LITTLE PREDATORY BUTTERFLY

Something I have to ask: are you presently scrolling on your cell phone while having a cup of tea? Specifically, are you doing this at that chaiwallah on Tank Bund Road in Gandhinagar while the temperature climbs to one hundred degrees Fahrenheit (39°C) and your dhoti is drenched with sweat and bunches uncomfortably in your crotch? As I unfondly imgine you to be. You recently called me, introduced yourself as "Kevin", and promised that you had wonderful news about end of life insurance PLUS funeral expenses!
You sounded so breathless.

Perhaps that vegetarian samosa went down badly.
And overmuch ghee does affect the throat.

BTW: I do not intend to perish soon.

And it's pronounced "kevin", not 'K-bin'.

Myself, I could not sound so chipper if it was anywhere near that hot. I would wilt. Not even enough energy to kick the punkha wallah on the veranda OR amble slowly slowly down to the nearest tea stall outside the colony, sloyong-sloyong as we say in Indonesian (Dutch-style, old-fashioned usage) to roundly abuse the Mohammedan proprietor as you are accustomed to do, you wormy Hindu nationalist telephone gunda, you.

Though the cup of tea is appealing.

Ek bhar chai, garmagaram! Tank Bund Road, Gandhinagar. Yelp four stars.

To be honest, instead of a cell-phone (which remains inside near where the old land-line apparatus used to sit), there would be a pipe, filled with the best tobacco available among the Gujujus. Probably Erinmore Flake, which in that hot weather smells faint and anaemic, instead of the customary full-bore fruity funk it has in a more temperate zone, like cheap incense sticks ('dhupa') so redolent of an ashram catering to gauralog.
Or spiritual hippie communes in upstate.

No, I do not miss the summer of love. I was too young at the time to appreciate it. But I do sometimes still smoke Erinmore, which is available even in the tropics, because it brings back being cold and wet in Northern Europe. That aroma, oh, fragrant! That smell, that wonderful burning village smell, it reminds me of napalm.


Please stop calling, bevakuf.
I shall not bite.


I am all sweetness and light.
Sach mein hai!


Some tea would be lovely!
Strong, sweet.



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