Jabeur, Sabalenka, Svitolina and Vondrousova*. (This is being typed up while the semi-finals are in progress). The influx of new East European and Russian stars every year, particularly on the women’s side of things, has led to our tongues being twisted like nobody’s business. In short, you can get all the results and how they were achieved without my having to weigh in with my two-bit.

In lieu of which, I felt it would be a good idea to concentrate on a different aspect of Wimbledon tennis to share my thoughts with you. Namely, watching the game on television and enjoying the running commentary that goes with it. For the most part, the commentary on TV consists of former tennis champions, mostly British and American, as well as a handful from other nationalities. Our own Vijay Amritraj has been reduced to an insignificant, walk-on part this year. If only the wretched, reverberating advertising commercials in between games were not so intrusive, denying us the pleasure of experiencing the contrasting emotions of the players. And what good do they do for the brands, when our thoughts turn so hostile towards them? If I were in the market for a new car, Renault will be the last on my list of preferences. Ironically, I say this as a former advertising professional!

At this juncture, I would request the readers of this column to indulge me in a small sidebar. Around the time that players in skirts and shorts have been whacking the ball cross court and down the line, not to mention the odd double fault, the Ashes cricket series has been gripping the British nation like never before. If you are a cricket buff, you will know exactly what I mean. The stadiums have been packed to the rafters, while England and their arch enemy, Australia have been going hammer and tongs at each other. No holds barred. Test cricket is alive and well. Even to disinterested watchers, this is not India playing Pakistan after all, the cricket has been riveting and we have been glued to our sets, switching frantically at times between Centre Court and Headingley.

So, what has all this got to do with the tennis commentary, or for that matter, cricket commentary? Tarry awhile. All shall be revealed. Imagine, if you will, American tennis superstar and super-brat of yesteryear John McEnroe in the commentary box at Wimbledon Centre Court, alongside former British tennis ace Tim Henman, describing play. Bear in mind that while Henman, being English, is fully familiar with the niceties and nuances of cricket and tennis, McEnroe knows next to nothing about the game ‘played by flannelled fools,’ but has a few aces of his own up his sleeve. This provides for some interesting exchanges. What follows does not purport to be a word-for-word accurate description of the proceedings. Rather, treat it more as an impressionistic word picture.

Henman – ‘Alcaraz goes for a monstrous forehand, mistimes it, ball flies off the edge of his racket, and is pouched safely at deep third man in the stands. And now a brilliant, deep return from Djokovic. Almost at yorker-length to Alcaraz.’

McEnroe – ‘What the hell was that, Tim? Deep third man? Yorker? You got me there, buddy.’

Henman – ‘Those are cricketing terms, John. Deep third man is a fielding position. A yorker is…well I’ll explain later.’

McEnroe – ‘What the %$#@? Are we watching tennis or cricket? Anyhow, Alcaraz lobs, Djokovic rises to smash for a clean winner. Slam dunk!’

Henman – ‘Well done, John. Touché.’

McEnroe – ‘I say, Tim. I hope I was off camera when I used the %$#@ word? I will get the sack otherwise.’

Henman – ‘Not to worry, John. They know you and know what an incorrigible crosspatch you are. They will be disappointed if you did not throw the odd unprintable expletive. Meanwhile, Alcaraz plays an exquisite forehand pass. Smooth as silk. Like a Joe Root straight drive.’

McEnroe – ‘Who or what is Joe Root? And what is a straight drive? Come to that, what is a crosspatch? I am going nuts here, Tim.’

Henman – ‘Tell you what, John, stay on in England for a few more days after Wimbledon. I will take you to watch the 4^th Ashes Test in Manchester. Just for a day, mind you, and I will give you a full cricket education.’

McEnroe – ‘How do you mean, just for a day? How many days does the match go on for?’

Henman – ‘Why, five of course!’

McEnroe – ‘Christ almighty! Five days? You cannot be serious!’

Henman – ‘Now you are starting to quote yourself, John. I can sense the italics. Yes, Test matches are played over five days, and guess what John? Even after that, sometimes we may not get a result. We could have an exciting draw or some very unexciting rains.’

McEnroe – ‘I am not sure I am coming to Manchester. I’ve had all the rain I can take right here in Wimbledon. I think I’ll take a rain check. Ha ha! While we have been faffing around on cricket, Alcaraz is clearly behind the eight ball in this set.’

Henman – ‘Hmmm. Behind the eight ball. I know that one. Baseball?’

