tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81793722872218225422024-02-08T11:49:07.477+05:30Out of the blueArmchair expertise.Guaranteed.ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-31682756785778142902014-01-14T01:05:00.000+05:302014-01-14T12:54:14.458+05:30Of beats- skipped and stopped<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I think it was this beautiful song, <i><a href="http://youtu.be/dyauNfiMh7E" target="_blank">'Ik tara'</a>, </i>that I was listening to,as I waited patiently for the local train which would take me home from work. With the eyes on the platform, ears hand-in-glove with the earphones, peak-hour crowd ambling along restlessly, train chugging along carrying another set of passengers to be offloaded but not before being smothered and disregarded by all those people waiting to get in and grab that much-coveted seat causing a commotion before the commute back home,life was as run-of-the-mill as a Ravi Shastri-tracer bullet. I didn't even get a feeling.<br />
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There's probably another guy lurking somewhere around me, watching me silently, observing my every moment (from who knows when?), probably keener by a whisker when I take the phone out of my pocket to satisfy my screen-swiping urges(if there's a scientific term for that, please insert here) or to scroll through an always active twitter timeline. He is also, most certainly,least interested in what I am doing with the phone.<br />
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Thats when the train slows down enough for people to force their way in without even bothering for the passengers to disembark- of course- all hell would break loose if one isn't seated. Standing and commuting is an inconvenience of unimaginable proportions. Standing and commuting is for losers. Standing and commuting is for the weak-hearted. Standing and commuting is for those accused of immigration fraud by the US government.Standing and commuting is for the.. okay,I probably lost my train of thoughts there. Of course, if there's anyone who's right on track, they are those smart-and-indolent-as-hell commuters who spare themselves the agony of sailing against the Tsunami of people gushing out of the train- they simply drop that piece of cloth,newspaper,book, lunch box-whatever it is that they deem to be associated with them- or whatever isn't precious enough to be out of their possession for a few seconds but precious enough to help them grab that seat. (Some unwritten rule in the unwritten constitution of Indian public transport etiquette says that any unreserved seat or berth in any means of public transport- from a bullock cart to a long-distance train- can be reserved by dropping anything belonging to the dropper of the said instrument of reservation who is also one of the numerous claimants to that piece of priceless real estate( whose worth is directly proportional to the crowd and the distance of the journey and actually not the price of the ticket) and that will be enough to lay claim to the comforts of a seated journey. In case there's a conflicting and opposing claim made by a competing traveler, one can always go to any lengths, use any means, including, but not limited to the following options:1. A spirited debate 2. A slanging match 3. Getting involved in collar-pulling eventually leading to a fisticuff 4. By out-threatening the adversary. Of course if it is Delhi one can always make timely mentions of the power derived from their parentage(aka 'tu-jaanta-nahin-mera-baap-kaun-hai'). Best is to have an intimidating physique. Usually that settles matters in the most peaceful manner. Anyway, I digress.<br />
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So as they go about reserving their seats through the window, they're waiting to troll the hell out of another set of hapless people who've just about sailed through the said Tsunami and made it alive-dishevelled and scampering- only to find that all of the seats have been taken. Including the one at that corner which was available until the last fraction of a second when some mr.smartypants-from-hell drops his piece of cloth from outside the window,presenting a <a href="http://www.reactionface.info/face/troll-face" target="_blank">troll-face</a> to you, and boom- its gone.<br />
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Only that, what's gone is not just a place to sit in a crowded local train packed to bits for a 20-minute journey. That was the hollow sound of my heart skipping a few beats, a sound rushing in to fill the silence from the beats that had stopped playing in my ears, as the pocket suddenly feels empty and the hand reaches out for what is usually ensconced in there day in and day out - that connection to the rest of the world- that provider of gratification to restless fingers- that player of music to a soul perennially hungry for food- that source of a million jokes and a billion hashtags-that piece of a ticking scorecard- that piece of metal and glass and gloss- that iThing made by that company- that company which goes by the name of that fruit- that fruit which is supposed to keep that doctor away-that doctor or any doctor who has nothing to do with any of this...<br />
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And that, my dear friends, is how someone stole my beloved phone.<br />
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Its like you're bitten by a snake and you don't know that for a few seconds, but the moment you realize you've been stung, the pain shoots through your veins, leaving you paralysed in thought and action. Well, at least thats what happened to me as I ran around aimlessly hoping to see it dropped somewhere, spouting some gibberish to a squatting commuter ( which reminds me, this is another category of spirited commuters- who'll take to the floor if their tsunami-sailing goes in vain) while somehow managing to convey to him that I was asking if he had seen an iPhone lying somewhere unclaimed.(Duh! An unclaimed iPhone, what was I thinking!) The guy then reacted in a manner that I don't have words to describe. Simply saying "no, I haven't seen any phone lying around" could have done, but no,empathy is for idiots. As I turned around blowing off the salt on my wound, I requested another gentleman with a legacy-phone,physical keypad and all, if I could use it to make a call to my missing phone. As he generously handed it to me, I struggled to dial my own number. Not that I didn't remember it, but my fingers just wouldn't move. Seeing my little struggle on that keypad, the gentleman offered to dial it for me. And in a very "what-else-did-you-think" manner, told me it was already switched off.<br />
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The last few days, I've been trying to come to terms with the theft of my smartphone. It's an empty feeling. When you're outside and want to listen to that song thats playing in your head. When you want to tweet your frustrations or bad jokes or something that nobody gives a damn about.When you want to check the score. When you want to engage in more whatsapp chatter. When you want to routinely put your hands in the pocket to feel your phone. When you want to click a cute moment with your 4 month old niece. Its a disconnect. It's a massive wave of withdrawal symptoms. But, at the end of the day, its not a big deal. Life goes on. 'Ik tara' plays on again, popping up as the first song from a playlist in shuffle mode- this time on your laptop.<br />
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P.S. Hell no, life doesn't just go on without a smartphone. I'm right now bisecting the line joining the two horns of a dilemma on whether I should surrender to my impulses and urges and get that new phone here or order it in the US and ship it to a friend who'll get it for me next month.<br />
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ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-66472902123099962902013-10-20T23:43:00.000+05:302013-10-20T23:43:19.123+05:30That elusive thing called attention span<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Its been quite some time now, that I've been dealing with plunging attention spans. Dont think it was like I woke up one fine day and discovered that I couldn't focus on a thing for too long. Its been on a gradual decline I guess. I struggle to read long articles at one go unless they're something I am really really interested in, otherwise there's the ubiquitous 'read later' option that I choose to stalk myself with- be it on all the desktop browsers I use, or my smart phone. And then they lie in cold storage- in my instapaper feeds. Google reader (earlier) and Feedly (now) are other avenues to this problem. And read later I do, much much later. And I don't know what transpires in between. Too many things vying for my attention?Yes,but I rather think it is a case of a fickle mind getting fickler by the day. I have caught myself looking at the same tweets on my PC, phone and tablet within a space of a few minutes and right then I do feel its crazy,but that fleeting moment of realization is quickly relegated to the background and crushed to death by some new link or a tweet or a joke which someone has made somewhere. If it happens to be a link to a long article, it is instapapered-off again. Rinse, repeat. That, ladies and gentlemen, is my online life in a nutshell.</div>
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And it is not just the online aspect of my life that seems to have been impacted. I used(it hurts to use a past tense here,but I'll have to admit) to be a voracious reader of the newspaper until, I guess, late 2010 or early 2011. Then a long-term onsite assignment happened. And a smart phone was bought. That was that. I was keen to keep my newspaper-reading habit going, so I subscribed to the WSJ print edition there, but it ended up being a disastrous marriage. There were many reasons to it, one of them being the lack of a long enough commute to office, but I wouldn't deny that super fast internet connections and the smart phone resulted in other extra-marital affairs, which, ultimately killed my relationship with the paper.</div>
