| Summary: | Biren was one of those people, you come across or talk to almost every day and then forget immediately afterwards. Maybe in every para, every neighbourhood, one can find a few people who may be our Birens or may come very close to Biren-like figures.1 Not many of us remember him today though. I have tested that. In various places, small alleys or streetside roaks, in houses or in STD phone-booths, in clubs or in markets, in small pan-cigarette shops, I had tried to raise the issue of Biren by throwing a quick reference in a manner one throws an unused coin so that somebody would pick it up and Biren would suddenly appear with his dirty shirt, untrimmed beard, dishevelled hair, big gray eyes, sunken cheek and safety-pin strapped slippers. And having appeared, he would do something which he always did, speaking about a thing which had no meaning whatsoever, hundred percent bhat.2 No, he would not talk nonsense always. He would also speak of other things, the hot topics – such as death-by-hanging, cricket, vote, whatever was on the card. Biren would unfailingly place his hand on the shoulders of the person talking to and pinch him as he spoke. It would happen almost every day that the person, Biren started talking to, would give him an excuse in order to skip his nonsense and try to go past; but Biren would follow up and walk together without a pause in his words.
|
|---|