McEnroe – ‘You’ve lost it, Tim. You are behind the eight ball. Billiards, buddy. A game you guys in England play so well.’

Henman – ‘My bad, John. Bowled, lock, stock and barrel. Let’s grab a beer at the Wimbledon pub. Oh, and look who is here! Ben Stokes, as I live and breathe. Taking a break from the cricket? Ben, let me introduce you to John McEnroe. John, Ben. Ben, John.’

Stokes – ‘An absolute honour meeting the great, all-swearing McEnroe. May I take a selfie with you and Tim?’

McEnroe – ‘No problem. Any friend of Tim’s. And what do you do for a living, Ben?’

There can be no snappy answer to that amazing question. Stunned, England’s celebrated cricket captain and Tim Henman hurriedly disappear into the milling crowds while McEnroe is left bemused and wondering if Tim has vanished with this stranger, Ben Woakes or Stokes or Foakes or whoever, without paying for the beer.

Cheapskates.

*Unseeded Vondrousova of the Czech Republic shocked Tunisian crowd favourite Ons Jabeur to win the women’s singles title.

 Why are you on Facebook? Why do you care who is trending? Did you miss your 15 minutes of fame? Van Morrison.

My participation in social media is negligible. I post my weekly blog on Facebook and Twitter and on occasion, I might make the odd comment, odd being the operative word, if some of my ‘friends’ happened to post something that I found particularly relevant or interesting. Other than that, zilch would be an apposite word to describe my contribution to these vehicles that so intensely involve and engage millions of people all over the world. At this point, I can faintly detect in the offing, a few of my readers bristling at what they might wrongly assume is a condemnation of social media and their active role in it. Or should that have been ’in them’? I have never quite come to grips with whether the word media should be treated as singular or plural. The singular medium or the plural media, if you get my drift. In such dodgy circumstances, I just go with the flow.

Leaving that grammatical conundrum to one side, in re: my imagined condemnation of the social media multitudes, perish the thought. I admire the amount of trouble people take to tell us all about their daily rounds of duties and concerns, their food habits and eateries visited, the music they lean towards, oftentimes breaking into song themselves, their travel plans, their pet hobbies as well as their pets and so much more. The downside is that a ghastly road accident becomes a target for instant clicking and posting, never mind extending a helping hand. Above all, politics. That is when biases, bile and invective combine in an incendiary way to give us agnostic, disinterested readers, some well-earned, if dubious, entertainment. Twitter is usually the vehicle of choice for verbal abuse. Therefore, I may not be an active participant, but I do commend the assiduous participation of people of all ages and denominations in social media, per se. Free speech and all that guff. More power to your shoulders.

As I spend on average, about 30 minutes or so browsing through Facebook, Instagram or Twitter every day, I have been able to arrive at some kind of categorisation of the posts that most engage social media freaks. I had already mentioned some of these heads, but I felt it would be an interesting exercise to elaborate on them, such that we get a more rounded feel for what confronts us on a daily basis. By no means a comprehensive list, I have merely cherry-picked a few that interest me. Now that Mark Zuckerberg has announced the launch of Meta’s Twitter clone, Threads, taking Twitter head-on, there is much frisson in the air. Elon Musk is having kittens and is threatening legal action claiming infringement of copyright or similar. Let battle commence. Seconds out of the ring, first round, go for it chaps and hit below the belt.

The Travellers.

Indians are now arguably the most peripatetic race in the world. They are everywhere. Or in the words of that memorable Beatles hit song, Here, There and Everywhere. Europe, the Americas, Australasia, the Far East, the Silk Route, the Middle East and, come to that, even the North Pole. The Indian footprint spreads far and wide and is as firmly etched on diverse soils as the mythical Yeti’s. Which, of course, means photo ops galore. In earlier times, we would lug our Canons, Pentaxes, Yashicas or Leicas and take careful aim at the Leaning Tower, the Pyramids, Sydney Opera House, the Niagara Falls, the Eiffel Tower, the Tower Bridge, Machu Picchu, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and so on and so forth. Yank out the completed roll of film and hand it over to the nearest developer and in two shakes of a duck’s tail, you will be poring over the glossy or matt prints with your near and dear ones. Plenty of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs.’

