I watch people. And study their habits. Like that guy at the next table who taps his cup twice after mixing sugar. Not once, not thrice. Always twice. That Dell kid who gets into his chair from the left and out from the right. + That woman with the pink iPhone who picks all her calls after three rings. The guy who takes a picture of every coffee he has. The doorman who wipes the handle after every customer walks in. Covid habits die hard. +

Here's a bunch of random pictures. Will try to run a thread through them. And try to hold your attention with trivia, wordplay, and banter while doing so. +


Most of you may have recognised three of the four images. And some geniuses, all four. The logo of Rolling Stones, a Phantom comic, Sacha Baron Cohen, and the toughie - the root of a mandrake plant. Aah! Many of you have probably got the basic connection. +

Today is a good day to tell you the story of how my 85 year old grandmother helped us win the IPL. I will not tell you which edition it was. I am sworn to secrecy. + I was on the bench the entire season. I didn't play a single match. I fielded as a substitute, for a couple of overs in our tenth game. I took a catch and saved 7, maybe 8, runs. I didn't get picked at the auctions ever again. But it was my paati who helped us lift the trophy.+

When we were dating, I thought Vir's time saving hacks were oh-so-clever. Silly me. I treasured every second he saved in queues, theaters, parking lots, shops, and restaurants. A minute less in traffic meant a minute more in his cozy apartment. + I didn't realise I was slipping into serving a sentence of stolen seconds that would hang heavy the rest of my life. His urge to crunch critical paths went from being cute to nails-on-chalkboard even before our honeymoon ended. +

Last month my wife and I visited an antique shop the size of a double bed. The walls were lined with shelves precariously stacked with figurines, statuettes, clocks, carvings, toys and bric a brac. In no sense of order whatsoever. + Every available inch had something stashed there. When we were in the shop, the owner had to stand outside on the road. We picked a few things that caught our fancy. Correction. I nodded at a few things that caught my wife's fancy. +

K.L.Cycle was a familiar sight to the locals. He looked forty when his lips smiled. And sixty when his eyes did. When he sang a Saigal song, which was often, the world turned sepia. It was only a matter of time before some wisecrack gave him his name. It stuck.+ He wore a theadbare three piece suit even in tar-melting heat. And a sola topee that had seen British days. A 25 litre ice box rigged to his cycle held his daily needs. Among them a notebook, a newspaper, and a pen. +

Dhruv reached into the box of rubber bands. There were just three left. He smiled nervously. There were almost a dozen a few days ago. He coughed involuntarily. No cheating, he reminded himself. + He fastened the packet of sugar he had just opened with the rubber band he had just extracted. Now there were two left. He coughed again. +

I saw this full page ad in the ET today. As a copywriter, I felt obliged to read the copy. Needless to say, I couldn't leave something as juicy as a Silver Snoopy award ungoogled. + So here's what it actually looks like. It's a sterling silver lapel pin that has actually been in space. An astronaut pins it on to the recipient. In recognition of work that contributes significantly towards space safety. +

Iyer level batting at Wankhede today. He should have gone iyer with that shot.

In my relentless pursuit to talk about topics of global importance that nobody will bring up, today I take up the issue of spoons. More specifically, where are they when you want them? + First off, let me clarify that ours is a maid-less household. So those of you who have invisible minions tasked with ensuring spoon stands are always well stocked, you may exit this thread right away. You will not relate to it. +

Dear wise and learned people of Twitter, a friend of mine in USA needs help. He is embroiled in what looks like a blatant case of discrimination towards an immigrant in favour of a white Caucasian business partner. Let me break down the case for you as simply as I can. + My pal and his wife together own 25 and 26% of a tech company, while their business partner owns the remaining 49%. They took a 900,000 dollar SBA (Small Business Administrator) backed loan from a lender. +

Okil looked at his rear view mirror. His passenger tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear. That gesture always melted his heart. She was immersed in her work. Correcting a notebook. Like everyday. A cyclist swerved in front of his auto. Okil swore at him. + He reached the spot where she got off. She collected her books, nodded at him, and said, 'Aaj 4 baje tak mera kaam hai.' He watched her till she turned out of sight into the ramshackle building that was the municipal primary school. +

There's an old gag that runs like this.
'How do you know someone's from IIMA? '
'He'll tell you.'

