My temporary absence from the scintillating world of blogging has come to an end.

My inspirational “trio” ( remeber Three wise Monkeys & Three Judgemets !!   ) is back to complete a Trilogy .

First the  RIP : dedicated to someone who  famously described himself as a           gentleman bitch .  Gore Vidal is no more. I watched the Hard Talk re-run on BBC of a four-year old  interview with the just deceased , wherein his acerbic witticism visibly made the otherwise unflappable interviewer seem uneasy . I am not well read enough( nor  widely-read to be honest !! )  to write anything meaningful about Gore Vidal’s works . I knew of him as a novelist , a story writer , an essayist , & a political commentator but had read none of his works . What I did know though were some of his outrageously funny quotable quotes , which always come in handy , often as uncredited one-liners . Herewith some of these , aptly applicable to the world’s largest democracy wherein we participate , perform , & produce ( sorry , there I go again with my penchant for digression but this one was irresistable  !!  )  .  I am referring to democratic processes & not to what one-track minds would think !!

Coming back to the RIP dedication, who would imagine that he was referring to America & not to our very own India in his ” Half the people can’t read a newspaper , & half will not vote . One hopes it is the same half “.  Or in his somewhat snooty  ” Public figures can’t write their own speeches. There’s some evidence that they can’t read them either “.  Team Anna , in the euphoria of wanting to enter Electoral Politics , must take note of his warning ”  at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests ” .  Or the daily rant of most tax payers reflected in ” The genius of our ruling class is in making a majority of  people —–   drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”  How , one wonders , could he have known about the NDA – UPA hyperbola in our lives when he ascribed to Democracy the quality of giving us  “the feeling of choice like painkiller X  or   painkiller Y :  both just Aspirin” .  Cheerio Gore Vidal ; RIP .

The WIP  in this narrative occured when I drove  2 kms to a new Hair-Spa ( in my pre-HNI days I would visit the friendly neighbourhood barber shop when in need of a hair-cut & a vigorous scalp massage called ‘Champi’ orchestrated by the latest Bollywood number blaring full throttle from a precariously old radio ) . The hair therapist  at the Spa ( I thought they were called Barbers ; or Hairdressers in slightly up-market establishments ) spent over 10 minutes helping me through their Menu ( I wasn’t ordering a meal , hungry as I was ) to what he expertly believed to be the most appropriate treatment for my hair. The process started with a trim here & a clip there . Half way through these prelimineries , a certain religious fervour overtook  the therapist , & he excused himself to break his day-long  fast in response to his  ethereal  calling , leaving my hair & me as  work-in-progress so to speak , in no condition to stage a walk out in protest ( one sideburn trimmed & the other in wild disarray might be trendy only if sported  by a celeb ) . I amused myself , instead , through a vivid recollection of  the common sight of half tonsured WIP generated by  accredited barbers at a popular place of worship down south , by accosting unsuspecting pilgrims only to abandon them as half-done  captive demand awaiting completion of the tonsure, to accost more gullibles  : a clear case of two halves being grater than one full in revenue optimisation .

Finally , VIP  here refers not to any VIP but to my favoured brand of vests & boxer shorts  In the madness called the Phoenix mall , all global brands , differently priced , some shockingly so , were on display to the inexplicable exclusion of VIP . And that too , in synthetic fabrics & loud colours : whatever happened to the near-universal preference once upon a time for white ribbed Egyptian cottons.  A long & tiresome search finally produced results , albeit in a brand called MIP . May be there is a message there for one to move up in the hierarchy of needs from  very important to the most important .

Cheers for now