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There would be times when I, in all my virtual glory, with the laptop on one side, tablet on the other and the phone in my hands, all their wires criss-crossing each other, entangled with each other and plugged into the power outlet ,have felt slightly like a patient in a hospital connected to all sorts of life-support systems, probably struggling to get a real life outside this complex web of the virtual life.SIGH.After returning to India, I was hoping that my old marriage with The Hindu would be revived. Revive it did, but I found myself fighting off the smartphone once again which would barge in between me and the newspaper, fuelled by whatsapp notifications and that irresistible urge to scroll through the twitter timeline and all other such distractions emanating from the phone.Probably like a second woman gate-crashing into your date, someone with whom you intend to get into a long term relationship. (On deeper thinking, I realize that given my history of scoring dates with girls,or the lack of it, its highly improbable that a second girl would want to barge in, let alone finding one girl wanting to date me. Anyway, I digress).I also notice that the reading sessions have now become labored,rather than free-flowing, a bit like a boring marriage well into its second or third decade.Also,more often than not, the 60-80 minute commute is not good enough to finish the newspaper(which was not the case in my pre-onsite days). (Did you see what I did there? A glaring contradiction of sorts where I first try to make a date-analogy and directly go on to make a two or three decade old marriage analogy to describe,umm, probably the same thing, but I digress again.) On weekends, I lie down on the couch with the newspaper hoping to do full justice to the time in hand, but it is a matter of time before i hug the paper and scroll away shamelessly on my phone. Much like hugging your beloved and exchanging flirtatious glances with another girl. </div>
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One more thing I catch myself doing these days (I know I've used too many 'caught myself' instances here, but yeah, I'm trying to be honest) is that I am just reading through entire paragraphs without anything actually getting into my head. Well,because my mind is still pre-occupied or distracted with something else that had my attention just before I had embarked on reading the article. And then I shake my head in helpless frustration and go back to square one, with the equivalent pain of having to drill a hole into my brain to make way for what I am *actually* reading right now.</div>
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I've never been as voracious with books, but of late I've made my attempts to rectify that, and have picked up a few books on and off. Here too, I've failed miserably with some, by abjectly surrendering and abandoning half-read books. Though to be fair to myself, I think I'm doing slightly better here given the generally fickle state of my mind. And I hope to persist with this until I make book-reading an instinctive habit- something that I don't have to struggle with. But then, there are many other factors to it, I guess, like the type of books I pick up, how I manage my time, and above all, a genuine interest. </div>
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Mainly, I am just exasperated that may be I don't spend enough time thinking and understanding things. May be I am just sipping and taking random bites and not ruminating enough, not doing any cud-chewing of any sort at all. And that is impacting my ability to write. Which I really want to do. Whether anyone reads or not is a different question, but at least to pander to my sense of satisfaction, I want to write, I really do. All this intake of fast food, in the form of twitter, instagram and other feeds are probably destroying my appetite and I would love to exercise more control over it and be able to just switch off from these addictions without having any withdrawal symptoms. I have made a beginning by taking facebook out of my life, and I have to say I have succeeded to some extent- as in I was able to not activate it again for about two months until one day when a best-friend-couple got engaged and *I had* to login and wish them on the relationship status update even though I had made them known my best wishes from roof-tops in real life. Sigh. What a loser I am to think that I need to balance my real-life with my virtual-life. Of course I did de-activate it again, but now I am in a position where, at least once in 10 or 15 days, I reach out to that awkwardly hidden spot inside my mind which houses the urge to login to facebook and see the writing on people's walls. When the writing on my wall is quite clear. Damn,too bad these walls are not taken down by Mark Zuckerberg's geeks on de-activating an account. Quite cleverly,(I'd rather say sadistically) they have left the option of re-activating it anytime, pretty much like a shady drug dealer enticing a former addict who's going to rehab knowing very well when and where to find his dope if he really wanted to. That said, I don't want to completely give up Twitter, because it is actually a very very funny thing to be on- I'd rather adhere to a strict,uh, time regimen instead of continuously scrolling through tweets.</div>
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Anyway, so thats that. This is probably the lid going off after months of pent-up frustration from plumbing new depths of the attention span graph. I really hope there's an end to this.</div>
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ps1: I'm sorry if those marriage-affair analogies were in poor taste. Thats me trying dark humor, which, I admit may fall flat. </div>
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ps 2:And I had to mention this- the drug dealer analogy was a nod to Breaking Bad. Which may be cheesy again. :D</div>
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ps3: In a classic case of #meta, I had attention span problems while reading the final draft of this post.</div>
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ps4: These postscripts were not brought to you by Sony.( Sorry. Couldnt resist a bad one after seeing PS2 and PS3). </div>
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*Runs away*</div>
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ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-72292692552911838292012-04-27T09:10:00.001+05:302012-04-27T09:26:09.409+05:30Kitchen Kitsch<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As an adult human being capable of reasoning out (in most cases if not all) and making seemingly proper decisions, I also back myself to accept that certain things are just not cut out to be done by me.Note how I am using a passive voice to shift the blame completely on the <i>things.</i>Cooking for instance. Despite my best efforts(best,purely on basis of a personal perception,others' views may vary!), somehow this activity has not succeeded in impressing me with all its 'purported' pleasures,as evidenced by people like Sanjeev Kapoor or the guy at <a href="http://www.vahrehvah.com/">Vahrevah</a> or for that matter the numerous number of food blogs on the interwebs. My relationship with the culinary chores can best be described as one of the love-<b>hate </b>kind,with hate being the overwhelmingly dominant feeling.<br />
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Like every other relationship, this also keeps having its highs and lows. The highs are achieved with great finesse especially when I am out to make <i>upma </i>or variants thereof-that much derided,much despised dish which for some strange reason has a special friendship with me. I've also had a good rapport with making pasta,but then we both got so bored of each other that now I have completely stopped meeting err making it. Classic case of familiarity breeding boredom if not contempt I would say. And strangely the very same familiarity with upma hasn't bred anything yet.<br />
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Now the act of cooking rice is one facet (if you may) of that relationship where one wouldn't really expect to see any lows, but not with me.One fateful day,armed with a mind riding high on the glories of a powerful mix of jet lagged home sickness unleashed on self after having returned to Dallas from an India-based vacation, I resigned to the fate of having curd-rice with some pickle for lunch. The god damned whistles would just not come.Instead what happened was the aroma of rice burning under pressure engulfing my living abode,at which point I only thought something was fishy about something in the apartment. And then it went BOOM-the realization that the odour was in fact emanating from my kitchen.<br />
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Utterly aghast, I then proceeded to turn off the stove and unravel the mystery about what on Earth could conspire against a simple attempt at cooking rice. As it turned out, I had just omitted a simple but crucial step involved in boiling rice- that of adding water. What I was staring into wasn't just brown/black burnt rice, but an abyss , a bottomless pit of hopelessness into which I had plunged after enjoying a 3 week vacation when I had the luxury of the choicest of home made cuisine without having to enter the kitchen but for more helpings of the deliciousness that was being served. The magnitude of damage that mega fiasco did to the pressure cooker was just unimaginable.The poor utensil still bears those slight marks of carbon reminding me on every single occasion, "WATER IS NECESSARY FOR RICE TO BOIL". <i>Or anything for that matter.</i><br />
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But then as I look back at that incident, I just tell myself, "may be I ended up making FRIED RICE,quite literally" and shrug it off in a smug kind of way. Quite luckily,I've always been surrounded with people who cook well. In India,I never had to stay outside,so it was never a problem. After coming to the US too, I've bumped into roommates who cook well. I just do my bit by taking over the dish washing duties. And of course the occasional <i>upma/pasta/daal. </i>Actually,as I type this I realize that I make decent curries with potatoes/cabbages/cauliflowers and green beans too. But thats about it. Cooking,clearly is not my cup of tea!<br />
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<br /></div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-9639920869558401502011-12-19T11:00:00.000+05:302011-12-19T11:13:42.691+05:30Updates of the general kind<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Since I cannot bring myself to think deep enough and come up with a blog post on anything of significance, I just thought I might just come up with something that elaborates on the aforementioned topic of this post.<br />
