Mixed Shots

Cream And Cakes

Sometimes action speaks louder than words. Take a Madhya Pradesh Congress leader’s act as a cue. He sent tubes of the popular ­antiseptic cream Burnol through an e-tailer to the state’s home minister Narottam Mishra after Jyotiraditya Scindia, a former Congressman, was inducted in the Union cabinet. ­Apparently, Mishra was eyeing a berth in the Modi ministry, but Scindia pipped him to the post. And hence, the common ­palliative for burns to “ease pain”. In Goa, matching up to the Goan spirit, the gift of choice for “backstabbing the voters” was ­confectionary in nature. AAP sent cakes to 10 MLAs on the second ­anniversary of their switch from the Congress to the BJP, giving CM ­Pramod Sawant the majority in the assembly in July 2019.

Mask Boy Is Police Mascot

It’s called ‘revenge tourism’—pent-up people sequestered for months due to pandemic restrictions moving in hordes to holiday, in this case the hills, when the curfew was eased. But for their cavalier attitude overriding Covid protocols, nothing seems to be wrong in that. And so it came down to a poor, five-year-old boy to poke “maskless” vacationers with a plastic pipe in a crammed Dharamsala bazaar and ask, “Tumhara mask kahaan hai? (Where is your mask?)”. Amit’s act caught the cops’ attention and they have employed him as a mascot to warn people about Covid-inappropriate behaviour. The balloon-seller’s son—wearing a new Himachali cap and clothes—now sits on a police van and wields his famous stick.

With Love From Bangladesh

Trust the mango to sweeten up neighbourly diplomacy. Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina sent crates of the king of fruit—more than 2,500 kg—to Narendra Modi, Mamata Banerjee and the CMs of Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram, all states bordering her country. The gift basket contained the Haribhanga variety from Rangpur, the sweetest and most flavourful produce of Bangladesh. As return gifts, Tripura plans to send its Queen variety of pineapples, while Meghalaya is preparing a basket of assorted organic products such as honey, tea and Lakadong turmeric. Hasina perhaps hopes the mangoes will melt Mamata’s heart on Teesta, and make her agree to an amicable solution on sharing the river’s water.  

Saat Phere On A Boat

Ready, steady, go take seven turns…you are now pronoun­ced man and wife. Marriage is a balancing act, but what if the wedding itself becomes an act of balance—on a wobbly, wooden boat, that is? It so happened that swathes of north Bihar went under after a heavy dunking of rain, and the groom in Muzaffarpur and his party had to take a boat to the bride’s place, equally inundated by floodwater. It was decided pronto that the rituals would be conducted on the boat—including the saat phere, the seven circumambulations around a holy fire. They did it, without losing their footing, and the newly-weds returned to the groom’s house on the same boat. The groom uploaded his wedding video on social media to let the government know the people’s plight.

More than Meets The Eye

In one word the consignment seized by customs at the New Orleans airport in the US is eye-popping. Three thousand pairs of fake eyelashes illegally imported from China in four boxes and destined for a beauty supply store. They hadn’t been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration and weren’t labelled with the distributor’s name or the manufacturer’s name. That means there’s no way to tell whether the eyelashes had been exposed to disease during manufacturing or whether they were stored properly and kept away from insect-infested areas. False eyelashes can be made of synthetics and are attached using adhesive, and unregulated or dangerous materials could lead to allergic reactions, eye irritation or worse.

Brevis

Illustrations: Saahil, Text curated by Alka Gupta