wutheringheights

There was every reason for a dog-catcher to throw his rope at Thomman. He never wore a collar – the symbol that helped identify pet dogs from the stray ones. Thomman was healthy and handsome. He had big black & white circles on his body. A chronic wanderer, he would walk into our house only at lunch and supper hours. In the early 1980s, animal protection laws were not very effective and the dog-catchers used to kill the dogs they trapped. It was on the way to school we saw his body lying on a drainage slab with his mouth open. Tears kept rolling down from my eyes till I reached school.  Pomeranian dogs were fashionable those days. One day, dad got up early and left home before we woke up. He returned before noon, holding a white puppy in his hand. “Female… female dog… throw her outside now itself,” shouted my grandfather. “No, I paid Rs 50 for the puppy. I don’t want to throw her out,” dad said. Grandfather was cool, but he looked at his son as if he did something wr

“Don’t ever touch the silencer… It’s hot,” said the hippie uncle soon  after parking his brand new Royal Enfield  Bullet  on the street where  we played cricket. “It will burn your hands. Be careful.” With two  garlands, one tied around the headlight and the other on the rear  lamp, the  Bullet  had a dozen sandal-paste marks on its body. The potbellied uncle was never in a mood to leave the  Bullet , foreseeing  the possible harm I would have given to his new machine. So he checked  the vehicle a couple of times to ensure that it stood firmly on the  middle-stand. After walking a bit, he would return and stay close to  the  Bullet , adjusting the garland around its headlight. He wanted to  know whether I would approach his machine in his absence. The action  went on for almost half-an-hour, and finally the uncle gave up,  smiling at me. I could still feel the heat evaporating from the silencer as I stood  close by it. But what attracted me to it was a wide-angle image of my  fac

1996. It was a cassette shop inside the Palika Bazaar where we first went together with a common idea, after we became friends ten years ago: buy some good collections of ghazals. She knew Gulam Ali was my favorite. I never knew who she liked. I bought a couple of Ali’s famous ghazals, including ‘chupke chupke’ after an hour’s search. In fact we were meeting after a long time. At the bus-stop, when I was about to board a bus to R K Puram where I lived, she hurriedly handed over a small box to me. Sitting on the bus, I slowly opened the wrapper… there were two cassettes: both by Mehdi Hassan. “Ab ke hum bichhade to shaayad kabhii khwabon mein milen” was the first ghazal I played immediately after reaching home. I must have played this ghazal one thousand times. Interestingly, we have never met after that. In 2009, when I went to Kozhikode to meet Ahmad Bhai, a music-lover and friend of Mohammad Rafi, he told me how the town was graced with the presence of Mehdi Hassan in 2000. “Wh