Sunday, 13 July, 2025

10.09 AM

For the third Sunday in a row, Twinkle hasn’t published. She doesn’t know I suppose that a daft old man has lost his lonely way in a desert where not even a mirage of a Twinkle column … well, … um, … err … twinkles … if you know what I mean …

2.10 PM

With Twinkle refusing to twinkle, I tried to find solace in the only other column worth anyone’s while. It’s authoured by Anupam V Kapil, who, as the column informs at the top, can be booked for appt./written predictions. There’s a phone number, which I’ll not share of course. Go buy your copy to access Mr. Kapil.

He warns me that “The Mars-Ketu conjunction” makes it a worrisome time for me as far as “long distance travel” goes. I travelled to College Street recently I recall. For Debraj’s lecture, which I enjoyed. And now I’m told that I shouldn’t have risked the travel. Pretty gloomy outlook for me next Friday/Saturday too. “… visits to doctors likely” he says.

Quite obviously, second opinion was in order. The other newspaper I consulted says “… Mars which is lined up with optimistic parts …” will ensure “… that it’s difficult to think of anyone resisting …” me! Which, hopefully, excludes the doctor who’d be waiting in his lair next weekend according to TOI.

6 PM

Sometime ago, I found a difficult word, one which haiku editors were likely to admire. And one editor did behave as I thought he would. He accepted this haiku of mine.

philemaphobia
the day she shared
her chewed gum 

I promise you, the word you are frowning at does exist. Whether you look it up or no is your choice of course.

Much to my delight, I found one more such word in The Great Gatsby, which, as you might remember, the title of Debraj Ray’s lecture inspired me to read. Lovely reading. Debraj and Abhirup inform me that they read the book when they were still riding perambulators. The new word in my vocabulary is “echolalia”. I have acted quickly and used it up for a tanka.

Quite a musical word don’t you agree? A song word, somewhat like Sir Lancelot’s “tirra lirra” I seem to think. Btw, if you don’t know what a tanka is, you have faced worse tragedies in your life I am sure.

8.46 PM

I am told the elevator in our building is malfunctioning. Which reminds me of what the thespian Utpal Dutt, our English teacher at junior school, once told us. The word “elevator” was more expressive than the word “lift” according to him. He gestured with his hands and showed us why this was so. At that young impressionable age, I saw exactly what he meant. And now in my wisdom stuffed old age, I don’t see anything at all.

There was something that bothered me though even in the distant past. He pointed out that “elevator” was an American word. I was surprised that he praised America for anything at all. Under normal circumstances, capitalist America was garbage at best and worse at its worst. The world used to be Garden of Eden till capitalism arrived in the shape of America.

Sunday, 20 July, 2025

11.30 AM

One more Sunday gone. No Twinkle alas! She may have gone out space travelling. Like the wondrous little star. Even Twinkle would not write a TOI column sitting inside the ISS. Not that I have given up hopes. Still subscribing to Sunday TOI.

3.36 PM

The lift keeps invading my consciousness. My first tryst with a lift occurred somewhere in the future vicinity of Barun De, then the historian to be. There used to be a building in Hazra Road, where a top ranking officer in some TR organisation lived. I visited his home one evening in the company of my uncle who in turn was related through his wife to the TRO of Hazra.

I don’t think it was raining on that history filled eve, when I encountered the first ever lift in my life. I have absolutely no recollection of the interior of the home we visited, but the lift shines vividly in my memory. Collapsible gates, a lift man in a spotlessly white uniform, sporting a Hercule Poirot-like (though greying) moustache, the red carpet floor of the lift, some sort of a shining metallic crank handle sticking out of the lift’s rich, brown coloured wooden wall … Children were not supposed to touch anything inside that well-appointed cage. I suppose children as a rule are inclined to jump downwards, which contradicts the lift’s very purpose, viz. defying gravity.

Much later in life, I realised that one of the youngsters who lived in the apartment had tied the knot with Barun De. She had no idea who I was when we bumped into one another in her father’s home the first time in our lives , or when, quite recently, for the second and last time I guess, in a Nursing Home in Jodhpur Park. Neither of us were patients that balmy spring afternoon. We might have been visiting the same patient, but we held our cards close to our chests on that issue. I am not sure why though. Nor do I know why someone introduced us. I remembered the lift in Hazra Road immediately though.

Barun De didn’t know me as far as I am aware, but I will always associate him with the LIHR, even though he never rode it. I mean, in my opinion, the probability of Barun De having been carried up in the LIFR is extremely small. His wife to be was no more than ten years old at the time and, as far as I am aware, the family moved to a new home soon after. It was a technologically regressive step, for it didn’t have a lift. So, by the time Barun De arrived in his wife-to-be’s life, the lift was gone. However, being a historian, Barun De may well have found out about the LIHR.

Which, Utpal Dutt in his non-Marxist generosity, could have described as an EIHR.

6 PM

It rained cats and dogs yesterday. The ground floor in our building was flooded and the lift was sanctioned to remain stationed at the first floor level. If you were to visit a flat in the ninth floor, you’d need to roll up your trousers, wade through the water in the ground floor, climb up the staircase and catch the lift at the first floor level.

Speaking of cats and dogs, I came across a cat with a patched brown coat prowling the common passageway in the fifth floor. We regarded each other somewhat suspiciously for a while. The way Sony Liston and the then Cassius Clay might have measured each other up in the ring. Unlike those fighters, we soon disengaged. And behaved instead like Shaw and Chesterton standing face to face on a narrow bridge. Rumour has it that Chesterton refused to give way to fools. Shaw didn’t.

See you again, someday …

Click here for Episode 2.