Well, this is me telling you. But with some reason, I hope. No brag, humble or otherwise, intended. Every institute needs people to populate the left end of its bell curve too. + I was notoriously acrobatic on campus. My main motivation to attend class was the chance to vault over brick benches, jump through geometry-defying holes, and cartwheel down ramps. Louis Kahn obliged with his ingenuity.
(All pics in this thread by the brilliant @richaarora500)

Exactly seven days ago, on a whim, I asked @MartianSpeak how many Kotak customers were born on August 15, 1947. He found out. And the answer astounded us. Thousands. + Can we do something by Aug 15, we asked each other. Because we like to inflict suffering upon ourselves. So we hunted them out. Starting with Mumbai. Pay dirt. There were hundreds. We whittled them down to a handful. +

'Promise you'll never forget me', she pleaded.
'Of course, I won't, silly!', I said.
'You say that to everyone, don't you?'
'But you're not everyone', I replied smoothly. + 'Do you keep a secret diary with all our names, you creepy little man?', she taunted me.
'I don't have to, love', I said, 'Moreover, I wouldn't want someone to stumble on it, would I?' +

This is the story of how I left from home in a fourth-hand Esteem and returned in a spanking new high-end Mercedes. Sounds crazy, I know. I mean who ever starts a story with the ending? Anyway, here goes. + I used to be the lift-giving type. Repaying a vast debt from my school days. Years of thumbing a lift from the gate of IIT Madras to my school which nestled deep in the woody campus. Saved me 15 paise and bought me a cummercut in the recess. +

This is the story of how I got to be called Bluetooth Ganesh. I'm a 40-under-40 type of guy today. I probably take up one square inch on the phone in your hand right now. Million downloads and counting. And I drive a high end German car. Thank you. + I was the geek of the gang. I was no good at any game. But I designed an automatic score-keeping digital jampot at college (a device to tell you which participant pressed the buzzer first in Just a Minute). +

It was only a matter of time before the match started being called Lagaan 2. At stake was a dusty plot of land more than half the size of a football field. It had two large trees at diagonally opposite corners. A peepul and a mango. The locals called the ground Do Ped Maidan. + The trees were perfect pavilions for competing teams. Each match had two tosses. One to decide peepul or mango, and the other to decide bat or bowl. The ground itself looked like a giant pav basking in the humid pre-monsoon heat of Mumbai. +

I opened my Tor browser to check for updates from KP. Sure enough, there was a message. And a link to a document titled RRO. The headline was pretty simple - 'Read. Remember. Obey.' Obey was in bold. Clearly KP didn't care for alliteration. + Start flashback. A week earlier, I was recruited by KP in a dark corner of the dark web. KP was short for Kamlesh Patel. As fake as a name in Mumbai could get. Like John Smith in London. KP was probably a bot designed by a freelance coder.

TEA COASTER KILLER STRIKES AGAIN, the tabloid's headline screamed in as big a font as the width of the page allowed. It was the third murder in three days. That was fast, as serial killings go. Even Jack, of ripper fame, took three years to kill eleven women. And some believe he only killed five of them. But that is of no relevance here, so I'll move on.

The panauti location had claimed its latest victim. Bahadur was surprised it lasted this long. He watched as the truck was loaded. A cortege of tandoor ovens, stoves, kadhais, degchis, LPG cylinders, unused sacks of rice and atta, a fridge... + The signboard coming down was always the saddest part. This was the seventh one he'd seen come down. Soon the office bearers of the largely residential building would meet to approve the tenancy of the next aspiring restauranteur. +