All that has changed now. We live in an instant world. Your mobile phone is your camera. Correction. Your camera is your mobile phone. Click away till you are blue in the face and keep posting for instant consumption by your publics, on Facebook and Instagram. That’s you standing next to the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen. That’s me sitting on a log somewhere in the dense Black Forest waving my trusty alpenstock. That’s you again standing next to the lovable 400-year-old Mannekin Pis (the Pissing Boy) bronze statue in Brussels, and that’s all of us biting into a juicy sirloin steak at Angus Steak House in Piccadilly Circus. The waiter took the picture. And hang on, is that Jeremy Irons walking past in Leicester Square? Shall I run and get a selfie? It’s not Jeremy Irons? Aw shucks! 257 responses in less than 3 hours. Mostly emojis, hearts, smileys and kisses. If you are a foreigner (as opposed to an Indian), you will be doing the same thing in front of the Taj Mahal, the silvery beaches in Goa or the Madurai Meenakshi temple.

The posts I really marvel at are the ones where the traveller takes a picture of himself or herself in the plane, making sure the backdrop clearly establishes he or she (or both) are swanning it in Business Class. Or even First Class. Raise a flute of Dom Perignon. Cheers! Then there’s the airline route map. Or flight path. Oh, the flight path! That is an absolute must. Just taking off from Mumbai. In nine hours, we will be landing at Heathrow. Will click and post the London skyline. After eight plus hours, London approaching, gradual descent. No skyline. No Houses of Parliament. No Thames snaking through the city. Only clouds. See the clouds! These are London clouds that rain on Wimbledon’s parade! Bye for now, rushing off to Customs and Baggage Claims. Will post pictures from the black cab. Bye for the next forty minutes. That is so cruel. His family and friends having to wait for an agonising forty minutes.

Eating out.

 Why so many social media devotees should be dying to know what you are eating on a daily basis is a matter for deep contemplation. Philosophers have said that you are what you eat, but still. Must we be subjected day after day, to photographs of restaurants visited and mouth-watering snaps of every dish ordered from soup to nuts, the wine list, and naturally, a close-up of the label of the exotic wine of choice, rounding it all off with the dessert? Othello’s envious green-eyed monster roils my innards. Many even helpfully post a picture of the invoice so we know the damage incurred. On balance, if one were contemplating a culinary binge abroad, this is useful. Less ambitious folk in India are also happy to share with us the refined art of making curd rice at home and how not to screw up the delicate business of cooking up a storm with tomato rasam and the Kerala special, the mixed veg avial. Yum, yum. A short film of the entire procedure is de rigueur. Bon appetit!

Let’s have a sing-song.

 Never mind what your choice of music might be, it’s all there on Facebook, Instagram or even WhatsApp. From precocious three-year old toddlers to spavined octogenarians, and every age group in-between, we are all closet warblers. And now, we are all coming out of the closet, in a manner of speaking, technology helping out with the pre-recorded background soundtrack. From Hindi and Tamil film songs of yesteryear, western pop hits of The Carpenters or Engelbert Humperdinck, Carnatic ‘hits’ like Vatapi Ganapatim or for that matter the infantile Geetham, Vara veena mrudu paani, a ghazal or thumri thrown in, if that is your bag – there is no end to it. Even your pet dog is encouraged to howl a few canine notes! All of it captured on your mobile for posterity, at times a pain in the posterior! I often wince with regret that we did not have mobile cameras fifty years ago, else many of our musical exploits would have been preserved for us to admire nostalgically, but after ‘giving me excess of it’ (to slightly paraphrase the Bard), I am not so sure. It might have been too much of a good thing.

The Twitterati.

 Look, there is quite a bit of sensible and sensitive chat that takes place on Twitter, but you will have to search very hard to find it. Needle in a haystack. Mostly, it is dominated by trolls and bots, political mud-slinging, engineered by the rival parties themselves. Even observations on sports personalities can get pretty ugly. This freedom granted to us to punch in pretty much what we want without let or hindrance, and repent at leisure, is a curse that has come upon us, as Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott might have put it. Those who would have found writing a 300-word essay with a fountain pen on a foolscap sheet of paper a gargantuan struggle, now fancy themselves as a latter-day Charles Dickens or Jane Austen. With due apologies to those two literary titans. For the most part, the posts are so full of bile and borderline toilet banter that it barely merits a second glance. So much so that the bitterness is spilling over into our drawing and dining rooms. Friends become foes overnight, and the idea of what is ‘politically correct’ to talk about or not has undergone a sea change. Better to simply sit back and sing a song, out of key.

