Leslie's Laughs

 [Published in My Kolkata on 23rd June 2024.  Read Online .] Oh the games people play now  /  Every night and every day now Never meaning what they say now  /  Never saying what they mean Inner Circle made that song memorable for me. After an exhausting brace of election months we know we’ve been a part of these games, often as spectators or pawns. But that’s political.  This piece is about the games that we played in our youth and how they have transformed over the years. Facebook University informs me that for some 72 days which began a week or two ago, we are going to be treated to sports like never before - ICC World Cup, UEFA, Copa America, the Olympics - and for armchair sports persons this is good news!  Better news for TV channels and advertisers. In the good old days of 2-colour TV (Black and White) we preferred to be outside, missing the ads, lowering the TRPs and playing physical games. Or even indoors. At a friend’s house the other nig...

 [First published in My Kolkata on June 12, 2024.  Read it Online  ] [This piece is close to my heart and based on over four decades of practical classroom teaching, observation and working with teachers across the country.] “Hey Teacher, leave them kids alone / All in all you’re just another brick in the wall” sang Pink Floyd. “If you wanted the sky, I would write across the sky in letters… / To Sir, with love.”sang Lulu in the movie. I’m sure we have all met both types of teachers.  But this piece is on what makes teachers tick. I was watching a shared video of students of a Kolkata school on an exchange program in Australia. Delightful, made even more so by the brief appearance of an accompanying teacher stepping up on stage and doing a namaste. This got me thinking about teaching and “teachering” - a phrase I invented to explain the myriad things that teachers do other than transact a syllabus. As schools reopen after the vacation, teachers are invited to attend ...

Published in The Telegraph My Kolkata on May 8, 2024. You can read it online here or read the original below. A regular traveller of yore shares his flippant though backhanded view of how we travel for vacations. Any resemblance to existing entities are coincidental and purely for fun. “We are going on a Summer Holiday, No more working for a week or two” – sang Sir Cliff Richard, an Englishman who knew his India. The 42 on Chowringhee would never have imagined that it would become the yardstick for temperature. With the mercury threatening to pop its buttons on our thermometers, people are buttoning down to the serious business of heading for the hills - or hols anyway, if they aren’t that lucky. While the new school year, mentioned earlier, has just about started, the tickets for the summer vacation have already been booked, by train, plane, bus or bullock cart. We gotta get out of here! That’s a Calcutta thing. Lock, stock, barrel and greater families will all go together when we...

 Published in The Telegraph My Kolkata on May 4, 2024.  You can read it online here  or read the original below. “I hate to see the evening' sun go down I hate to see the evening' sun go down It makes me think I'm on my last go 'round” - from St Louis Blues, reputed to be the first blues song to become popular. With apologies to W C Handy, arguably the father of the blues, I would rather have “I LOVE to see the evening sun go down”. Wouldn’t you agree? Because, when the sun goes down in Kolkata, light balmy breezes replace the oppressive loo winds that have tortured us throughout the day. Because, when the sun goes down, the temperature goes down a notch or two. Because when the sun goes down, it’s sundowners with plenty of ice! Keep your cool. This is not just another joke on The 42. That building has seen its share of memes this summer. It’s time to go higher with the temperature touching 44 and higher in some cases. 44 is Lewis Hamilton’s racing number. It’s a pa...

Published in The Telegraph My Kolkata on 28 April 2024. You can read the online version here Or you can read the original below. [The author, a musician by accident and music lover by choice, unravels the threads of the argument that “vinyls are better” as they make yet another endless loop comeback despite on demand streaming and other media.] Disclaimer: This is NOT another Audiophile’s Decisive Comparison between vinyl, CD, cassettes and streaming mp3. But it has been triggered by yet another post about some music icon who still visits music stores to buy vinyls! And of course, the string of comments, on the whole listening experience, both for and against. Vinyl. Pronounced “vie nil”. Yes, I checked it with Google and a few other erudite scholars. The 12 inch polystyrene repository of musical memories, usually black but other shades these days, are vinyls. The pedestrian buyer in Calcutta called them “LPs” for Long Playing Records. Well, in my day folks around me said “vee n...

 [The piece was published in My Kolkata on April 12, 2024.  You can read it online here . ] This is the original as written by me. A teacher by vocation, this Kolkata Goan shares some of his back to school experiences as a student and some insider information as a teacher, very tongue-in-cheek. On the day of the solar eclipse a reader of My Kolkata shared a picture of a circular rainbow seen in Kolkata. It was beautiful and brought to mind all the different imagery of rainbows and their meanings. The one that sticks is the legendary rainbow after the flood in the Bible. This was interpreted as the promise of things to come. The season of Spring is poetically the promise of the future, the darling buds of May. In the world of education, too, it is the excitement of a new school year, new classrooms, new teachers (hopefully) and new textbooks. Or old, depending on which millennium you were born. In the one in which I was born, there was something called “Book Mart Day” - this wa...

 [The original piece was published in My Kolkata on April 7, 2024.  You can read it here . The piece as written is reproduced below.   [The writer has survived the storms of life in Kolkata for six decades, from the pre-electricity era to the post-Covid era. He writes about the storms, virtual and real.] There was a song that Bing Crosby used to belt out from the old gramophone my dad owned. It went like this: Those April showers, they come your way They bring the flowers that bloom in May So if it’s raining have no regrets ‘Cause it isn’t raining rain, you know, it’s raining violets! Bing Crosby warbles on through the song about clouds, hills, bluebirds and daffodils, and all the benefits of those showers, but I get back to thinking about Kalbaisakhi  and how it affects my life.  A couple of weeks ago, after ages, my internet connection started ‘flapping’ - that’s the official term, I kid you not. It came, it went, it came again and as I logged into my onl...

  [This was published by My Kolkata on 26 March 2024.  You can read the published article online .  This is the pre-edited version without the pictures and links.] Eggs, Bunnies and Chicks - it’s Easter again! [A survivor’s guide to Easter in all its forms, with a little serious information thrown in … ] Eggs, Bunnies and Chicks - it’s Easter again! [A survivor’s guide to Easter in all its forms, with a little serious information thrown in … ] “Happy Good Friday!”  The wishes ping forth from the recesses of WhatsApp on the Friday before Easter.  It’s a red letter day on the calendar, it’s a long weekend at the office, obviously someone is celebrating something, so let’s wish them. The lone Christian on the employee list is singled out for the wishes. Painstakingly patient, she responds, “Good Friday commemorates the death of Christ. It’s a day of remembrance and mourning. We celebrate Easter, the resurrection of Christ on Sunday.” “Ok, then.  Enjoy!  W...