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<b>Holiday season? <i>Not quite.</i></b> <br />
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Thanksgiving to New years is usually when the clients take it easy and there are no strict deadlines staring into the eye. Not in my case this year. Its been a crazy one month with issues cropping up everyday and the bane of weekend on call support adding its own flavors.Just when I thought the system was getting stable after the go-live ,all such notions have now been charred beyond recognition ,in the raging inferno of day-to-day issues.Which is one more reason why I cant wait for Feb, when I'll be off on a vacation to India for 20 full days. A trip to LA has been planned with colleagues for the Christmas weekend, but I'm assuming it will be frantic from the word go.<br />
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<b>Trip trappings in Texas</b><br />
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Talking about trips, I have undertaken quite a few in the 15 months of stay here in the US. Notable ones include the ones to New York city, Chicago ,Yosemite national park ,San Francisco and the Big bend national park down south in Texas. Which is pretty much almost all of the places I have seen so far. I leave out Las Vegas here because apparently no visit to that city is complete if you haven't covered Grand Canyon and the Hoover dam in the same trip. Having seen these cities, I now crave for visits to the wilderness. National parks, hikes, and the like. Places like the colorado springs in Denver, Niagara falls, the grand canyon are on the bucket list of tours to be undertaken before I return to India for good. Also, my heart craves for an eyefull of the splendid fall colors.The Eastern Sierra ranges in northern california ,the Smokies in Tennessee and New Hampshire in particular are bestowed with the splendor and resplendency of the full glory of the season's colors.Being stuck in Texas means one has to fly out to these destinations and that leaves little scope for last minute planning,whereas in California or in the north/east coast or for that matter the midwest, one doesn't have to plan too much in advance. Renting a car and driving down is always an option. Not so with Texas with its large tracts of barren lands, one-day-per-winter of snow,merciless summers and a non existent fall season. May be the only good thing here is the absence of state taxes,interestingly for a state which is an anagram of that very word!<br />
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<b>Attention span problems</b><br />
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Blame it on Facebook or blame it on Twitter, but my decreasing attention span is a clear and present danger, raising its ugly face everytime I'm confronted with any post/article/link of a substantial size requiring my attention for more than 5 minutes. Yes, its come down to such depressing levels. Once a voracious reader of the newspaper, I find myself struggling every morning to keep myself focused for more than half an hour. That I dont wake up early enough and that I dont have a long enough commute to office for me to spend time on a paper,unlike in India, may be valid reasons, but I'm quite sure it has as much to do with my ability to devote attention lasting long enough. Which is probably one of the reasons behind me not being able to think deeply enough on any topic worth its salt and present those thoughts in the form of a blog. I must also shamelessly admit that I've had to return a couple of books to the library without reading them fully,after having kept them for the longest permissible time,using up all the renewals. I seriously need a way back into the books and I have no idea how.<br />
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<b>Serial Killing</b><br />
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I've never quite been a TV show person. Back in India,I'd miss no chance to troll the hell out of my folks at home while they'd be busy watching their favorite shows on TV which made me an utterly undesirable element during the showtimes. And that kind of instilled a generally negative opinion on TV in my mind. That seems to have changed in the recent past, thanks to some people I follow keenly on Twitter/Facebook, who have pretty good tastes ( or tastes<i> I appreciate) </i>when it comes to matters of art and music. Of course it is a very subjective thing, it could be argued,though. All of which means I have developed a taste for the american sitcoms and TV shows and I must admit being swept off my feet looking at the production values and the high quality of programming on offer. So far I have completed all seasons of 2 shows, one being the intense drama,Prison Break( they dragged the last season a lot, I felt though.) and the other being the quirkily funny Arrested Development. Used to watch Two and a half men as well, but have stopped after it lost its sheen. Pun intended, for sure. Currently I am catching up with How I met your mother, which has 7 seasons in all but I don't see putting myself through all of them. In all likelihood, I'm not watching season 3 onwards which is why I did myself a favor and read a pretty good gist of it all in wikipedia. On my instant queue in Netflix are Breaking Bad, Mad men and 30 rock, not necessarily in that order. And oh yes, did I forget to mention that I find 'Friends' to be highly over-rated?<br />
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<b>Thoughtful considerations</b> <br />
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Considering that attention spans in general are decreasing, and it is not an isolated phenomenon, I'd guess it would be good to end this post here,being mindful of the fact that I need to exercise some mercy on whoever chooses to read this post. More later!<br />
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<br /></div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-83428580339965433612011-07-09T12:10:00.000+05:302011-07-09T12:10:42.752+05:30A post late by 3 months.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">To begin with a cliche,I'd say a lot of water has flown under the proverbial bridge since the last time I blogged. In fact why is it that I feel so every time I post a blog? So much that it is a bit like making a come back every single time. But this post is not about why I cannot write more often.This is a post that should have come around 2-3 months back. Only that the thoughts got lost in a flash flood of sorts.Which kind of brought down the bridge.Bad one. I digress.<br />
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Coming back to the water and the bridge,yes, a certain world cup was won to satiate almost a billion crazy maniacs of the game and the team. This was something that could have provoked a post from me, being no less a fanatic myself. What instead happened was I read so much stuff from so many people, that everything that could have been said about <i>'the'</i> match was done to death by every blogger worth his or her salt. That said, it was nevertheless a unique occasion. Here I was alone in my apartment (I live with two others, one chose to go to his brother's place and the other chose to go apartment hunting on that day-the latter mostly out of a fear of jinxing our team just by watching them play!), shouting and screaming and cursing and clenching fists and gnawing throughout the course of the match, finally culminating in that magnificent six over the long on boundary,accompanied by that slick twirl of the bat by MSD. And then I erupted in joy. A feeling that had never been felt in reality before; a feeling that had only been dreamed of, a feeling we all had only wondered about. Here it was. What followed was high decibel screaming and a subsequent mental delirium of sorts which was to last for a few more days until it all gradually sunk in. When the dust seemed to settle a bit on the state of my mind,when it looked like I could sit down and gather myself and word my thoughts, it felt like a frustrating drought of a verbal nature.Words vanished like clouds on a drought-affected land,mind resembling a parched landscape. I had read so much from so many sources, it seemed like I had nothing different to offer in the form of one more blog post... after all it would have been just another drop in an ocean.<br />
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Most part of last year, I spent aspiring for a couple of things to be precise(among many other less-interesting ones, of course). One was a purely professional one- that of traveling to the US for a long term assignment and the other was about India winning the cup.Once the visa was obtained,I was reasonably certain that an on site opportunity would materialize sooner than later, but the second one was prone to becoming a pipe-dream, especially since I had seen 5 previous world cup dreams crashing like a lead-balloon.<br />
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Never did I know that I would live to experience both-<i>simultaneouosly</i>(not to say I had any imminent threat to life!).Although I'd've preferred the company of a few friends during that moment of triumph,celebrating it in solitude was interesting in its own way. For I didn't really feel like I was alone. There were those scores of people I was following on Twitter. The entire world cup was watched in the crazy company of some very funny and equally mad tweeters. Every single incident evoked a whole gamut of emotions on the timeline and it was one heck of a substitute for the lifeless,cliche-ridden and banal commentary that was on offer. Testmatch Sofa was also frequented upon,by muting the commentary from the live stream.Tuning into this website offered a very irreverent,funny and sarcastic point of view on the proceedings.It was like watching a dubbed movie or something.OK,not quite the analogy I was looking for but you get the drift,don't you?<br />
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The journey from the knock-outs, goes without saying, was one roller coaster ride. The quarter final against the Aussies started off as a sleepless night-before,progressing as a nervous,gingerly first innings as Ricky Ponting guided them to a tricky total. It was then time to go to office, and the next couple of hours were destined to be totally unproductive from a work-perspective. It was an exercise in venting out all possible emotions even while trying your best not to let them out in a way which would make the clients aware of such feelings. This was the most tense I would feel in the entire world cup. The last over was watched streaming on one of my desi co-worker's mobile with utter disregard to the download limits his data plan imposed.Nobody cared as long as we were winning.<br />
