Pappu and the Cop

So I was taking big strides down Marine Drive, enjoying the lovely moisture laden cool breeze that enveloped me during my routine evening walk. I love this part of the day -- it helps me clear my head and plan work for the next day and at the same time works out to be a super exercise regime.

It's also that part of the day when I listen to some great music, sing aloud without any care and return home satisfied that I gave myself some time alone. Wednesday evening was no different. Much of the day was spent at work editing stories, planning stories and well, scrapping stories. Through all this, I listened to Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti on loop. In fact I even pasted on Facebook some random lyrics of one of my favourite songs from the album, Trampled Underfoot. Enough digressing.

Surely enough, I picked this album to accompany me on my evening walk. As I paced "down by the seaside", I noticed there were hardly any cars in the northbound direction. No cars at peakhour, in the direction of the traffic? So strange, I thought. Then I noticed a barrage of policemen scattered across the promenade. Ahh, a VVIP is driving by, I concluded and continued clocking my steps as I did a Robert Plant. 

Just as I prided myself for holding a note a la Plant and effortlessly singing "Sure as the dust that floats high in June; When movin' through Kashmir", a constable gruffly brought me to a halt. "What happened?" I asked him.

"What are you doing?" he demanded. It seemed like one of those times when the question seems so redundant. Like my mom knocking on the loo door and asking "What are you doing?" Umm... what do you think?   

I tried not to sound smug and I said,"Listening to music while on my routine walk." 

"What's that you're listening to?" he asked impatiently. "An English song. Do you want to listen to it?" I enquired earnestly. He put on my headphones and listened to Robert Plant croon. Just then he saw my recently lit iPod screen flashing Kashmir by Led Zeppelin. 

"Yeh Kashmir kya hai?" Just then it struck me. Trust me to sing aloud Kashmir in a high security area and distract a poor constable on duty. Incidentally the word Kashmir is mentioned just once in the entire song. How he caught it, God alone knows. 

In my halting Marathi I told him that its a famous song by a famous band and quickly offered to make him listen to any other song, so he knows I wasn't on any mission. I scrolled to the letter A on my iPod, chose A.R. Rahman and played him a chartbuster that makes me cringe -- Pappu Can't Dance Saala. He had this priceless expression; it seemed like he couldn't decide whether to laugh or to be annoyed. I'm pathetic with small talk. As I took my headphones back, I told him its a famous song and my nieces love it. Don't ask me why I gave him that fabulous piece of trivia. I'll never forget the look on his face. I'm sure he looked at me and wondered if I was some sort of moron.

And as I walked back home, I saw the President's cavalcade whiz past me.

Snapping at the Snappers

Photographers love to capture a moment, freeze a scene from nature and reproduce the beauty they've witnessed.  Some get paid for doing mediocre work while some produce masterpieces for free. Either way, they're a reminder of the moment you've just missed or the moment you absolutely do not want to forget (and often the moment you desperately want to forget).

A lot of them are also intrusive, annoying and distract you from the moment you're about to experience. Unless you're a star with tantrums, it's quite hard to get the lens off your face. People like me often end up scowling in photos because they would've been taken at exactly that moment when I said, "I don't like to be photographed".

Here are five circumstances involving photographers that irk me immensely.


1. The Wedding Photographer (for brides and grooms):

Unless you really like being photographed in no matter what you wear,  dealing with the wedding photographer can be quite a painstaking. "Put your right hand across his chest and tilt your head towards his"; "Look into his eyes and hold his hands"; "Feed him some kulfi" -- staging romance for a photograph is plain preposterous.
Despite the happiness in your heart, you are also tired of shaking hands of people who now resemble one big blur, being on your feet while manoeuvring through layers of cloth (read sari) and enthusiastic people. You're craving that one drink or the comfort of your bed, you can feel the corns growing on your feet and want to just dip them into some hot water; but the photographer wants you to enact your feelings.


2. The Wedding Photographer (for guests):

What could be more embarrassing than being photographed just as you bite into a pani puri?  Being photographed with 4 dahi vadas in your plate. Some weddings have phenomenal food but you don't necessarily want to be the testimony to that. I've lost track of the number of times photos of me with spinach stuck to my buck teeth or with onions wedged in my molars have made it to photo albums. And you still wonder why I treat photographers with such disdain?

3. The Press Photographer (lacking in talent):

The mundane ones can take nothing more than the best-of-four photos. All photographs will have two people in action (shaking hands, giving awards, clinking glasses) and two hangers-on.  On an average, the non-award-winning press photographers are the ones who stick to this formula, irrespective of the occasion.
Some of them copy the award-winning ones and end up sticking to that formula instead. Don't understand? Pick up three newspapers the morning after some riot breaks out in the city. There is a 90% chance that all three of them will have one picture of a lone slipper in focus and the people in the background out of focus. This is meant to be the symbolic slipper that started the riot. There will also be a photograph shot through a hole in the window of a bus/car. That hole is either caused by a bullet or the stone some hooligan threw. The lack of originality is shocking, especially since there are so many lensmen around the world working for the press, who come up with deliciously interesting pictures. So far I haven't seen a slipper being focused on through the hole in a window. Thank God.

4. Won't-leave-them-alone Photographers:

So a love-struck couple decided to spend a beautiful evening by the sea and the next thing they know, they're splashed on the front page of a newspaper. "Offbeat" pictures make for great page 1 offsetters, but can also spark a domestic argument if the couple's parents don't consent, no? Of course it's an unending debate between photographers spotting eye-catching beauty and campaigners of privacy like me.   

5. The Passport Photo:

First of all he wants you to move your head in all directions, dab some powder on your face, shove cotton balls behind your ears to make them more prominent and flash just a hint of a smile. Yet you look stupid, every single time. The consistency with which despite all his instructions you look stupid, is astonishing.