At ninety, T. L. Raghavan settles into a chair almost as old as he is, coffee at hand, and lets nearly nine decades come back to him in no particular hurry. Last Hurrah gathers thirty short pieces in which a schoolboy darts on stage to drum the mridangam at an MS Subbulakshmi concert, a small boy on a gardener's shoulders watches Gandhi's train steam into Chidambaram, green hailstones are gathered to be strung into a necklace, a leopard cub is chained in a Coimbatore workshop, and a board of starched directors is stopped for tender coconuts on the Cauvery bridge. Film stars, Test cricketers, Carnatic legends, Nobel laureates and silver-tongued orators wander in and out — not as trophies, but as people he happened to share a seat, a stage or a flight with. The voice carrying it all is unmistakable: allusive to the point of mischief, unfailingly good-humoured, and most affectionate at its own expense, each piece ambling through its asides before landing on a quiet, self-deprecating punchline. Beneath the wit runs a steady current — memory itself, and what age takes and leaves behind. By turns funny, tender and sharp, this is a nonagenarian's affectionate bow: a last hurrah that is anything but final.