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Pakistan was an entirely different proposition. The hype back home was understandably maddening and over-the-top and I was kind of insulated from all that frenzy the media created in a way. That I didn't have any TV here helped. However, an Indo-Pak encounter in a world cup is nothing like anything.(no, this sentence wasn't sponsored by micromax or karbonn or whichever brand uses that as a tagline). The fever gets to you. What I experienced on that day was something I will cherish for a long time to come. We were a pretty formidable number of desis at the client's place. A couple of influential Indians working with the client had enough authority to book a meeting room and screen the match live for our sake. Heck, they even sponsored snacks, drinks and a post-victory pizza for lunch!We did try our bit to help the Americans understand what all that fuss was about too. Work and deadlines and time- everything came to a standstill. Only those hysterical bunch of Indians packed inside a room seemed to be moving about crazily. The clients,had resigned to fate that no work would be done that day,irrespective of whether we were going to lose or win.It was very nice of them indeed.<br />
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To abruptly end with another cliche,the final of course,as they say, was history. I still cannot muster the words to describe <i>that </i>match. <br />
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</div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-14842236322873454382011-02-03T11:52:00.000+05:302011-02-03T11:52:12.960+05:30A forgotten father,a maligned martyr<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><blockquote>“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood”</blockquote><br />
Albert Einstein said this about Mahatma Gandhi decades ago and I still can’t stop wondering at how brilliantly it captures the essence of that man,the persona that the Mahatma was,is and forever will be,with his unshakeable legacy of nothing but the truth,non-violence and simplicity.That a man who stood for such principles should be subjected to so much abuse and hatred and disrespect is a matter of the greatest of ironies. In fact, it might well be cited as an example of what defines an irony.<br />
The nation of arm chair experts that we are, most of us conveniently blame him for partition without even bothering to know that he was the biggest obstacle for Nehru & Co on one side and Jinnah and his cohorts on the other side to see to it that one of the greatest bloodbaths in the history of mankind is staged here in the subcontinent- in the form of partition. He was obstinate and stubborn in his opposition to split the country into two. I don’t even think he was ever convinced about the idea. They just chose to ignore him and go ahead with the power brokering and the detailing of how to separate the conjoined countries.<br />
While most of them were busy in Delhi bargaining and arguing over who’d get what after the 15th of August 1947- this in the days/months leading up to India’s ‘tryst with destiny’ as famously described by Jawaharlal Nehru, the man we call mahatma was busy with something else. He was running from pillar to post and to pillar again, trying to pour some water of love and peace over the communal inferno that had engulfed the whole of Bengal. And then, he went on an obdurate,infinite fast- to bring to an uneasy compromise the heads of the two inexplicably antagonized communities waiting to slay each other at the drop of an eyelid.Irony indeed that he has,by many people , been described as selfish and cunning.Most of them would be ensconced in the comfort of their homes, hiding under their beds if and when a carnage of such magnitude were to occur. <br />
At a personal level, I was astounded at whatever I have read about him in others’ words and his own. I must confess that I couldn’t complete reading his autobiography- ‘The story of my experiments with truth’- it takes a whole lot of patience than what I have been able to muster, to do that. But whatever I had read it became increasingly difficult for me to fathom that such a man walked this Earth, true to what Einstein had remarked. I got to read more about him in that heck of a book-this time armed with more patience- about India’s excruciatingly painful journey to independence via that treacherous road called partition- ‘Freedom at midnight‘, brilliantly described by Larry Collins and Dominique La Pierre.<br />
I cannot claim to follow any of his principles,just like most of us here. I believe it is too tough for mere mortals like me to have that kind of will power and steadfast belief in those principles. I have though, been involved in arguments on him and his leadership, trying to defend his role against all the vitriol. At the end of it all, I once again, wonder at the irony that we even have to ‘defend’ what he did.I might risk using the word too much, but not least of all ironies was not only the bloodily violent manner in which he was assassinated, but also the venue-at a prayer meeting!<br />
Far from the outset, I would like to underscore one point - don’t abuse him if you can’t agree with him or respect him. Because ,forget about being critical, most of us don’t even qualify to praise him.</div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-81723015114491537332010-09-27T04:25:00.000+05:302010-09-27T04:25:21.183+05:30Rants from a distant landThe last 25 days in my life in a way symbolize in concrete form the title of this blog.Things have happened completely out of the blue,unexpected and the pace of these happenings kind of left me unsettled. And now I find myself alone in a hotel room here in Irving,thinking of how to go about preparing my next meal.For someone who has entirely lived and been brought up in a 'home' environment, this is a remarkable change in settings. Things like groceries,cooking,washing clothes,searching for accomodation and the like were hitherto unbeknownst to yours truly.Not that I am complaining though. This 'onsite' opportunity is my chance to be independent,an experience I am sure will transform me as an individual,professionally and personally in equal measure.<br />
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Among the many things I stand to learn, the interesting ones include cooking,shopping for groceries,cutting vegetables,cleaning,washing clothes( the last one ,I tell you its real easy here :) ).And driving of course. As a first step towards the latter,I've learnt how to tie my own seat belt! :P Besides that I have already acquired skills like operating a microwave also,for which I repeatedly pat myself on the back in self congratulatory mode.<br />
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Its been one week now that I have landed here and I'm sort of getting used to this new way of life. Work wise it has been okay so far but the next few weeks and months herald a lot of challenges for which I must gear up to face and conquer. Lot to learn and explore for sure.Everything I do from here on will be new which makes it that much more exciting.<br />
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As for the place,Dallas/Irving is quite warm and the weather took me by surprise as soon as I came out of the airport. Although I was well warned about this, the similarity with Chennai's weather was prettly much there to be felt,minus the humidity. Things have cooled down a bit over the last few days with the onset of the fall season.But I have been told that Dallas is quite indifferent to those amazing fall colors that the leaves radiate elsewhere in this country.<br />
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One more thing that strikes me is the number of Indians in this place. Any store or restaurant you go out,you are invariably bound to bump into your compatriots. And there are these scores of desi grocery stores which try hard to look like an American supermarket selling Indian stuff but inside you cant help getting that distinctly Indian odour which actually amuses me. :)<br />
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Perhaps the only thing that I havent really liked about this place is the public transport system. The buses are pretty infrequent and run only at fixed times which makes it difficult for people without cars to commute. Thankfully I have a teammate who has a car and is kind enough to pick me up and drop me off. The number and sheer variety of cars you get to see here on the roads is quite amazing. Almost everybody owns one and that probably eliminates the need for a regular public transport service.<br />
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I can keep going on and on I guess, but that,in a nutshell describes my first week in the most powerful nation in this world. They really are blessed with a lot of prosperity.As a footnote,one more thing that I am trying hard to get used to is typing on a laptop. And this is tough! :)ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-86761303393601901442010-06-12T22:58:00.000+05:302010-06-12T22:58:25.980+05:30Futbol Mundial-A game of beauty is a joy forever!This is probably my nth attempt at writing a post on the football fever that is currently engulfing the world. I wanted to post this on the eve of the opening ceremony, but words betrayed me like silence betrays a classroom full of kids sans a teacher.Basically I was( <i>and still am</i> ) brimming with excitement and anticipation of the world’s most watched sporting spectacle-the FIFA world cup. You can name the olympics and the sporting spirit that it brings along and celebrates, but to me all that dulls and fades in comparison to the passion and the fervor that this soccer world cup generates.<br />
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I mean which other sporting event creates this hype and frenzy among nations which are not even taking part.Not only that, it lives up to the reputation invariably. 32 teams wriggle it out for the trophy, but the audience cuts across countries,irrespective of nationality. Teams are ‘favorited’ -you even have opposing camps of fans getting into fisticuffs and the like for a team that has nothing to do with them. Especially the latin american teams-Brazil and Argentina have such a fervent fan following that supporters literally fight it out not sparing any effort to play up their favorite teams.What I’m saying here is obviously so obvious-you needn’t have to read <i>Out of the blue</i> to know this <img alt=":P" class="wp-smiley" src="https://ch1blogs.cognizant.com/blogs/154807/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_razz.gif" /><br />
