One of the things that has served me well throughout my academic life has been the skill of skimming over many pages of dense text and zooming, with the alacrity of a hungry hawk, on to that part of the document relevant for me. And I owe this skill in no small measure to the works of Harold Robbins and of the lately deceased Sidney Sheldon.

Late 80s. No relief on pre-cable Rajiv-Darshan for the horizon-broadening early-teen. The mind turned to the printed word—-but the only English books allowed at home for “bhodro” (good) kids were the classics (Moby Books with one side text and one side pictures where a glimpse of Estella’s cartoon cleavage was the only possible great expectation), Famous Five and Nancy Drew, the juiceless products of the Communist state otherwise known as Vostok publications, Tintin, Asterix….you get the picture. The “bad” kids, the ones who got “guardian calls” and had red in their report cards, smuggled in these dog-eared Sheldon-Robbins books to school which we, with shaking hands and smoky breath, would leaf through rapidly trying to focus in on the good parts, in the brief minute before “tiffin” ended.

And what a world it was. Screw the “Gajab ka hain din”-style running around trees and the juvenile “Oye Oye”s —-this was the real deal.

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Birthdays are a bitch. No this is not a rant about growing old and about the death of idealism —– for that I ask you to refer to my last year’s post where I tried to deal with the monumental milestone of turning thirty.

Birthdays are a bitch because no matter how hard I try not to get misty-eyed, my mind is flooded with memories of other December 30s when our living room would be decked out with ribbons, my uncle would be blowing balloons, my grandmother would be fighting with the Oriya “thakur” (cook) who would insist on adding an inordinate amount of spice to the chicken and I would rubbing my hands gleefully in anticipation of all the gifts I would have at the end of the day.

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As reported briefly elsewhere, the team of Anyesha and moi won first prize for quiz as well as antakshari [basically a music quiz] at Sparsh, 2006.

Besides the sheer rush of participating (and winning let me add) two of my favourite events after quite some time, what made it doubly fun was the drive back home when memories of fests and culturals from days gone by came flooding back like the tunes of a long-forgotten song.

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