IT IS A RAINY EVENING in early May when I squeeze into an autorickshaw at Mathikere in north Bangalore with some friends. Electric blue lights blink above the driver’s seat; fluorescent stickers glow on the windshield; and speakers at the back play loud Kannada film music.
“Where, madam?” the auto driver asks, over the blaring music, expertly turning on the auto meter with his left hand while adjusting the rearview mirror with his right.
“Cantonment,” I reply, and then, spotting the photograph of a stylish man with thick hair at the bottom-right corner of the windshield, whose features I can only dimly make out through the white, sticky flipside of the sticker, ask, “Is that Shankar Nag?”
COMMENT