Kaustubh Dudhane > Recent Status Updates

Rust's milky eyes stared out of his memory. Bastard! Men like that thought, they really thought, that the Watch was a kind of sheepdog, to nip at the heels of the flock, bark when spoken to and never, ever, bite the shepherd...

'Mr. Vimes saved the day!' said Sergeant Colon excitedly. 'Just went straight in and saved everyone, in the finest tradition of the Watch!'
'Fred?' said Vimes, wearily.
'Yessir?'
'Fred, the finest tradition of the Watch is having a quiet smoke somewhere out of the wind at 3 a.m. Let's not get carried away, eh?'

'Detectoring is like gambling,' said Vimes, putting down the clove. 'The secret is to know the winner in advance...'

In Lawry's era, leaders had made plans, given orders and been able to expect their completion. In Chappell's, they would invest more in charisma, instinct and consensus.

(Keith) Stackpole says:

India was a fabulous place to tour. Everyone was really friendly and mad about their cricket. But I reckon the seeds were sown then of the WSC revolution. The conditions we toured under were appalling. Some of the hotels were so pathetic you wouldn't have had a pig in them. And we all started to wonder: was it the board trying to save money?

When Ian Redpath returned from making 40 not out in four hours in that Karachi Test, for instance Grout picked up his bat and examined it critically. 'Strewth Redders,' the keeper commented. 'I could put this bat straight back in the sports shop and sell it as new. It hasn't got a mark on it.'

It was impossible not to like him (Ian Meckiff.) But it was equally impossible to ignore his action.

There was sherry. There was always sherry at these occasions. Sam Vimes could regard it dispassionately, since he always drank fruit juice these days. He'd heard they made sherry by letting wine go rotten. He couldn't see the point of sherry.

Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo.

Also lurking in the shadows was a goat. It was unkempt and smelly, but it turned its head and gave Nobby the most knowing look he’d ever seen on the face of an animal. Unexpectedly, and most uncharacteristically, Nobby was struck by a surge of fellow-feeling.
He pinched out the end of his cigarette and passed it down to the goat, which ate it.
“You and me both,” said Nobby.

But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but, by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride.

Reiji was now realising how important the ordinary life that we take for granted is and how much happiness can be experienced from having someone you care about by your side.

People's true feelings are not in plain sight. The other person might not be thinking, but there is a tendency to just assume what the other is feeling without reaching out and asking.

'Indecisiveness is self-destructive,' warned Sachi to the man in sunglasses, who was indecisive like Hamlet. Having read the entire works of Shakespeare, child prodigy Sachi was probably the only one among them who had some inkling that One Hundred Questions was more than a simple book for light entertainment.

Corporal Nobbs looked despondently into his glass. People often did this in the Mended Drum, when the immediate thirst had been slaked and for the first time they could take a good look at what they were drinking.

And something had been put in his mouth. It looked like a rolled-up piece of paper. It gave the corpse a disconcertingly jaunty look, as though he’d decided to have a last cigarette after dying.

Newspapers delighted in reporting symptoms of 'Test Fever': the four schoolboys who, having been to the cinema on Friday evening, dossed in sleeping bags outside the Olympic Stand, the bank department that ran a three-hour roster so that its employees could nip off to the cricket; the police radio channel D24 broadcasting regular scores.

When he (Gavin Stevens) saw Harvey again 25 years later, Harvey said: 'You were unlucky, Gav. You could've been the most famous man in the history of cricket.'
'Yeah?' said Stevens. 'How come?'
Harvey answered: 'You could've been the first man to die on tour.'

Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw. Men made dogs, they took wolves and gave them human things—unnecessary intelligence, names, a desire to belong, and a twitching inferiority complex. All dogs dream wolf dreams, and know they’re dreaming of biting their Maker. Every dog knows, deep in his heart, that he is a Bad Dog…

Dogs were brighter than wolves. Wolves didn’t need intelligence. They had other things. But dogs…they’d been given intelligence by humans. Whether they wanted it or not. They were certainly more vicious than wolves. They’d got that from humans, too.

Consider orangutans.

In all the worlds graced by their presence, it is suspected that they can talk but choose not to do so in case humans put them to work, possibly in the television industry. In fact they can talk. It’s just that they talk in Orangutan. Humans are only capable of listening in Bewilderment.

If communism was Prime Minister Robert Menzies' greatest public concern, cricket was seldom far from his private thoughts.

What 'sports medicine' existed at the time was the domain of Arthur James, a Tasmanian masseur who accompanied Australia on its Ashes tours from 1930 to 1968. He was an endearing character, with a deep knowledge of England and a wealth of contacts, one who took care of many sensitive problems (such as obtaining and doling out condoms.)

I'm (Ken Archer) sure it was Australia's happiest tour for years. It was the first without the Don, so that disciplinarian hand was missing, replaced by Hassett, who was a pretty liberal skipper, and 'Chappie', who had the wisdom to allow a bit of levity.

To the Pakistanis the demand for neutral umpires seemed a logical response to the accusations that their own umpires were 'cheating.' To the English it was a declaration of war.

“I hate to see him like this,” said Angua, following him into the hallway and up the stairs.
“He only drinks when he gets depressed,” said Carrot. “Why does he get depressed?”
“Sometimes it’s because he hasn’t had a drink.” 😂

Vimes adjusted his cravat as best he could.
He’d faced trolls and dwarfs and dragons, but now he was having to meet an entirely new species. The rich.

“That’s three beers, one milk, one molten sulphur on coke with phosphoric acid—”
“With umbrella in it,” said Detritus.
“—and A Slow Comfortable Double-Entendre with lemonade.”
“With a fruit salad in it,” said Nobby.
“Woof?”
“And some beer in a bowl,” said Angua.
“That little dog seems to have taken quite a shine to you,” said Carrot.

An epic order at the bar! 🍻🍹🥛

His caution might have had something to do with the way Carrot put his hand on the hilt of his sword, but it could also have been because Assassins did have a certain code, after all. It was dishonorable to kill someone if you weren’t being paid.

Now there was one of those silent sounds, a long, buzzing silence of extreme concentration and just possibly the indrawing of breath into lungs the size of haystacks. The last rats of Brother Watchtower’s self-confidence fled the sinking ship of courage.