The after-seethe

A few days ago, I was at Gwalior station, waiting for a train that just wouldn't arrive. Since I travel very light these days, I just swung my bag on my shoulders and proceeded to walk about, mostly between the enquiry counter, the platform and the tea-stall.

The man approached from a distance. I could see him but didn't notice him until he extended an arm and tried to wrap it around my waist as he walked past. For a fraction of a second, it didn't sink - what just happened? But instinctively, my hand had latched on to his arm. Even as he began to walk away, I pulled him back and with the other hand, caught his ear, and asked him (in Hindi), "Where do you think you're going?"

Young man, checked shirt. From his expression, he didn't seem to realize what was going on.

He just stared, then asked, "What do you want?"

"I want to take you to the police station."

He tried to walk off again. I hit him on the arm and twisted his ear. A few people gathered. Most paused half a second to glance at this new tamasha, and walked away.

He stepped back and struggled free. Then he got out his wallet and began to produce credentials. Some sort of identity card. "I'm not just anybody, you know..." he began.

I snatched the card out of his hands and yelled, "What do I care about this? What difference does this make? Come to the police station."

A few people asked, in passing, "What's going on? What's the matter?"

He said, "I didn't do anything."

I slapped him.

Before I could ask anyone to help me take him to the police station, he snatched his identity card out of my hand and broke away. I was about to follow him, frightened as I was, but right behind me, there stood two railway police cops. In uniform. Not saying a word. Watching.

I saw the checked shirt receding, disappearing into the crowd, and decided to forget about going to the police station. Instead, I went to the ladies-only waiting room, to seethe in silence, and to glare at every man who entered the room whoever briefly.

The flame flickereth no more?

A few weeks ago, holed up in a small-town hotel one evening, staring dully at the television, my finger stopped jabbing remote when I caught a glimpse of Mashaal.

I had seen the movie before, but yet, I hung on. Waiting for the famous death scene. The one where Waheeda Rehman, who plays Dilip Kumar’s wife with a quiet, assured dignity, dies out on the street. Her husband tries to hail passing cars and cabs, bangs on locked doors and screams ‘ae bhai!’ Nobody stops. Nobody calls a doctor. Nobody listens. She calls out to him, and dies.

I had known I would cry. And I did.

But this time, there was another scene which grabbed my attention. It was the shop-breaking/looting sequence before the death scene. Raja (Anil Kapoor playing a rough mawaali type) and his friends had just been smashing, and stealing from, a store. A very disappointed Vinod (Dilip Kumar, the upright journalist-activist), goes to his room to upbraid him. Raja, however, is not in the least bit remorseful.

He begins to talk of a memory. When he was five years old, he remembered being out with his father, walking through the market. His father had reached out to touch the fabric that was hung up there for sale. The shopkeeper had yelled. The paradox was his father was a weaver. Perhaps, the very man who had woven that bit of cloth, was now forbidden to touch it.

Raja swears that he would not live like his father did. If he was not permitted to touch something in a shop, he would break it.

For a long time, it stayed with me. That sequence. Incredibly, the movie was made by Yash Chopra.

Funny, how they just don’t say that sort of thing in the movies, any longer. No?

The weird, the comic and the ugly

This is almost a ritual for bloggers now: to keep an eye - a widened, part-horrified, part-amused eye - out for the weird searches that direct the web-world to their blogs. I had mentioned one particular google search a couple of years back (sadly, have not kept the promise I made at the end of that bemused post).

Here's an update on some of the more interesting searches that led people to Known Turf (the comments in brackets are my reactions):

teachers in transparent saree

mallu in transparent salwar

black prostitutes on the job

quiet kind person (This googler sounds interesting)

fat woman on thin man shoulders statue

sar pe topi lal lal

ae handsome (!)

aye mere nehru (!!)

naughty tailor taking measurements of nude girls with his hands

please I saw the rashtrapati garden (why the 'please')

smriti irani cleavage pics

chennai aunty sex story

DO GUYS LIKE QUIET GIRLS? (In all capitals. And the answer to that is, I hope so)

madhuri dixit mili raste mein mili raste mein, khaye chane hamne saste mein

low waist sarees (this cannot be an Indian, surely?)

jonsar map india

Perverts "R" Us /Stories/ First Time Sex Experience

researcH WORK on rasmalai (Wow!)

dilip kumar saw sayra bano nude (One certainly hopes so)

air hostess getting raped

photos of white prostitutes

indian sexy maidservants

Empathetically meaning Dictonary English to hindi (Empathy means 'samvedna' in Hindi)

yana gupta fashion pictures

how to make an icy chai

woman from india gropped in public large breasts

xxx text stories of sex in india

paliwal farm jaipur sex drugs party

kamuk ho gayi (Kamuk means lustful?)

roti from millets

fuck renuka chowdhary

pathani suits mumbai

shia muttah marriage with hindu women

night bus girl rubbing her breast story bangalore

madhuri dixit mili raste mai (again!)

Which symbol on the 100 rupee note help blind recognize it?

disillusioned with osho (Tsk-tsk)

sanskrit shloka on peace in hindi

land allotment policy for Biodiesel plantation in punjab, india

"hidden recording devices" journalistic ethics audio