The city — sliced, diced and served with a dash of sauce
Top of the pops, sort of
Last year the CBSE board examination results were all about Sarthak Agarwal, the Delhi boy who scored 99.6 per cent. “What happened to the 0.4 per cent?” was one of the one-liners on social media.
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This year, it may well be the turn of district-level kabaddi player Indrajeet More, who scored the minimum require 35 per cent in each and every subject of the SSC exam! In our book, that’s as skilled a feat as scoring 100 percent and apparently lots of other people think so, from TV channels to educational institutions.
Perhaps More will go on to prove that academic numbers do not guarantee success in non-academic life. Famous school dropouts include actors Al Pacino and Jim Carrey, filmmaker Walt Disney and top chef Wolfgang Puck. And look where they went!
Recorded, off the record!
Few things raise a journalist’s hackles like being told after a long conversation that the whole chat is off the record. But that is just what happened to this diarist when he went to interview a sportsman recently.
The said sportsman, who has represented the country on a few occasions and is obviously quite savvy to the art of interacting with the press, happily spoke to journalists at length, not minding the voice recorders the reporters were holding aloft near his face.
More than 10 minutes on, while wrapping up, the sportsman politely mentions that none of what was said was on-record!Note to self: The first question in every interaction from now on should be “Is this conversation off-the-record?”
Token trouble
Metro passengers at Azad Nagar station faced a peculiar problem yesterday. The staff had run out of tokens and could not let passengers in! Frustrated, some opted to go by bus. Finally, a bag of tokens was sent over from Andheri station by metro!
You are in the queue...
Passengers waiting for the train at Vikhroli station last evening saw an odd sight. On the fast track, bound for Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, not one but three trains had come to a halt, held up by signals.
The trains were practically nose-to-tail and it was something even pedestrians on the foot overbridge stopped to gawp at. One smart aleck on the platform called out to the passengers in the middle: “Aap qataar mein hain!” “You are in the queue”, words that we often hear when a phone line is busy. Anything for a laugh, Mumbaikars!