India Uncut

Ever been in a movie hall when some jerklike gentleman's cellphone went off? Well, it happens in rather more important places as well. IANS reports:

A cell phone ring during business hours in the Lok Sabha on Monday irked Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who then launched an unsuccessful search for its owner.

As the phone rang, Chatterjee asked whose phone it was and directed the owner to hand it over to the marshals. Although the marshals were walking up and down, no MP was seen handing over a phone to them.

This is immense fun. An image of Chatterjee lurking the aisles looking for the phone comes to mind. Every once in a while he lunges at an MP, examines his dhoti or veshti or lungi as the case may be, and sighs and resumes his search. (In the process he wakes the MP up, which is a pity.) If he sees an MP shaking his legs under the table, he assumes it's because his phone is on vibrator mode, and ducks under the table to get a grip on things. And now and then, in the middle of his search, the phone rings, but he can't make out where the noise is coming from. All the MPs look at him and smile. Laloo Prasad Yadav's cow is also there, chomping grass from a bucket. But the phone is not located.

And, needless to say, the ringtone is Kajra Re. It plays in Chatterjee's mind, long after the session is over, long after he has quit politics and retired to Kolkata, long after the untimely demise of Laloo's cow because of competition from low-cost airlines. Kajra re, kajra re, tere kaare kaare naina.