Over a Cup of Tea

• An astrologer gives the prediction that in twelve months, the two new Dominions will re-unite. All the trains that carried documents and personnel from Delhi to Karachi will be running back in time for the budget session. The civilians “released” will be chased down and recaptured, while the political discharged will be re-charged.

• The titles and honours and badges discarded will be restored on that day of the re-union, pre-fixes like Pandit and Qaed e Azam being exchanged by way of courtesy. School children in Madras will get one anna’s worth of sweets at black-market price as usual…

• A genial influence is going to be lost in the Indian Legislature by the migration of Mr Sri Prakasa to Karachi as India’s first High Commissioner in Pakistan. He has a gift for casual interruption. Once he completely discomfited Sir James Grigg by a simple remark.

• Among the members of the Grigg Circus was an expert named Chambers. In the course of a finance debate, Grigg bitterly criticised Bombay opinion and attacked the Chambers of Commerce. “What does he care?” cried Sri Prakasa. “He has his own Chambers.”

• Sir Edward Benthall, Transport Member, admitted in a speech that for the sake of economising in electric consumption, bulbs in the bathrooms had been removed. Sri Prakasa asked: “Is not light more necessary in bathrooms than in bedrooms?”…

• The relations between Burma and India regarding residential rights are still strained, but there is now hope in the fact that the Governor-General of India is Lord Mountbatten of Burma.

• The Governor-General we have is so sporting by nature that he would have been ready to accept the offer of his office by phone instead of letting the President and the Premier call on him at midnight. Lord Mountbatten afterwards probably recalled the occasion which prompted Elizabeth Barrett Browning to begin a poem apostrophising his ancestress: “God bless thee, Weeping Queen.”

• Young folk fond of cricket-sensation were stumped by the news that Merchant was not going to Australia just when they almost regarded the tricolour design of the national flag as emblematic of the hat-trick with a painted ball in the centre.

• A discussion was in progress at the local inn on the value of education. One man stressed the importance of a good education, and said that everyone was at a disadvantage without it. “Well I dunno,” replied an old man. “I’m no addicated at all, an’ it seems to me that when ye’re no addicated, ye just have tae use your brains.”