Mumbai Diary: Wednesday whispers

Storm in a teacup?
The kerfuffle over the All India Bakchod video of their AIB Knockout Roast has, of course, kept social media busy as bees, and buzzing like them too. A filmmaker and Censor board member's tweet in particular made more waves than usual: "Karan Johar could have easily shown his position while performing sex to his mom at home instead of making it public.

#AIB Porn Show." Naturally, it drew a storm of protest, but Johar's own tweet in response was nowhere near as strong. He simply tweeted: "Not your cup of tea... don't drink it !!!" Twitter is the planet of rapid-fire ripostes, and barely five minutes later the filmmaker tweeted back: "No it is not my cup of tea at all.

But if you want to drink the poison, I wont try and stop you. #toeachonehisown" And with Johar known for his talk show over much-celebrated cups of coffee, it was all the more ironic. There was lots of movement in the Department of Sly Tweets yesterday.

Ashok Mankad's mimicry skills booked!
IN A country where autobiographies by cricketers are minuscule as compared to books in England and Australia, V Ramnarayan becomes a rare Indian first-class player to write his memoirs on a rewarding, eventful domestic cricket career with Hyderabad and South Zone.

Ashok Mankad

The 1970s off-spinner who played with and against the best names in Indian cricket like MAK Pataudi, ML Jaisimha, Abbas Ali Baig and Gundappa Viswanath, has provided the cricketing fraternity a gem in the form of Third Man - Recollections from a life in cricket published by Westland Ltd.

Mumbai cricket personalities figure in the book including the late Ashok Mankad whom the author hails for his sense of humour. Ramnarayan writes, "it was during that camp that I first heard the typically Mumbaiyya expression ‘leg n' leg that Kaka (Mankad's nickname) repeatedly used to describe our condition after our coach Darshan Tandon put us through the wringer day after day."

Ramnarayan refers to the conditioning camp that was organised in Chennai for India's Test probables for the 1977-78 season. Mankad was a character but not many have described his mimicry (in this case, of then India captain Bishan Singh Bedi) like Ramnarayan has: "Bishan Bedi, away playing county cricket in England joined the camp only for the last three days or so.

Kaka's impersonation of how Bishan would come into the stadium for training on his first morning of the camp and find no one there was a brilliant act of mimicry. Imitating the captain, and giving wild vent to his imagination, Mankad went through the whole gamut of emotions surprise, bewilderment, anxiety and finally anger peaking with the dawning of realisation in a sterling show of the adbhuta rasa when Bishan finds the entire team jogging on the roof of the stadium." Well played Ramnarayan, well penned too. We hope there'll be a doosra too.

Coin confusion
With the rates of the BEST bus fares up since Sunday, February 1, the buses yesterday saw many clueless commuters. As it is there is what we would colloquially called "mach-mach" over the giving and getting of change.

When the conductor went around with his customary "Ticket, ticket", some commuters presented Rs 6, the old minimum fare. The conductor informed them that the fare was now Rs 7, to which they reacted with shock and disbelief.

The news has been on the front pages of most city newspapers, and yet many seem to be unaware of the fare hike. This just adds to the coin woes we face.