By the way8230;.

Then the police decided to call the girl and her father, who arrived at the spot to declare loudly that they had accepted Kumar8217;s proposal. It was around five in the evening when the youth decided to come down, with a big smile on his face. Little had he realise that his adventure would land him in a mess as what he had done was plain unlawful. Kumar was arrested under Section 309 of the IPC and the girl sent back to her home. The modern-day Majnu has now been released on bail.

Madness outside
Hordes of MTV-VJ-wannabes, twenty-somethings in fluorescent sandals doing the balancing act with glasses of chilled Pepsi and Marlboro cigarettes and your regular passers-by braved the sweltering heat to see and be seen at the shopping festival at Connaught Place. Quite a pointless exercise given the pathetic fare that was being dished out. Axel Rose-hopefuls painfully belted out ear-shattering renditions of once pleasant Guns N Roses songs, while another long-haired muse attempted, in vain, an Asha Bhosle imitation. In a far corner sat one lonesome man with his synthesiser. Though he played continuously the whole evening, no one seemed interested to stop and listen a while. The only ones who benefitted were the fast food joints, where the crowds thronged for some respite from the madness outside.

Transformed
When a fire broke out in a transformer in the Jamp;K block of Laxmi Nagar, the residents frantically tried to call 102 Fire Service.

The fire was in full fury when this reporter asked a nearby shopkeeper to dial 102. But the man simply refused to contact the fire service saying the fire will subside after some time. When the shocked scribe desperately contacted another resident, he was told,8220;let the transformer burn, then a new one will be installed.8221; He continued watching the free fire show8217; that was going on 10 yards from his residence.

It was only after someone responsible finally informed the fire service that a fire engine arrived and doused the flames. The same bunch of people were later heard discussing the late arrival of the fire engine.

Very, very powerful
A colleague hired an autorickshaw from East of Kailash the other day to reach her office at ITO. She got onto the vehicle and decided to ignore the muck and noise around her by immersing herself in a book. But her journey did not quite turn out the way she wanted it to.

As soon as the TSR reached the Delhi Zoo, this colleague8217;s face slammed into her book as the auto-driver suddenly stopped the vehicle to prevent it from slamming into a frantically waving scooterist in turn.

A tall guy yelled out to his newly-wed wife to jump down from their scooter. Then he rushed towards the auto-driver and started bashing him up.It was then that it slowly dawned on the colleague that while she had been busy with her book, the auto-driver had nearly rammed into the scooter carrying the newly-weds. A good number of kicks, slaps and abuses later, the driver was allowed to move on.

But the autorickshaw had barely covered a few meters when a burly man with a policeman in tow appeared out of nowhere and insisted that both the TSR and scooter stop.

He wanted the scooterist to accuse the auto-driver of rash driving so that the latter could be booked for the same. But he was also quick to add that the two 8220;parties8221; could easily split the money between themselves.Shocked, the scooterist tried to explain that it was not exactly his fault that the auto-driver had almost hit him.

The burly man then simply turned his attention to my colleague and asked her to pay up. Equally shocked, she also refused to part with a single rupee.It was only when the burly man was asked exactly who he was and why he was so interested in playing middleman that he shut his mouth. But when questioned again by the young scooterist, he claimed to be a policeman in plain clothes, with no explanation for a missing I-card.

Now the cop intervened and said that he was there to 8220;supervise things8221;. He followed this up with a few nasty comments and threatened to take all of them to the nearest police post to 8220;sort out the matter8221;.

My colleague was finally compelled to introduce herself as 8220;a very, very powerful8221; journalist. So, it was only when she threatened the cop and his friend with dire consequences that they let her go without extracting any money out of her.