Mumbai Diary: Wednesday whispers

Storm in a teacupThe kerfuffle over the All India Bakchod video of their AIB Knockout Roast has of course kept social media busy as bees and buzzing like them too A filmmaker and Censor board memberrsquos tweet in particular made more waves than usual ldquoKaran Johar could have easily shown his position while performing sex to his mom at home instead of making it publicAIB Porn Showrdquo Naturally it drew a storm of protest but Joharrsquos own tweet in response was nowhere near as strong He simply tweeted ldquoNot your cup of tea donrsquot drink it rdquo Twitter is the planet of rapidfire ripostes and barely five minutes later the filmmaker tweeted back ldquoNo it is not my cup of tea at allBut if you want to drink the poison I wont try and stop you toeachonehisownrdquo And with Johar known for his talk show over muchcelebrated cups of coffee it was all the more ironic There was lots of movement in the Department of Sly Tweets yesterdayAshok Mankadrsquos mimicry skills bookedIN A country where autobiographies by cricketers are minuscule as compared to books in England and Australia V Ramnarayan becomes a rare Indian firstclass player to write his memoirs on a rewarding eventful domestic cricket career with Hyderabad and South ZoneAshok MankadThe 1970s offspinner who played with and against the best names in Indian cricket like MAK Pataudi ML Jaisimha Abbas Ali Baig and Gundappa Viswanath has provided the cricketing fraternity a gem in the form of Third Man mdash Recollections from a life in cricket published by Westland LtdMumbai cricket personalities figure in the book including the late Ashok Mankad whom the author hails for his sense of humour Ramnarayan writes ldquoit was during that camp that I first heard the typically Mumbaiyya expression lsquoleg nrsquo leg that Kaka Mankadrsquos nickname repeatedly used to describe our condition after our coach Darshan Tandon put us through the wringer day after dayrdquoRamnarayan refers to the conditioning camp that was organised in Chennai for Indiarsquos Test probables for the 197778 season Mankad was a character but not many have described his mimicry in this case of then India captain Bishan Singh Bedi like Ramnarayan has ldquoBishan Bedi away playing county cricket in England joined the camp only for the last three days or soKakarsquos impersonation of how Bishan would come into the stadium for training on his first morning of the camp and find no one there was a brilliant act of mimicry Imitating the captain and giving wild vent to his imagination Mankad went through the whole gamut of emotions surprise bewilderment anxiety and finally anger peaking with the dawning of realisation in a sterling show of the adbhuta rasa when Bishan finds the entire team jogging on the roof of the stadiumrdquo Well played Ramnarayan well penned too We hope therersquoll be a doosra tooCoin confusionWith the rates of the BEST bus fares up since Sunday February 1 the buses yesterday saw many clueless commuters As it is there is what we would colloquially called ldquomachmachrdquo over the giving and getting of changeWhen the conductor went around with his customary ldquoTicket ticketrdquo some commuters presented Rs 6 the old minimum fare The conductor informed them that the fare was now Rs 7 to which they reacted with shock and disbeliefThe news has been on the front pages of most city newspapers and yet many seem to be unaware of the fare hike This just adds to the coin woes we face