Flux of Time

This afternoon, I went to Blossom Book House on Church Street after a gap of some months. Felt like visiting an old love, but it was an effort to rekindle the old magic. Has the book-buying experience changed? Or have my circumstances changed?  Blossom Book House, Church Street, a sanctuary once, an old love now I first discovered this bookstore about 13 years ago, in 2002, when it was a small one-room store in Brigade Gardens. When I was working as a sub-editor in a newspaper on MG Road, I'd end up at Blossom during the famed 5-6 pm 'thindi' break. Blossom was a sanctuary for me. I didn't have too much money to spend, but would end up buying a nice second-hand one for about Rs 50, and come back to the desk, in time for the post 6 pm rush. Work on the State Desk was dull and dreary sometimes, and we had to edit poorly written copies or make page after page on old systems that often hung! And the endless translations from Kannada to English. Going to Blossom bec...

No, this is not about cricket, although cricket is a constant presence. Some days I could be watching it, some days not. But it is there. Like music, like the smell of jasmine or ‘agarbathi’ in the bylanes of Bangalore. Or even the loud ‘soppu’ cry of the vegetable vendor pushing his cart in my city. My mind goes back to a winter’s morning in the city. I remember waking up at 5 am to watch a test match between India and Australia. Must have been early 2000s. I had set the volume on the TV really low. There is a certain guilty pleasure in switching on the TV really early in the morning and listening to the commentary at a really low volume. It is intimate and conspiratorial, almost like the commentator is talking exclusively to you. I don’t remember much of that winter morning except that it was an Ind-Aus test series. But what I distinctly remember is the lunch hour of that test match, by which time my parents were up. And I remember drinking my mom’s trademark strong coffee. The...

Witty, smart, charming, affectionate, sad, all these come easy on social media. Try that in real life and it is a different ball game altogether. I thought about this as I asked (on Facebook) someone I know to be brave as he had just lost a young son. How easily I said it. Not that I did not mean it. I meant it from the bottom of my heart. And yet, Facebook had made it easy for me to say it, somehow. That's how it is on social media. Log in: FB reminds you it is a friend's birthday. You wish her. Someone else has announced it's her anniversary. You wish her as well. And then someone is grieving. You say sorry. Someone's unwell. You wish them a s peedy recovery. Someone's posted holiday pictures. You like them. Someone's cooked a fantastic meal. You like the pictures. Someone's being extremely witty. Like the post. You mean well, and do all this. You feel you have made someone's day, effortlessly. It is really easy to pull all this off on social media. ...