Sipping spiced coffee & cacao as I wait for a dear friend, thinking back to when I learnt about the transferred epithet with my brilliant teacher, Ms May quoting PGW to the class, except for one detail: the actual line was that ‘he smoked a moody cigarette’, but being the strict Catholic teaching in St Xavier’s in Mumbai’s conservative Vile Parle that she was, she changed it to ‘he sipped a melancholy cup of coffee’.
Thank you, Ms May, for teaching me English, for being uniquely you, and for giving me the perfect phrase to sum up this evening’s festivities at the Brooster Coffee Spot in what used to be a leafy, idyllic lane in the old Kalyani Nagar.