Twitter? Speaking for myself, it is strictly for the birds. As former American basketball pro Charles Barkley put it pithily, ‘Social media is where losers go to feel important.’ He might have had an axe to grind and is probably guilty of making a sweeping generalisation, but one can see where he is coming from.

The law is an ass – Old English proverb.

I am at odds with the Karnataka High Court, which recently ruled that the act of a 38-year-old man opting to squeeze another man’s testicles during the course of a heated argument cannot be regarded as an attempt to murder. Now, in the normal course of sitting down to write my weekly blog, the subject of testicles would be the very last thing on my mind to expound upon. I leave that kind of stuff to urologists and others in the medical profession to mull over. Apart from which, strait-laced members of my family are apt to look askance at this sudden, unsavoury departure in my choice of topic. Which is probably the way it should have stayed, were it not for this morning’s esteemed daily newspaper. There it was: the headline, bold as brass, plumb, spang in the middle of the front page, Squeezing testicles in fight not ‘attempt to murder’: Karnataka High Court. Well, I mean to say! What are our newspapers, or our judiciary for that matter, coming to, I ask rhetorically. Stopped me dead in my tracks. After that, I had to read the whole, sordid bulletin.

This is what their lordships of the High Court had to say on the matter. The prose is untidy but the point gets across. ‘There was a quarrel between the accused and the complainant. During that, the accused chose to squeeze the testicles. Therefore, it cannot be said that the accused came with an intention or with preparation to commit murder. If at all he had prepared or attempted to commit murder, he would have brought some deadly weapons to commit the murder.’ One presumes the good judge said all that with a straight face. Sounds logical enough, if a tad naïve. After all, bare hands can also be used to strangle a person to death. Overturning an order of a trial court, the High Court, in their wisdom, reduced the punishment earlier meted out, from seven to three years imprisonment. Did not the prosecuting lawyer try to convince the court that if a man’s genitals are squeezed long and hard enough, it might well lead to death? Who can say? At the very least, his self-worth could get hit for six, and he will become a spent force, in every sense of the word for the rest of his miserable life.

So why am I not joyously strewing flowers and doing my version of the Naatu Naatu at this remarkable judgement? Why has my local High Court, by virtue of this verdict, given me pause? There is this great concept called precedent, much loved by legal eagles. They pass a judgement on some subject or the other, in this case that of testicle squeezing, and next thing you know, a precedent has been set. One is now free to go about picking up a fight and without so much as a by-your-leave, aim straight for your opponent’s family jewels. No questions asked. The poor victim runs to the courts, if he is able to run at all, seeking justice for the indignity caused. Not to mention the pain suffered, and is fobbed off with an ‘All right, we can feel your pain, but he was not trying to kill you, was he? Now be reasonable. Where was the gun? Where was the murderous machete? We will put him in the cooler for three years, with two years remission for good behaviour. That should straighten the blighter out.’ ‘But judge, where does that leave me?’ bleats the victim. ‘Next case,’ bellows the judge, bringing his gavel down hard on the much-abused high table.

My point, quite simply, is this. Why is a reduced jail sentence going to act as a deterrent to this habitual squeezer of the unmentionables? Which incidentally, the courts have mentioned in excruciating detail. He sits in jail for the minimum period accorded to him, his palms itching to get at some poor sod’s nether regions, because that is what gives him the jollies. He is a pervert. The whole insidious habit builds up into an uncontrollable desire, and the moment he steps out of prison, a free man, no one is safe. The warders lolling around at the prison compound better watch out. That’s all I can say. Why could he not have behaved like a normal idiot involved in a street brawl? Some violent fisticuffs and kicking one can understand, but squeezing testicles? That’s a no ball in any language. A sensible referee would have stopped the fight instantly.

Now here is the problem we need to bend our brains to. There could be any number of thugs in the country who would have read the fine print of the Karnataka High Court judgement with glee. And, presumably, with a fine-tooth comb. I know most of them are illiterate but word gets around. Then there’s always television for those that cannot read beyond ‘the cat sat on the mat,’ or its Indian equivalent. The television set is called idiot box for a reason. The upshot of it all is that these sons of Belial go around seeking whom they may devour, screaming ‘Your money or your balls,’ in the full knowledge that their heinous act will not attract anything more than a light sentence, or better still a caution, if at all they are apprehended.

