Who Stole My O2
These are desperate times, a plague lurking to steal the air out of your lungs. And the air—pure, medical-grade oxygen is the mainstay of Covid therapy—has become so precious that thieves made off with seven cylinders filled with O2 from a tempo in Pune. That’s because supply of oxygen is not keeping pace with the demand in hospitals treating Covid patients, those on ventilator support. India’s coronavirus infections are ticking up and high Covid-count states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka and Rajasthan have reported oxygen shortage. And so, thieves are trying to make money out of thin air.
Zoom Wedding
Soft Carnatic music greeted guests at Keerthi Jalli’s official home in Assam’s Silchar town. The deputy commissioner, a 2013-batch IAS officer, had invited a handful of colleagues to what they thought was Ganesh puja. Well no, it’s her wedding—shorn of all ostentations as she has put duty above self. Jalli from Hyderabad, who is overseeing the Assam district’s pandemic fight, didn’t take leave. The wedding was on a state holiday. The groom flew in from Pune, followed quarantine protocols, and nearly 800 relatives and friends watched the wedding and blessed the couple on Zoom. Everyone turned up for the virtual wedding in their fineries—making a fine example of looking the part.
Limpid Perspicacity
Chetan Bhagat asked for a compliment ‘wordy’ of Shashi Tharoor when the author-politician praised him for a newspaper article. The Tharoorosaurus obliged. “It’s clear you are not sesquipedalian nor given to rodomontade. Your ideas are unembellished with tortuous convolutions & expressed without ostentation. I appreciate the limpid perspicacity of today’s column.” The polysyllabic ‘sesquipedalian’ is clearly ‘limpid’ about the shrewdness of ‘perspicacity’ in the choice of words to present a complex ‘convolution’ and pretentious ‘ostentation’ of boastful ‘rodomontade’. Apologies for the “exasperating farrago of distortions” but if you have an antwacky appetency for recherché check out Tharoor’s Tharoorosaurus, his latest book.
Okay, Saggy Pants
Aaround the South Florida city of Opa-locka, which is northeast of Miami, signs warn folks of a 2007 legislation that banned saggy pants—bottoms that reveal the wearer’s underwear. Women, not just men, could receive civil citations for wearing pants that exposed their undergarments. The signs show an image of two young men wearing pants below their waists and featuring the words: “No ifs, ands or butts ... It’s the city law!” Human rights groups called the ban ‘racist’, arguing that it would disproportionately affect Black youths. After 13 years, the city commission overturned the ban recently.
The Food Order
The takeaway from Parliament’s monsoon session is, er, packed food. Covid curbs have confined its cafeterias to tea, coffee and kahva, which mean carb and protein for lawmakers and staff are outsourced. Worry not—our MPs will be fed well. For breakfast and snacks, the vegetarian menu has cheese roll, kachori khasta, samosa, sandwich, paneer pakoda, veggie kabab, dhokla, gulab jamun. For lunch, there are North and South Indian combos—paneer, yellow dal, cumin rice or peas pulao, chapatti; or southern comforts like idli, vada, dosa, and uthapam with sambhar and chutney. There’re vegetarian biryani, poha-upma and idli-vada too. The buffet is limited for meat-eaters: chicken biryani or a bento box of chicken cutlet or fried fish, croissant or vegetable sandwich, boiled vegetables. No Chinese, of course.
Brevis
Illustrations: Saahil, Text by Alka Gupta
