India, May 13 -- Rolling hills shelter the gaur, the riverbank houses the otter, the broad leaf is the baya's atelier, and Bombay, as it was then known, was Busybee's stomping ground.

For decades, Behram Contractor or 'Busybee' was the city's greatest columnist. His writing was about his charming, friendly and quirky conversation with the reader on current topics concerning Bombay or his own social and cultural life, so his subjects varied. But it is as a cultural and political satirist that he is best known. It is an endangered species in India today; but even back then, there were few who did it so well and none for so long. To seek Busybee's peer is to look outside the Indian newspaper space. One of the few names that comes up, then, ...