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Personally I’ve always followed football, though I can’t say I keenly watch the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_League">EPLs </a>and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Liga"><i>La Liga</i>s</a>. But that has never prevented me from checking out the league standings and stuff in the news and papers. The world cups, however have always been something that I don’t miss. I remember my first one was the ‘94 world cup in the USA when I was just getting initiated into soccer with all those stories about Maradona, Pele, Baggio,Ruud Gullit and others. Maradona of course was my hero by default- my elders used to describe his ‘<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal_of_the_century">goal of the century</a>‘ against the Englishmen in the ‘86 world cup.The disappointment when he had to sit out following drug accusations, is still fresh in memory…<br />
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This time, FIFA comes to Africa. The proteas are hosting it, but they have rightly described this as something that belongs to the whole of Africa-a continent bruised,battered and ravaged by decades of fighting,suffering,poverty and hunger. For the host nation though, it is a chance for their populace to be united-a chance to forget the racial divide that still makes its uneasy presence felt even after the days of the apartheid-a chance to rally behind their <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bafana_Bafana">Bafana Bafana</a>. </i>Sport has that unique quality to banish divisions and mistrust and hatred (within a country I must add!)…<br />
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Like every time, Argentina is my favorite team. Lionel Messi of course is the man to watch out for though I’m apprehensive about club superstars because they seldom replicate their club success for their national teams(Christiano Ronaldo of Portugal and Thierry Henry of France also come to mind).The <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albicelestes">albicelestes</a>,</i>as they are known , are coached by the mercurial Maradona. I somehow have a feeling they will either come crashing down or go all the way. No intermediates I guess.The other teams that I’ll watch out for-Brazil(come on,how can one miss out on them?),the Netherlands,Spain,Italy(I still hate the fact that they’re the defending champs,coz they just didnt deserve to win the semis against a hapless Australia last time in Germany) and England(only because of Wayne Rooney,and nothing else. I sincerely believe they’re an overhyped side). <br />
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So for the next one month , every other sporting event can take a backseat. Even cricket. Even the dignity of Wimbledon. <i>The beautiful game</i> is here- in all its splendor and unmatched glory,as a feast to the eyes of millions worldwide. Nothing else is likely to get your adrenalin pumping so fast.The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adidas_Jabulani">Jabulani</a> has rolled,so here’s to Africa <i>- </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waka_Waka_%28This_Time_for_Africa%29">Waka waka!!</a> <img alt=":)" class="wp-smiley" src="https://ch1blogs.cognizant.com/blogs/154807/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif" />ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-22065605108506828712010-03-13T18:28:00.000+05:302010-03-13T18:28:36.646+05:30Guilty PleasureYeah,its that time of the year again.When purists will cringe in embarrassment. Every principle fundamental to the system will be ripped apart.Basics will be scoffed at. Traditions will be flouted like never before. Commercialization will hog the limelight in a manner so unabashed and brazen.Raking in the moolah will be all that will matter,for the stakeholders involved. And those who will witness the so called spectacle will be divided along lines that didn’t exist hitherto.Villains will be cheered and heroes will be booed. A paradox of sorts will unfold. All this will last for a month or so-in an encore of an event that bull-dozes its way into the collective consciousness of a nation of a billion crazy people with an insatiable apetite for what is known as the game of cricket. Yes, the event I’m talking about is the Indian Premier League,or the IPL, which it’s mastermind Lalit Modi ambitiously (I’d say rather quixotic-ally) hopes will one day join the likes of the NBA and the EPL. Sigh!! Enough of a build up for an already built-up and over-hyped tournament.<br />
Ever since T-20 has burst into the cricketing scene, it has had me confused. For a die hard purist like me,it has taken sometime to ‘accept’ this slam-bang-whack-wallop form of cricket.Somehow after we won the 1st world cup, I started taking it seriously. Then came the IPL. And with it, came along things that were witnessed never before in cricket-city-based franchises promoted by filthy rich businessmen and film stars who wanted to splurge and earn. Also not to forget, the skimpily clad cheer girls. The IPL is when my ‘love-to-hate’ or ‘hate-to-love’ relationship with T-20 began…<br />
For those like me who mix cricket with patriotism, the IPL comes across as something that doesn’t quite fit in the whole scheme of things. Somehow,I’m yet to fall for the city-based loyalty concept.This is my 8th year in Chennai, but that hasn’t evoked any feelings of support for its Super Kings. So I really don’t care who wins or loses. It just boils down to having some fun watching some insanely high scoring edge-of-the-seat thrillers where some of my favorite players are involved.Talking of that, the only team I can claim to support or have a soft corner for, is the Mumbai Indians, which of course is attributed to the godly presence of a stalwart called Sachin Tendulkar. So once he gets out,the match can go to hell. :P What I miss is the sense of jubiliation or disappointment I feel on seeing India win or lose,respectively. That, according to me is the real essence of watching cricket.Unlike after every match that ‘India’ plays, I am not really drawn into passionate discussions on what went wrong or right or any such kind of post-match analysis that would ensue.<br />
High octane cricket is fine,but it really is not the form of cricket which can tell the men from the boys. Supporters argue that events like an IPL provide a platform for the young domestic players to rub shoulders with international-class players and in the process gain valuable experience. But it is quite evident that apart from rubbing shoulders and laughing their way to the bank, T20 doesn’t necessarily make them better at the game,holistically speaking.<br />
Having argued against T20, I will now contradict myself. :P At the end of the day, it is all about having some fun.Like say watching a typical masala movie where you leave your brains behind. You can appreciate serious Mani Ratnam flicks,yet find guilty pleasure in watching silly-leave-your-brains-behind movies. Yes,the IPL is all about guilty pleasure,as far as I am concerned. I will speak for the purists,yet not forget to watch or follow it(minus the passion,of course!).<br />
Even as I type this out, Yusuf Pathan of the Rajasthan Royals is giving the Mumbai Indians a run for their money in pursuit of a mammoth score. 5 more overs to go and 70 to get. :P I better go and catch the action now. :Dravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-35182939908312027322010-01-31T21:57:00.001+05:302010-01-31T22:00:21.587+05:30News…that isn’t news anymore…One more weekend comes to an end. Roger Federer wins yet another slam, this time ramming into a hopeful Andy Murray who at the end of the day must have felt rather hopeless. Pakistan got thrashed once again by the Aussies who by means of the win lashed out their final few brushes of distemper on the former to complete a whitewash,3-0 in the tests+5-0 in the ODIs.Pity the Pakistanis.Time for a few lessons from us on how to give it back to the Aussies in their own backyard,what say?The Padma awards were announced and as is the custom it has left its share of disgruntled aspirants left in the lurch as also a substantial number of undeserving folks getting the honors(Saif Ali Khan is a padmashree-BION*). Ditto with the national awards…Arjun Rampal wins best supporting actor(I loved Rock on and Arjun’s performance too-probably his all time best) but a national award??The time is 8.13 PM to be precise and I am feeling slightly hungry. ‘Ibn-e-batuta’ from Ishqiya is playing on my computer. In fact it just finished and I need to enqueue a few more songs to keep me humming along. Don’t quite know what is for dinner tonight. Guess its chapati and subzi.As I scratch myself (on the head, mind you) to continue this orgy of meaningless rambling, I remember I need to pay for my declared investments and save myself some money from the tax net.Watched Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday on a Sunday,which happens to be today. Thought it was bloody brilliant. Hard hitting indeed. A pity such movies don’t get good enough publicity.Way to go Anurag Kashyap.It seems Shahid Afridi has earned a 2-match ban for ball tampering. Apparently he was caught chewing them!That reminds me, is he still 18 years old?I remember they kept showing his age as 18 for more than 3-4 years prompting Sunny Gavaskar to comment that “Shahid Afridi is an experienced 18-year old campaigner”. :D Had been to Bangalore last weekend and it felt so good there. Guess I am bored being in Chennai . Been 7 years now.One more friend of mine is getting married next month, following a bunch of others who have been surrendering their respective bachelors’ lives. Every friend who comes home with a wedding invite invariably ends up in me becoming the target of “when-will-you-get-married-blah-blah-blah” taunts from the elder ladies at home. My pleasure, let me get my girl, I say! ;) Sania Mirza called her engagement off last week. The week before her grand plans of quitting tennis post marriage ‘to-be-wtih her-husband-otherwise-why-would-she-marry-followed-by-a- silly-laugh’ were