MYSTERY

 
It is clearly intended as a joke. Such self contained reasoning is usually the lead up to some punchline but the photo was it. He sent it sans explique. However there are clearly certain entertaining facts like the twirling blonde, the effervescent sunglasses and of course, the friend.

Changing the subject, Why are there so many coffee shops? How many do you have a day? What do you do there? There are also many varied types of coffee shops. Some are genuine coffee shops where they do not serve food but delights. A piece of sliced pizza or a sandwich may be ordered and got but let's leave the pasta and the steak to restaurants. It is a sort of place where people linger for a while and then go their own ways. It is a pedestrian, quotidian, normal sort of thing in many instances yet there are some coffee shops that are like punchlines in a good joke in how they satisfy a human being's simple emotional needs.

There is really nothing more natural in the above image than what you saw before in the previous photograph: men peppered among women. During the day when all the details are visible, everything is predictable and boredom sets in. That is why mystery movies have a lot of night shots where details blur into shadows creating an entire cinematic genre called NOIR. What these films do is create anti heroes, where the contrast in the setting itself is the very metaphor for the ensuing moral struggle.

Literature serves that desire in the mind for an awareness of reality beyond what is plainly visible. An entry into that intriguing dimension of the imagination is only a book away. The book could be 'The Glass Key' a crime thriller by Dashell Hammet or it might be a biography of a fascinating personage. For lovers of cricket, it might be the biography of Ian Botham. His exploits in winning the ashes all off his own bat in 1981 remain the greatest of sporting mysteries. As England were losing wickets cheaply all around him on a difficult pitch against a very talented Australian bowling attack, where did he find the nerve to start hitting sixes all over the place and then bowling, precipitating an Australian batting collapse. How did he do it? It was the stuff of myths. He then remains so mysteriously himself, very much in harmony still with the game he loves.