Reading? Out of fashion? How droll!

Reading? Out of fashion? How droll!

Drumrolls accompanied Emily as he stepped into the Tea Centre. And I followed meekly behind. Actually, I played quite the insolent cur, and made the Maharani of Worli wait for an hour before I showed up. And of course, it was quite inevitable that when Closetalk meets up with Emily/Maharani, the two of us would gather over a cuppa tea and shiver in our shawls like two old English grannys.



This was part of the Bonding Exercise, you see. Enough of sleaze, I'd decided, it was time I met up with old chaddi-buddies and hung around, discussed men and hung around, sipped tea and hung around. So, we started off with garlic bread and tea, and since we were both famished (both of us being on killer diets), I ordered a mushroom salad and Emily had soup. He put dollops of butter in the soup, but I pretended not to notice.

Soup and salad over, hungry as ever, the two of us decided to amble over to where the Strand Book sale was being held. For the record, the Strand is quite an institution in Bombay. It opened yesterday, and the sale will last till February 5. You get discounts ranging from 40-80% on the books, so if you're new in the city and want to know where to pick up some great books, hit Churchgate station for the sale. There, that was the advertorial. Emily and I did the rounds, up and down the aisles, looking for new books. Saw this collection of gay short stories that Emily trashed, so i put it down again. He picked up a completely hilarious book for a mutual gay friend, and then we started reading unabashedly from the 'adult' section. Excerpts from the story of a guy who goes to a gay gogo bar for the first time. A Parsi aunty passing by glares at us, and Emily hoots in laughter.

I end up buying Dhanvi's Last Song of Dusk, because that's been highly recommended by both d/d and Emily. Then, another book about two gay men that Emily sobbed over. And finally, Bapsi Sidhwa's The Crow Eaters. True, Boy's no Parsi, but he does a Parsi Gujarai imitation that always gets me in splits!

Of course, I had to end this post with something about Boy! He's coming back to Bombay tonight, and I shall do cartwheels now.

;-)