Netherworld heat retreat

On a summer day, all the people going down the stairs of a Metro station do not end up taking a train. You will see so many standing in small huddles, chatting away unhurriedly while all round them the world is running pell mell in a bid to catch the next Dum Dum or Tollygunge-bound rake.
The ones who stand still are Calcuttans driven to the netherworld in search of succour from the heat above. They could be students shifting their rendezvous from the park, sales representatives hopping downstairs to catch their breath in between door-to-door knocks, or the glorious breed of idlers who find the para rok too hot for their derrieres this season.
And the best thing about the new-found meeting point is that it’s naturally air-conditioned, it’s free, and though it doesn’t offer you a seat, you can grab a cola or an iced tea to wash down the conversation, thanks to the stalls that have sprung up next to the ticket counters. And as long as they are on their best behaviour, they are not driven out by the cops, who choose to look the other way.
T20 vs IPL
Pakistan was playing one of the lesser teams in a T20 cricket match recently when a group of youngsters entered a restaurant at City Centre.
After the first burst of voices, there was a lull in conversation when
A woman braves the heat. A Telegraph picture
the eyes of one of the boys caught a particularly exciting turn in the match on the huge TV screen.
“IPL dekhchhis (Are you following IPL)?” he asked the others innocently. “No, I am not,” responded one. “Karon IPL shesh hoye gyachhey (Because IPL is over),” he added.
“This is the World Cup, stupid!” the only girl in the group laughed, crushing the boy who had raised the topic.
But if we can Xerox instead of photocopy and Google all Web searches, maybe one day we will call all T20 matches IPL?
Catch, prince
A Salt Lake neighbourhood witnessed an attempt to theft recently, but of an unusual kind.
A lady asleep in a ground-floor flat in a housing estate woke up around 3am when she felt the flash of a torchlight on her eyes. “Who is that?” she screamed, in English, for being from outside Bengal, she did not know Bengali.
The suspected thief scrammed, but not before retorting, in English: “I am prince!”
SUDESHNA BANERJEE