Early in the morning in the fresh light of a Kolkata waking up to another day, a missive from the world outside, curled and wound by a jute string would come spinning and then glide through the open door onto our red cement floor. It never missed its target – one open door of many others on the second floor of a jhool baranda, a hanging verandah. I always ran out to peer through the trellis work of our wrought iron railing to see the newspaper man cycling away and stopping every so often to throw his next missile with the sure aim of a champion bowler, an art he must have picked up playing cricket in the numerous lanes or para[1] parks of the metropolis.[2]
