Mixed Shots

Faeces To Face With A Thief

Whoever said every theft raises a stink didn’t mean it literally. But the line did inspire two thieves in Delhi and their ingenuity could go into the police training manual. When a patrol accosted two suspects near a Metro station, one ran away and the other pepper-sprayed his pursuer, but as that failed, he pulled out his ‘odour’ weapon: human poop from his pocket. He smeared the dung on himself and on the cops trying to catch him, which they did eventually. Fagin’s Academy would prefer a lube—time-tested as Delhi’s chaddi-banian gang had shown. Those men in underwear showed up at break-ins in well-oiled bodies, slipping away from the long hand of the law.

The Language Barrier

The language that won’t travel in Tamil Nadu is Hindi. Flashback to the anti-Hindi campaign in the 1960s or, more recently, the state rejecting in plain language the three-language formula in the Centre’s new education policy. Only Tamil and English, please, no Hindi. But the railways failed to read the signs, apparently, when passengers in the state got their ticket confirmation SMS in Hindi. That translates into a major issue—and political parties, including DMK and NDA constituent PMK, interpreted the SMS as “planned imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi-speaking people”. Some food for thought since the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd (IRCTC) handles e-ticketing. 

You Get What You Wear

Every shoe has a story; some craft their own footprints, some follow in other’s footsteps. Take Royal Challengers Bangalore pacer Navdeep Saini, whose shoes got more attention than his beamer that caught Rajasthan Royals’s Rahul Tewatia on the neck in an IPL match in Abu Dhabi. The message on Saini’s shoes: F*** it! Bowl Fast. Inspirational for a fast bowler, but not original. Australia’s Mitchell Starc wrote “F it! Bowl fast” on his wristband during a Test series against Pakistan in 2019. So what was Tewatia’s riposte to Saini? Consecutive sixes off the next two balls. Shoes don’t step miles if they’re not your size.

Star-struck Pedigree Kid

It’s not often that a tennis player calls being on the wrong end of a 6-1, 6-1, 6-2 Grand Slam result “super awesome” or “definitely the best moment of my life.”  It’s also rather rare for a player to go up to the net and ask the guy who just beat him for an autographed shirt. Sebastian Korda, the 20-year-old American qualifier who lost to Rafael Nadal by the above scoreline in the French Open’s fourth round, still was beaming afterward. Korda, whose cat is named after the 12-time champion at Roland Garros, is the son of Petr, who won the 1998 Australian Open and was a finalist at the 1992 French Open. Mother Regina was ranked in the Top 30.

Moving Billions In Bullion

This really was the gold standard of road trips. The Netherlands’ central bank transported its Dutch-based stock of gold—14,000 bars and about 1,000 boxes of gold coins—from its headquarters in Amsterdam to a safe in nearby Haarlem. Along with the bullion worth US$11.7 billion, the bank shifted bills worth another US$ 5.3 billion. The cash and gold travelled in trucks guarded by armed military police, police motorcycle outriders and a police helicopter hovering overhead. The move comes ahead of renovations of the central bank’s Amsterdam offices. The Dutch central bank also has large reserves stored in the US, Britain and Canada.

Brevis

Illustration: Shahil. Test curated by Alka Gupta