Street crime will now acquire a new avatar. It is being suggested, at least I am suggesting it, that innocent and unwary male strollers protect their private parts with those abdominal guards we employed while playing cricket. In school they were colloquially referred to as ‘ball guards.’ In case you don’t have one or the old one has seen better days, you can always order it on Amazon. I know I have one somewhere up in the loft. I will need to fish it out and give it a Dettol wash and leave it out to dry. Never know when it might come in handy. As an interesting aside, here is a question for the ages. Why do people always laugh hysterically when a batsman suffers a painful blow in his crotch? It is no laughing matter.

This judgement has left me quite distraught. Or do I mean distrait? Never mind. Suffice it to say that you would not be far wrong in describing my current mental state as being discombobulated. One reason for that is that if ordinary men like you and I are in ever-present danger of being assaulted in unusual anatomical areas of our body, I dread to think what will happen to our good women. There are, I admit, some fundamental differences in our bodily make up, men and women that is. However, it is the principle of this ghastly affair that bothers me no end.

 It seems to me that these no-good yobbos who roam our streets looking for cheap thrills, need never fear the law anymore. If they are caught in the act by a cop and challenged as to what on earth do they think they are doing, grabbing someone’s breadbasket (as I have heard it described by English cricket commentators) in broad daylight, and that they had better come to the police station handcuffed, the criminal will have a ready response. ‘Look Mr. Plod, the judge has already spoken on the matter. Am I carrying a sharp knife? No. A pistol? No. Then what is all the fuss about? I was merely having a friendly chat with this gentleman who was reluctant to part with his bulging wallet. As a means of gentle persuasion, I proceeded to apply the squeeze to those parts which will elicit a positive response. You can escort me to the station by all means, but you will get no joy out of it. Probably a suspension for your troubles.’

The befuddled cop goes cross-eyed with confusion. He decides not to get crotchety about someone’s crotch. ‘I could not follow a word of what you just said. Now you just run along and we shall say no more about it. So saying, they all part company, leaving the poor victim of physical abuse abandoned, his wallet gone and facing the gargantuan task of initiating an infructuous court case. As a final nail in the coffin, so to speak, his baritone voice has shockingly turned into a shrill soprano. How was he going to explain that to his wife?

Honestly, those eminent judges at the Karnataka High Court have a lot to answer for. Perhaps we need to knock on the doors of the overburdened Supreme Court for a second opinion. A real testing affair, this issue of the manhandled testicles. A right, royal balls-up, if ever there was one!

Footnote: As if all this was not enough, a court in Gujarat recently sentenced a man, with heavy heart, for raping a minor. Just to be clear, it was the court that bore a heavy heart, not the rapist. I understand there were extenuating and mitigating circumstances, but still, with heavy heart? Clearly, there are many bleeding hearts in our judiciary!

As I am about to post this comes news from Bihar that a woman sliced her rapist’s goolies in the dead of night with a sharp knife. A surgeon’s knife and complete castration, without an anaesthetic, would seem to be the order of the day. If one might paraphrase the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, ‘Off with his nuts.’

Let me get one thing straight off my chest. I do not understand the art or science of predicting the future. Do I believe in it? Do I repose blind faith in its mysterious and arcane ways? I do, when the predictions go in my favour. Else, I am dismissive. This is not to suggest that I am scornful of it, it simply means I haven’t quite got my head round how someone could possibly predict that a particular horse would gallop home in a canter, at handsome odds of 20 to 1 and make me a very rich man. Provided, of course, on a reckless dare I decide to plonk my hard-earned money on said horse.

I am aware that there are experts who study form, past results on the turf and all that kind of equine sporting stuff. There is science and reasoning involved. That being the case, I can understand plumping for the favourite at pretty low odds. That is how the form book is meant to operate and how racing experts provide odds. However, when some oily geezer sidles up to you and hoarsely whispers, ‘Put everything you’ve got on Break a Leg. You will clean up,’ it gives a man pause. ‘But that horse has a broken leg,’ you expostulate, ‘how do you figure?’ The geezer smiles enigmatically and vanishes. So, you do exactly what he said, assuming there are factors at play that are beyond your ken, and promptly lose all your money. A sucker is born every minute.

Betting on the horses is just one of many illogical things we human beings indulge in, in the fond hope that we can get something for nothing. In many countries, not in India of course, you can legally bet on just about anything your heart takes a fancy to. Just walk into a betting shop in London, and they will give you odds on sporting events of every description, election results, a political leader being assassinated within a week, an impending divorce in the royal family (at very low odds) – you name it, they have the odds. Why, you can even open your own book at the shop and provide odds on the next chap entering the shop being bald, of Oriental origin, walking with a limp and wearing a charcoal grey three-piece suit. If, however, it is discovered that the said bald, Oriental chap and you had conspired to arrange that extraordinary coincidence, you may find you are literally minus an arm and a leg and rushed to Emergency, if you are lucky.

