T r e a d Softly... YOU MIGHT TRIP ON TEXT


Friday, June 23, 2006


A long time ago, when the Sholavaram races were in full swing, a group of us gathered one night outside Buhari's on Mount Road. Being a time of Prohibition, drinks masked in soda bottles were consumed behind the main building. Our group included riders who were going to whip their mobikes to a frenzy on the next day's tracks. The next day some of us would be part of the cheerers-on at the pits. But this is not about the next day. This is about the previous night. As we walked down the pavement outside Buharis, a vendor sat there with his product---a green frog attached by a wire to a little balloon that one held and squeezed to make the frog jump. And he was calling out as part of his sales pitch: "Jembing frog, jembing frog!" And one of our guys wanted to buy one, so he picked it up and tried in vain to make it jump. And he returned it to the vendor saying: "Jembing frog, something wrong!" That phrase has stayed with most of us. Today, my Thinkopotamus is behaving more like that "jembing frog", jumping away on April 1 and returning on June 23! Let's see if we can keep this frog's "jembing" under control from this point on.
Anyway here's another pic. Vinayak at the Masquerade reading.