announced after yet another 1st round loss at a grand slam. All in that stupid fake accent of hers of course. Which means there’s no end in sight to her now-legendary 2nd round (dis)appearances in all the slams. Way to go Sania. Hope I eat my words at the next one. May you win the Wimbledon. Err… does it sound a bit like Virender Sehwag taking two days to get a 100? Never mind. We’ll still watch out for her.BalThakeray has suggested SRK be awarded with Nishan-e-Pakistan for his politically incorrect statement on Pakistani cricketers getting IPL 3 berths. Take a bow, Balasahib, you deserve a Nobel,no less. We’ll ask them to give the citation in Marathi, scripted by none other than your de-facto heir-apparent and now estranged nephew Raj. And the category? A life time achievement award for inciting mobs,causing public nuisance,making insane remarks and for his tirade against innocent love-struck couples celebrating Valentine’s Day. A legend in true flesh and blood. In the meanwhile, I get a confirmation about tonight’s dinner- it is Chapati indeed. :D Heard Meghalaya now has 2 chief ministers. Apparently the deputy CM was not really happy being deputy.It happens only in India.Vidya Balan looks stunning in Ishqiya. She was gorgeous in Paa too.Rann released this weekend. Evidently,it takes a critical view on the way today’s news channels run and ‘manufacture’ news. Hard to miss the irony in the fact that the makers used the very same news channels for their pre-release publicity. That said I remain a big time Ram Gopal Varma fan( that excludes his Aag and other duds). Like him, hate him but you cant ignore him.Will definitely watch Rann irrespective of the reviews.The time now is 9.08 PM and dinner is still not ready though the sounds and smells of a delicious one are obvious. I had ‘revived’ my jogging routine a few weeks back which were interrupted by a morning shift yet again. Plan to get back on track tomorrow onwards. I never give up, you see! :D It seems there are only 1411 tigers left in India. Atrocious I say, for a nation which considers it as the national animal. Hope that number goes up in a hurry. With this I decide its time to spare the innocuous followers and readers of this blog from further agony. The sole aim of this write-up was to spew out non sense, just for the heck of posting something before 31 days have passed since the new decade dawned upon us.<br />
* BION- Believe It Or Not . In case you are wondering why on Earth I mention this, just scroll to the 9th line from top and you’ll get the answer. :)<br />
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It would be a cardinal sin not to give credits where it is due. I wouldn’t want this blog to be a Vidhu Vinod Chopra-Chetan Bhagat type slugfest. Not that this will receive media attention,but what the heck.So here goes…<br />
This blog wouldn’t have been possible had it not been for the invaluable inputs derived from the following media groups:<br />
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1. TV18 for IBN Live<br />
2. The Times group for ToI and Times Now<br />
3.NDTV<br />
4. The Hindu<br />
5. Rediff.com<br />
6.Aaj Tak<br />
7. Star Sports and Star Cricket. :D<br />
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Breaking News: I just finished my dinner, and its 9.44 PM now. On that note, we’ll take a quick break and on the other side,we’ll have an expert panel consisting of eminent personalities like Amar Singh, Rahul Mahajan, Rakhi Sawant, Lalit Modi and Santhakumaran Sreesanth pulling their collective hairs out on the issue of the melting glaciers and global warming. Stay tuned. :Pravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-15637392842266548902009-12-28T22:15:00.000+05:302009-12-28T22:15:30.797+05:30Indian Cricket: The decade that was...<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">From being labeled 'lions at home and lambs abroad' to being crowned numero uno in tests, team India has taken a billion people along on an exhilarating journey that has witnessed a lot of highs and a few lows. What follows is, in my opinion,a summary of moments that hold special significance in the team's story during the last decade in chronological order.<br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><b> Champions Trophy 2000,Nairobi:Where it all began</b></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The foundations of an aggressive and resurgent team India were laid right here, when India defeated Australia in a nail biting encounter, against all odds. Two guys- both southpaws-one with the bat and other with the ball-made their mark. Yuvraj Singh with a blistering 84 followed up Sachin's aggressive cameo (one of the rare occasions where the little master actually swore at McGrath) and Zaheer Khan's bowling at the death which included that classic yorker to Steve Waugh turned out to be the defining performances of this match. The match might have faded into the horizon of public memory now, but this was the beginning...<br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><b>Eden Gardens,2001: VVS Laxman,Rahul Dravid. Period.</b></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Need we say more? In one of the greatest tests of all time,David had felled Goliath. And what a match it was. The Aussies had India by the scruff of their necks, and by the end of the 2nd day it appeared as though the final frontier would be conquered with ease. But standing there were two mild mannered gentlemen who turned warriors and carried out one of the most impossible come-from-behind acts. And the rest,as they say, is history. To this day, teams around the world think twice before imposing a follow on. All thanks to this classic.<br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><b>The Lords' balcony and Sourav Ganguly: The Natwest final '02</b></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Bowled himmm!!! this was on the cards..." screamed a despondent Harsha Bhogle from the commentary box as Ashley Giles castled Sachin Tendulkar with India tottering at a precarious 146/5 or something, chasing a then-monumental score of 326. Who knew that two youngsters, in their early 20's would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat from there. Yuvraj Singh and Mohd Kaif's inspirational partnership blended frenzied running between the wickets and counter attacking stroke play and in the process scripted one of India's most celebrated wins.The twosome did a Houdini act, right in front of an exasperated Nasser Hussain and team. And who can forget that once-in-a-lifetime reaction from Sourav Ganguly which is now part of cricketing folklore.<br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><b>World Cup 2003:The Australian jinx<br />
</b></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If I've got my memory right, we lost only two matches in that whole tournament and both were against the eventual champions, Australia. Between these two matches however, Sourav Ganguly and his team played some really inspired cricket in the face of fans turning fanatics and going on the rampage back home after that humiliating first round loss to Australia. It took a certain Sachin Tendulkar to appeal for calm and support. The whole team rallied around each other and played like deserving champs, only to be humbled by the brats from down under.<br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><b> "Do you realize whose catch you've dropped?"</b></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The tension was palpable and the hype leading up to this match had attained fever pitch. The match lived up to all that hype and how. Sachin Tendulkar's upper cut six over third man off Shoaib Akhtar in the innings of a lifetime elevated this contest to a different level altogether. Up against a stiff target set by Pakistan with their impressive line up of fast bowlers (Wasim Akram,Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar) the Indians rose to the challenge and maintained their world cup record against Pakistan unblemished. Not to forget that assuring partnership from Rahul Dravid and Yuvraj Singh which saw India home.<br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">p.s. The quote at the beginning is what Wasim Akram said to Abdur Razzak after the latter dropped Sachin early on in his innings. This was said in Urdu of course.<br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><b>India v Australia, 2003-04: Exorcising the overseas ghost</b></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Steve Waugh almost ended up with a loss in his farewell series, thanks to some really compelling cricket from the Indians. It all started with that brilliant 144 by Ganguly at Brisbane on a seaming wicket. It all culminated in Adelaide with India's first victory, the chief architects being Rahul Dravid,Ajit Agarkar(with the ball in case you are shocked!) and VVS. Though we lost at Melbourne, the final one in Sydney saw Australia just scraping through. The series was fought against all odds and considering that we were whitewashed 3-0 in our previous outing ('99), this one is right up there among the best.<br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><b> T20 World cup, 2007: A Mallu in every corner of the world, including one at short fine leg at the Wanderers</b></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Misbah-ul-haq,more than anyone else will agree to this Indian adage about folks from Kerala.As Sreesanth tantalizingly held on to that scoop from the Pakistani off Joginder Sharma, a nation erupted in joy. In what would later turn out to be the precursor for the IPL and the T20 revolution, this inaugural world cup gave us some eminently memorable moments-none more than Yuvraj's six sixes in that 'Broad' over and that heart-stopping bowl out against Pakistan in one of the earlier matches. For me, the more significant consequence of this victory was the emergence of MS Dhoni as a fearless and attitude oozing leader of men who would , eventually help India scale the test summit.<br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><b>India v Australia, 2007-08: When Ricky Ponting ate humble pie<br />