Let me move away from horse racing or come to that, dog racing, another lucrative pastime in the western hemisphere. Here in India, we set much store by predictions of a different kind altogether. Indians are big on such predictive hobbies as astrology, astronomy, the spirit world, Extra Sensory Perception (ESP), palmistry and other related mumbo-jumbo activities. Did I say hobbies? It is for some, but for many others it is a highly profitable business. From the richest to the poorest in the land, pretty much everyone wants to know what the stars foretell this coming week, month, year. The newspapers unfailingly carry a column every Sunday, where all the signs of the Zodiac are given the full treatment. American astrologer Linda Goodman became a worldwide celebrity with her books on astrology rivalling J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels on the sales charts.

We in India have had our own Bejan Daruwalla, now residing among the stars, and his ilk filling our heads regularly with things to ‘watch out for’ in the near future. Even the cynics among us (‘I don’t believe in all this nonsense’) take a sly peek at what the experts and charlatans have to say about our Zodiacal sign when nobody is looking. It is a kind of addiction, perhaps an innocent pastime. Let me quickly check on Gemini, my sign of the Zodiac. ‘Your dual personality could get you into trouble this week with a lady you will meet for the first time.’ Ominous, but tantalising. I spend the entire week looking at any strange lady who may or may not have smiled at me, wondering if there is more to this than meets the eye. However, nothing happens, the week passes, and next Sunday, it is a man from my dim past who is set to haunt me. I will say this for astrology. It keeps you involved and curious, but since you are a non-believer, you keep mum and anticipate silently.

I touched briefly on election results earlier. No general election in India is ever complete without some pundit or the other displaying his punditry with incisive predictions on which party is likely to win how many seats, cross his heart and hope to die, or whatever that expression’s Indian equivalent is. All this in mainline dailies and national television, watched avidly by politicians, psephologists and voters alike.

When I lived with my parents in Calcutta during my university days, every once in a while, a spooky looking man from deep down south in Tamil Nadu, would show up at our doorstep, his forehead liberally caked with sacred ash and some prominent scarlet powder. Unannounced. If memory serves, his name was Tirumalai (or Tirupathi) or some such. Why and how he should turn up in Calcutta with a list of addresses of many prominent Tamilians working in the city, was an unfathomable mystery. Nevertheless, when the doorbell rang, and the formidable Tirupathi (or Tirumalai) stood there, grinning from ear to ear, I was surprised to see him being warmly welcomed by my pater and mater.

When I came to learn that his visit was by appointment, I became fidgety. He was treated with great respect (filter coffee at the ready) and was asked to consult his moth-eaten books, strange-looking shells and some dried leaves bearing barely legible inscriptions in Tamil, along with horoscopes, to predict what was going to happen to each one of our family members. He could also read palms. He was versatile. My mother was dead keen that my future, including marital prospects (particularly that), should be laid bare. That is when I made my excuses and bolted for the great open spaces. My mother could have been yelling after a deaf mute. Damned if that put the brakes on this Tirumalai (or Tirupathi) character from providing chapter and verse of my future career prospects and my life partner in sickness and in health. To say nothing of evil omens I should watch out for. A black cat did cross my path as I scarpered from the scene, but I merely stopped to scratch its chin and move on. The cat purred in satisfaction.

There are also a couple of fortune tellers who live in some remote village or the other, possibly in a mud hut, who are regularly visited by all kinds of people from far and near, some of them extremely well-heeled. Apparently, this soothsayer asks precisely one question. ‘What time of the day or night were you born?’ No date, place or any other detail asked for. Most of us haven’t a clue what time we were born, unless the clock struck midnight as you emerged mewling and puking, in which case you are very special. Was it 2.17 am, 3.24 pm or perhaps, 8.31 pm? When I asked my mother the time of my birth she replied, with sturdy common sense, that she was in too much pain to recall. And yet, thousands of people approach these magic men with ‘My daughter was born at precisely 6.18 am. Please tell me, oh all-knowing savant, when will she get married?’ The savant casually pulls out a leaf from a crevice in his hut and declares, ‘In precisely 11 months your wish will be granted, and she will bear two sons and a daughter.’ Elated, the parents stuff some undisclosed currency notes into an earthen pot, and go away beaming with joy.

