Straight drive

Whatever it means in the English language, for boys growing up in India, it only means one thing - a monthly trip to the nearest barber after a scolding at school! India's hair cut saloons are a lovely reflection of the culture of the place. The water and the after shave being sprayed around the place leaves a lingering smell which is at once damp and refreshing. The cut locks lying about the floor add their own to the ambience. If the shop is relatively old, the furniture would have got all creaky with lime scales lining up the mirrors. The platform in front of the mirror is littered with water sprays, blades, creams of all makes, dyes, and the like. All in all, a great place to get in touch with the real India (forgive me for sounding like a firang tourist.) If, like 80% of the general populace, you find it too hard to get up on a weekday for the harvest and only visit the place 'subah subah' on a Sunday (anytime before 1PM), chances are, there would be atleast 7-8 people

London, New York and Paris are three cities which have withstood the test of time and have redefined the way the modern world has shaped up, for better or for worse. Having been fortunate enough to spend time in all three of them within a space of an year, and having been bewitched by each of them in their own unique ways, here are my views on them. London was home to me for two years. London was everything I expected it to be, and a bit more. As a character says in Snatch, "London, you know... - fish, chips, cup 'O tea, bad weather, worse food, Mary @#$%ing Poppins, London!". My own views are not that cynical but yes, the worst thing about London is surely the weather. Well, for eight months of the year at least. It is not just the fact that it is cold but it so amazingly depressing in the short and cloudy days of the winter, that I often wonder how the British have resisted suicidal tendencies! In the summer, however, England is the best place to be. With the extended d

For an Indian growing up in the 'communally sensitive' city of Hyderabad and having watched the menace of cross border terrorism grow from murders in Kashmir to bomb blasts 5 minutes from my home, I have nothing but the deepest hatred for all things Pakistan. I remember Wasim Akram once said in an interview that when he first came to India he half expected to find devils with horns walking on the street. My notion of Pakistan, and as an extension Pakistanis was not very different. Though that particular notion has since been put to rest, I have found new reasons to continue my contempt for the nation. The first time I met a Paki (I use the term purely as short form for 'Pakistani' and not in the derogatory sense), in fact two of them, was in Dubai on stopover to London, which, incidentally, my first overseas travel. As much as I dislike it I do look like someone across the border, and thus they misunderstood me to be a Pakistani. They surely did not look Indian to me an