Bangalore Rising

(All characters in this story are real. All events are true, except that they might have been dramatised for effect. No animals were harmed during this episode. Human egos were however terribly harmed) ———//——— Gregory Peck riding away into the sun in McKenna’s Gold is still firmly etched in my memory, fifty two years after the iconic movie’s release. And of Clint Eastwood’s horse’s amble in the introductory scene of The Good The Bad And The Ugly. Several decades later, some of the sheen on these macho-men wore off when I watched at Universal Studios, how many such scenes were shot - it was almost comedic to watch heroes ride those dummy horses on spring mounted poles. My fascination with these magnificent beasts however never waned. I always imagined myself riding one of these majestic stallions, jumping over hedges, taking a sharp bend, before riding off into the sunset. Alas, the closest that city-bred folks like me come to a horse is either as a dulha (TamBram dulhas incidentally n

It was 1985..or was it ’86? We were four to five young working professionals sharing a fantastic pad in Juhu, Mumbai. Each of us had moved into our second jobs, were flush with funds, were not spendthrifts, loved to cook our dinners at home, preferred to sit at home with friends and drink, instead of hanging around in either seedy or expensive pubs, and loved to leave the city on weekends. It was always the same - we would come back from work tired on a Friday night, sit around with a drink in hand, chatting, and suddenly one of us would have a bright idea. “Bore ho raha hai yaar, lets go somewhere.” So the next 30-minutes would be spent discussing options, and finally the guy with the loudest and firmest voice that night would get his way. Ganeshpuri, Vajreshwari, Lonavla-Khandala, Igatpuri, Mahabaleshwar-Panchgani, Nashik, Goa, Ratnagiri-Chiplun, Murud-Janjira, and a dozen other trips always happened that way.  So it was that Friday night too. “Alibagh” proclaimed Ramesh. It was