I can go on. In our country we have our own version of tarot cards that can divine the past, present or future. If tarot cards won’t do it for you, there’s always parrot cards. Haven’t you seen an old Indian pot-boiler film lately? The local astrologer sits under a peepul tree armed with a stack of portentous cards, unlocks his cage, and Polly the parrot goes hop, hop, hop and pulls out a card that has, metaphorically or perhaps even literally, your name on it. In any event, the parrot’s red beak ensures your goose is cooked, in a nice way, if you will excuse the avian mixed metaphor. Invariably, the parrot unfailingly predicts good things in the offing, that keeps the revenues flowing for its master and everyone happy.

Ah well, the westerners and the Chinese have their fortune cookies, we have our parrots and palmists. To each his own. As someone whose name escapes me once said, ‘The future can be changed. The psychic reads the map, but free will decides the path we take.’ Hear, hear!

Bore, noun. A person who talks when you wish him to listen. Ambrose Bierce, short story writer.

One of the most common words we come across in our daily conversation is the noun bore. It can also double-up as a verb. The word has several meanings, but in the sense in which I am referring to it, a bore is a person who is constantly nattering away about something nobody is particularly interested in, refuses to take a broad hint to cease and desist, and when someone else attempts to change the subject, bashes on regardless. Ironically, this kind of bore actually thinks he is holding his audience spellbound and must, on no account, stop short of expending all his energies on his endless droning. A regular windbag. A chap who would rather talk than listen.

A boring person is such a regular feature in our lives that I never saw fit to check how our famed digital dictionaries defined a bore. And you know what, the dictionaries provided me with all kinds of bores – a hole made with the help of tools, tidal bores that cause death and devastation, a hollow part inside a gun barrel – and so on. Any reference to a chap who sits back after a hearty meal, lights up a cigarette and sets the conversational ball rolling with a ‘Did I ever tell you about the time I went whale hunting in Iceland? I did? Well, you can’t have remembered all the riveting details, so let me refresh you,’ was not immediately discernible during my online searches. One had to plough through several more heads under ‘bore’ before hitting pay dirt.

All of which I found rather strange, as I am more apt to come across human bores on a daily basis, than the subject of borewells. Mind you, with the water situation being what it is in the world these days, mindless digging of borewells frequently finds a mention in our daily newspapers. For the purposes of this particular essay, the subject pertaining to all kinds of other bores will necessarily have to take a back seat to our friend, the human bore, who can put us to sleep within two minutes into his long-winded soliloquy. I have attempted to classify bores into various categories and see where it takes us. I have employed the male pronoun while discussing our boring protagonist. This is as much to preclude the need to tediously add an ‘or she’ in parenthesis as it is to make a point that somehow, the male of the species appears to be deadlier at the fine art of boring our pants off than the female. This is not to suggest that the distaff side cannot make you go cross-eyed with their conversation, given half a chance. It’s just that I don’t come across that many bores among the gentler sex.

With those few words, nearly 450 of them, I should dive headlong into the main subject lest I run the risk of becoming soporific myself. My classification of bores does not bear any specific logical sequence to it. It is more a top-of-the-mind exercise. Spontaneity is the watchword. You, dear reader, will be in a position to add many more types of bores based on your own personal experience. That said, here goes nothing.

The Oldest Member. If you are a fan of P.G. Wodehouse’s collected works, I applaud your good taste. If you are not, you are more to be pitied than censured. In a memorable series of golfing stories, where romance and skulduggery on the greens co-exist harmoniously, there is this delightful character, The Oldest Member. The capital letters denote his nomenclature as his actual name is never revealed. The Oldest Member of the club, sipping his brandy and soda, is long retired from his active playing days. Now in his dotage, he buttonholes any young golfer who happens to be passing, sits him down, and proceeds to torture him with long-winded golfing tales (involving young love) from way back when. Shades of The Ancient Mariner. Till his young victim, unable to escape, goes blue in the face. His fate is sealed. In this case, the master craftsman Wodehouse, paints the boring senior citizen in such a way as to have the reader in splits. To convey boredom without creating it. Therein lies the art.