</b></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">By this time, the India-Australia rivalry was (and still is) being spoken of in the same breath as that of the Ashes. This particular tour vindicated that hype. From the infamous monkeygate incident in the Sydney test to the redemption in Perth, the team gave back as good as they got. Anil Kumble's leadership during those times is nothing less than the stuff of legends.Ricky Ponting and his men might have won the test series, but not any admirers. Anil Kumble stood vindicated with his "there-was-only-one-team-playing-in-the spirit-of-the-game" quote. We had lost but we won. As a sort of poetic justice that was to follow, the team under MS Dhoni thrashed the home team in the tri-series finals. This too, was after some of the seniors were axed from the ODI side and the seniors v juniors debate started raging. Not to forget, the little master's brilliant innings in the two finals. :)<br />
</div><ul style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><li><b>The fab 5</b></li>
</ul><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This is not about just one particular moment or series, but the relentless pursuit of 5 gentlemen known as Sachin Tendulkar,Rahul Dravid,Sourav Ganguly,VVS Laxman and Anil Kumble. The golden generation of Indian cricketers whose efforts in the last ten years or so have led us to the peak today.With their combined exploits, they helped build the team brick by brick, inspired youngsters,guided them and have been the source of joy for a billion fans. We have already seen the last of a couple of them,and the rest will soon hang up their boots sooner than later.<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There have been many other moments too, which deserved a mention, but for the sake of keeping this short (I know it is already long) I'm not discussing them here. Some of those include the India-Pakistan matches at home and away, the famous triumph over Australia at home (which was Sourav's and Kumble's last series) , the recently concluded series against Sri Lanka and so on. The peak on which our team stands right now is actually the result of the journey the men in blue undertook ten years back and in due course they scripted many a memorable tale, some of which are highlighted above. Hope the next decade will continue to be as exciting, if not more, for we stand to witness the farewell of Sachin,Rahul and VVS in a few years time.<br />
</div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-69885435991033423702009-11-03T00:16:00.003+05:302009-11-03T00:18:46.271+05:30A figment of my imagination...<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Time for some time-travel now. Lets go back to the future-say 16 years from now in the year 2025. Following is what I guess will dominate the headlines. This is just an extrapolation of the current state of affairs in the world in general and India in particular.<br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And yes, you’ll do well not to take it too seriously…<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>1.</b><b>India submits yet another dossier on the 26/11 attacks to Pakistan; President Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari says proof still not conclusive. </b><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Pakistan today categorically dismissed India’s 100th dossier on the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008. In a press conference president Bilawal Bhutto- Zardari unequivocally reiterated the historical stand Pakistan has taken on all the dossiers and proofs provided by India so far, that it was still not good enough to say that the attacks were planned in Pakistan or by Pakistanis. He also accused India of trying to tarnish Pakistan’s clean image on the issue of terrorism.<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>2.</b> <b>Kasab trial drags on to a record 18th year;still no sign of a verdict.</b><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Chief accused in the Mumbai terror attacks Ajmal Kasab continued his antics in the Mumbai high court and complained of the lack of high speed broadband connectivity at his Arthur road jail campus. He further went on to crib about various restrictions being imposed by the jail’s network support team which allegedly prevented him from downloading movies , songs and viewing streaming videos. The judge then adjourned the proceedings for the day and directed the jail authorities to address Kasab’s issues under tremendous pressure from various human rights groups and intellectuals who have been accusing the government of inflicting torture on an under trial prisoner whose complicity is yet to be proven.<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>3. </b><b>Narendra Modi praises Benazir Bhutto in his book, faces expulsion from BJP on grounds of going against the ideology.</b><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Former BJP president Narendra Modi invited the party’s ire after the his latest book on India-Pakistan relations hit the stands yesterday. In the book Modi has apparently praised Benazir Bhutto as one of the most attractive women he had ever seen and has also admitted to having had a crush on the slain Pakistan PM. The BJP ’s disciplinary committee for literary affairs rushed into a meeting and immediately came out with a suspension order on the former president on grounds of deviation from the party’s core beliefs. Modi on the other hand displayed a devil-may-care attitude and went on to add that it was not as if he was attracted to Pakistani ladies only and that he has also harbored a deep infatuation for the yesteryear’s bombshell Mallika Sherawat.<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">4.<b> China makes new claims over Madhya Pradesh,condemns PM’s visit to Bhopal.</b><br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In keeping with its outrageous tradition of making ridiculous claims on areas that are integral parts of India,China today raised the bar a few notches higher by crying foul over today’s Prime Minister’s election rally in Bhopal. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman read out a strongly worded communique issued by the government which condemned the visit saying such actions in disputed territories would seriously undermine peace in south Asia. On the other hand, the Indian foreign affairs ministry officials dismissed the claims as baseless and went as far as suggesting that they had better things to respond to.<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>5.</b><b> Mayawati defies critics;announces plans for more statues</b><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><br />
</b><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Within weeks of being voted to power in UP after a landslide victory in the recently concluded assembly elections, CM Mayawati announced plans of building more statues of herself in a press conference held at Lucknow. Justifying the expenses that would be incurred for the same, she said that it would help generate a lot of employment for a large number of sculptors and give opportunities to thousands of laborers.She further added that she was just fulfilling the wishes of the public who have been yearning for more and more statues of her. On the question of land and space for the construction of the statues, Mayawati replied that no additional land would be needed as her statues would be replacing street lights on the roads and then fitted with tube lights. One of the reporters present at the press conference couldn’t help saying “what an idea behen-ji!!”<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>6.</b> <b>Test and ODI cricket to be part of history lessons in school says HRD Minister Sourav Ganguly</b><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Union Minister for human resources development and former Indian cricketing great Sourav Ganguly said that the government has finalized plans to introduce lessons on cricket in history textbooks for class 6 onwards in CBSE affiliated schools. Elaborating on this he said that the current generation of kids were being brought up on a diet of T20,T10 and the more recent High-Fives’ and it was important that in a cricket crazy country like ours the younger generation ought to know the roots and origins of the game-the antiquated 5 day and 1-day versions. He also appealed to college goers to stop circulating SMS jokes that mocked at the the older versions, which he felt deserved a lot of respect.<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>7. T20 legend Rohit Sharma goes hammer and tongs at new format,says High-Fives is killing the game.</b><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In a scathing attack on the newest 5-over format of cricket,batting legend :D :P Rohit Sharma said that the latest version is out to kill T20 cricket,which according to him is sacrosanct. He also cautioned young and upcoming cricketers against getting carried away by what he called as ‘bikini’ cricket and said that the 20 over game was still the best and most challenging format of all the three,T10 and High-fives being the other two. Some veteran journalists present at the press conference however took this opportunity to remind him about how T20 had led to the extinction of the then-holy-and-sacrosanct ODIs and 5 day games.To this poser however, the former India player appeared defensive.<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So with that,ends my news bulletin. :) <br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The more things change, the more they remain the same. This is the one liner that helped me spawn all these stories in a futuristic light. However, these are just what the blog is titled- figments of my imagination.<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">p.s. I am an incorrigible optimist. So I hope and know that none of the above will be true in 2025. May be the Mayawati one will,who knows! And of course the death of the longer versions of cricket. :)<br />
