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You may need to know Sabin Iqbal to fully appreciate the humour in his friend and professor Manu Remakant’s write-up about him. This happened long ago, writes Manu, on a day they were both in a car and Manu suddenly found the not-so-small Sabin sitting on his lap. He had leapt from the driver’s seat and onto Manu’s lap when a policeman knocked on the window. The poor cop was only asking for a lift but Sabin, despite many years as a renowned journalist, never got over his fear of police, Manu writes.
The episode describes a police station visit of the two friends, when Sabin, ready to introduce himself as the Editor of a new media portal, showed up in a suit and tie in hot Thiruvananthapuram. He asked the guard at front “if he needed a lift to go inside”, warmly smiled at one and all, waving an ID card – only it wasn’t his but his six-year-old daughter’s from kindergarten.
Like they say, you had to be there, or in this case, you had to read it. Sabin’s is only one of the many absolutely hilarious write-ups in Branded Batura, the first Malayalam book to be written by Manu, who is known for his funny columns in newspapers.
At the launch of his book, Manu claimed that all the incidents in it were real, and then lowered his voice to add, maybe with a wee bit of exaggeration. Somewhere in the audience was his wife, Divya, the principal character in most of these incidents. Elsewhere in the hall were several of his friends and acquaintances and his daughter Ammu who also feature in the short and witty anecdotes Manu has chosen to share with the world.