The Retired Veteran. In India, we are not without a surfeit of our own version of The Oldest Member. You should particularly look sharp to avoid people ambling in the park with a walking stick who might have retired from the Railways or some public sector behemoth. Even private sector veterans can be a handful. My father-in-law was a railway veteran, lived to a 102 before punching in his ticket, and never tired of ‘regaling’ us with stories of how he would give the short shrift to anyone who even smelt of being corrupt and how senior government ministers would shiftily creep by whenever they passed his ‘chamber.’ The fact that these tales were being told for the umpteenth time had no bearing on his eagerness to unburden his soul. A sense of overweening self-importance is virtually a sine qua non if you wish to be a reputed bore. ‘In the good, old days’ was the storm warning!

 My old man, also now sleeping with the fishes, was a much-respected banker. Not an evening passed when, on returning home, he would not impale my long-suffering mother with heroic and harrowing (for her) tales of how he told his boss off for speaking to him in a somewhat peremptory manner, and how his boss slunk off, tail between his legs. And he would do this every other day. We kids found it amusing. We even saw him as some kind of knight in shining armour. My mother had given up the ghost.

The Dreamer. Celebrated English essayist and parodist, Sir Max Beerbohm hit the nail on the head when he said, ‘People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.’ We all have dreams; good dreams, bad dreams, but there is this insatiable urge to narrate it to the first person you meet after you wake up, in case you forget the salient details later, which is often the way with dreams. Which means the first target could be your wife. Then again, the good wife, having been a victim of your Freudian recollections many times, may have been a bit shirty with your crack-of-dawn drawl. Worse still, she may have also had dreams of her own, requiring instant regurgitation. It’s a stand-off. You are stumped. Which then means some office colleague or long-lost friend could be the unfortunate recipient. ‘I was trapped in a dank cave in a remote forest, the grizzly bear was bearing down on me, and as he leaped, I woke up screaming, in a cold sweat. What can it possibly mean?’ That you are going to lose a lot of money on the bourses? It would have been preferable to have dreamt of a raging bull, about to gore you in a China shop. Figure that one out.

The Cricket Bore. In India, one can hardly hurl a stone without beaning a cricket bore. I do not exclude myself from this dubious tribe. Everyone is an expert on the game. ‘Why did the chump choose to field after winning the toss? You know what Boycott used to say? Win the toss and bat first. If you are unsure, think about it and bat first.’ That is the critical cricket bore. How about the boring cricket raconteur? Again, like The Oldest Member of golfing fame, he is in a class by himself. My bureaucrat uncle’s veteran cook in Delhi tortured me on a weekly basis with his, ‘You should have seen Vinoo Mankad. He would entice the batsman out of his crease, ever so slowly, ball by ball, inch by inch. Next thing you know, the bails are off and it’s bye-bye, blackbird! Yes, yes, Bedi was good, but not like Vinoo. What, Vinoo cheated? What rubbish! Ah, you mean whipping off the bails when the non-striker backed up too far? That is perfectly fair. In fact, Vinoo has been immortalised by Wisden as the term “Mankading” a batsman testifies.’ All in chaste Tamil! And so, the long, dreary, boring night wore on with more such tales.

The Retd. Army Major Type. Head for the hills, if you run into him. He will kill you with his heroic tales of valour in the trenches and how he once strangled a Chinese soldier with his bare hands on the Galwan LAC. After the third large whisky, it will be four Chinese and two Pakis demolished with his last remaining bullet. Avoid this man like the plague, at all costs.

The Public Speaker. I have to end this diatribe on bores with this old favourite. There is a handful of public speakers who can enthral, entertain and hold our interest. I exclude politicians for the obvious reason that nobody actually listens to what they are saying. However, in more cloistered circles, we can come across some amazing bores. Beware of the fellow who starts off by saying, ‘I do not wish to detain you. You must have more pressing engagements.’ A red herring, if ever there was one. Fasten your seatbelts and stay for the long haul. In India, I have often had to face the torture of some sponsor-VIP being asked to ‘say a few words,’ plumb, spang in the middle of a Classical music concert. ‘I don’t know what to say as I do not understand Classical music, but I am humbled by being asked to address you all on the performance. What a wonderful concert this was. The Kalyani elaboration was brilliant. Pardon? Oh, it was Bhairavi! Dear me, sorry about that.’ Beg your pardon, Sir? Concertus interruptus and even the artist is not best pleased.

Celebrated author John Updike once said, ‘A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one-and-a-half times his own weight in other people’s patience.’ For myself, I can tolerate, with much reluctance and up to a point, someone who is offensive, rude and unpleasant in his public utterances. However, to bore your audience to distraction should find him a place in a sub-category among the Seven Deadly Sins.