</div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-89071350000881199372009-10-19T14:22:00.002+05:302009-10-19T14:26:53.142+05:30Crystal gazing on T20<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Even as Lalit Modi and his cohorts continue to brag about the apparent revolution that they have brought about in cricket with the IPL and the Champions league T20,it remains to be seen whether this so called watershed actually benefits the game or kills it. If one were to go by Modi's vision, he sees cricket entering the domain of soccer- where the club/franchise based games will emerge and push international cricket to the background. While the effects of T20 have been more than obvious now on the 50 over version with people calling for curtains on the latter ,international cricket still remains the bread and butter of the game. We still haven't reached a stage similar to soccer ,where the various premier leagues and the UEFA champions league take centerstage.Lalit Modi's intentions ,apparently are to popularize the game. But amid all the din and dazzle of T20,lurks the danger of a premature extinction of the game atleast outside the sub continent.<br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So we potentially have two situations that could arise out of the Lalit Modi 'revolution'. Both ways, club cricket will come to the fore and relegate international cricket to the back burner. ODIs will be part of cricketing folklore, or at best played once in 4 years in the form of world cups. The first situation would be that of the gentleman's game treading the football-path. What that would mean is cricket being embraced in new places like Russia,China, south-east asia,africa and possibly the Americas.The Indian Premier League would then be bracketed with the great soccer leagues of the world like the EPL, the Primera Liga et al and the CL T20 would emerge as the cricketing equivalent of its counterpart from the beautiful game.Lalit Modi's name would go down in history as someone who opened up this game to the whole world. Sounds quixotic isn't it? And Lalit Modi is the Don Quixote here if he thinks this can be possible, not me for writing such nonsense on this blog. ;)<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The other more possible, probable or rather inevitable scenario would be the baseballification of cricket.We all know how popular baseball is outside the US, isn't it? Cricket will most probably meet this fate,with India becoming its only home. Cricketers will turn freelance, left,right and center. Andrew Flintoff and Symmo would be the icons of their ilk. The IPL will then expand to occupy the whole calender year. And we will have teams like the <i>Hubli hurricanes</i> taking on the <i>Guntur guzzlers</i>. Or picture a <i>Jallandar juggernauts</i> locking horns with the <i>Banarasi babus</i>(no offense intended) :D. Outside the sub continent,the game would be long gone. This, unfortunately seems to be more realistic. The recently concluded Champions trophy in South Africa alludes at this, more than anything else.<br />
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</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I might sound like a doomsayer, but it hurts to see the game getting increasingly adulterated, for the kind of cricket that I ve come to enjoy over the years is of the type where there is a level playing field for batsmen and bowlers. Of a game where batsmen were made to earn every single run. Of a game which has seen some of its greatest thrills in the longer versions. T20 cannot provide us those moments. Even if it does, they will not linger on for too many days, unlike that of a beaming Kapil Dev holding aloft the cup on the Lord's balcony or that of Sourav Ganguly taking off his shirt signaling a scintillating win, from the same balcony. Or for that matter Dhoni's men winning the tri series down under.<br />
</div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-65214497660305068412009-10-18T23:28:00.000+05:302009-10-18T23:28:39.293+05:30A bulging embarrassment :D<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>I ve pulled out this post from Channel-One again. It was posted a couple of months back:</i></span><br />
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The other day as I was getting ready for office, I saw a guy in the mirror placed right opposite to me. The fella had an obnoxious tummy protruding out. I was absolutely shocked to see his face- it had a striking resemblance to mine. Embarrassing to the core. What a turn off it would be for my potential girl friend. Yours truly is still single (and quite desperately so), and for someone like me, it isn’t a very good sign if I hope to impress a girl or two.Time to put on my jogging shoes mate, and get running! Now that is the most I can do, I am hopelessly lazy to go to some gym-somehow I don’t like gyms-I always feel good whenever I read that just jogging will take care of that bulge. That said, well it’s been around 10 years now that I’ve been planning to start jogging. Not that I’ve never done it, in fact I can boast of a strike rate of almost 80%. Yes, I have actually gone ahead with my jogging plans 8 out of 10 times. Only that all the enthusiasm fizzled out in a month at the most. I remember the last time I had started , it lasted for almost a month. I was almost feeling proud of myself to have sustained it for so long when it was interrupted by an early morning shift that warranted me to rise at such unearthly hours as 4′0′clock. The following week,I almost had an attack of selective amnesia-that j-word had ceased to exist in my vocabulary. I mean I can still manage getting up at 5.30, but 4 is a bit too much. Even as I glance at the keyboard to type this out I cant help noticing that pathetic convex-shaped curve. Yuck.The current state of my physique is slowly getting me into a position where I can no longer hope to wear t-shirts and manage to look decent enough. Scary proposition indeed. I’ve been trying my best to battle the bulge in ways which do not require me to do some accelerated physical activity-like trying to survive only on fruit salads for lunch. What follows that on most occasions is a snack-binge in the evening. So it becomes a zero sum game. And at home my aunt makes such delicious food which subjects me to selective amnesia again, as far as my diet consciousness is concerned.So the effect of the calories I manage to avoid with fruit salad is completely nullified and then over-compensated by the daily evening snack festival(consisting of stuff like mixture, murukku,bisuits etc and then of course by the typically south Indian veggie dinners replete with ghee-laden preparations and that irresistible thayir sadham (curd rice for those uninitiated in Tamil) .The reason I am so terrified right now is because people have started noticing that its not flat anymore(if you can tolerate a deadly PJ here, The world may be flat for Thomas Friedman, but the stomach is no longer flat for me :P sorry for that. Just couldn’t resist. )- actually it hasn’t been flat from almost 5-6 years , but since the last two or three months,its threatening to break out from the shackles of my buttoned shirts in broad daylight which makes my friends tell me “hey, you got a thoppai da!”(thondh nikal aaya/aayi hai yaar!) ouch!! That hurts. All these days I was the only guy who knew about it. Now the whole world knows it.And its not a very good feeling. If you ask me what I am doing to get back in good shape, the answer is I am taking it one step at a time. I have started waking up at 5.30 somethings (See, I’m a firm believer in planning before executing and right now I am in the process of formulating a master plan which will put me on the fast lane to achieving that perfectly flat stomach ;) ) and hopefully I ll get myself to start jogging all over again notwithstanding the sarcastic queries that I will have to confront from my aunt and sister , like, “oh you started jogging again?”, followed by smiles which eventually make way for loud uproarious laughs. But the danger is that I have a morning shift coming up in the first week of August. So should I post pone it again? The battle within continues for now…<br />
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As you can see, I started out with the intention of writing aimlessly about anything that comes to my mind, but ended up with this. What was actually titled as ‘Just-for-the-heck-of-it post’ has now attained this name.And yes, I am certain this will see the light of the day.<br />
p.s. : All fitness related tips are most welcome. But excuse me if it would need me to go to the gym. So anything else would be great.Actually if it can make me get up and go jogging no matter what happens,nothing like it.<br />
</span>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-67346251062358767402009-10-18T20:12:00.001+05:302009-10-18T23:06:17.687+05:30Rant on!!<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This one's reproduced from my most recent blog on Channel-one, my company's own internal blogging website. Again,for the lack of new ideas ;)</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Disclaimer: Before I go on to say anything,let me add a small but important disclaimer. This post is being written under a lot of desperation arising out of not updating my blog for a long long time and lots of unsuccessful attempts at writing something. So I don’t know what I am going to talk about. Yeah, its deja-vu time again. Been there,done that. How many times have I started out on a blog and abandoned it mid-way? The answer is ‘n’. What’s more,I even published one, but deleted it immediately before anyone could get to see it. It prompted mails from some of my subscribers(1 to be exact ;)) asking me why they(he) got a notification mail in the first place. :) The reason I deleted that blog was because I thought it was very,very unimaginative to say the least. I tried to do my version of the popular my-life-according-to-movies meme. Anyway, that is now consigned to the trash can.No point talking about it.Oh, and by the way, my disclaimer ended approximately 7 lines above this one. :) So it was short indeed,as ‘disclaimed’. :D (At this point if you are thinking I am up to utter nonsense and nothing else, you are bang on target.)</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What you read above were the beginning credits of a b-grade blog. The actual rants start here.</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">1.A bolt from the blue and a blast from the past:A few weeks back when I decided to arrange my things at home I found a Sun java certification voucher.Approximately 6 months back, yours truly ,with loads of enthusiasm had purchased it with the noble intention of becoming a certified Java programmer.This was the blast from the past. Months passed by. Nothing happened. And one fine day the voucher presented itself, begging to be utilized for the cause it had been purchased for.The bolt that struck me was the expiry date on the voucher,rather ambiguously printed as ‘11-10-2009′. Assuming it was 11th October, I rushed to one of the prometric centres , only to be told the date was 10th Nov, and not the other way. Phew!That gives me a chance to give it a shot with some sort of preparation. Nature’s way of waking people up I guess. :)</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">2.How many passwords can the human brain remember?Of late, I’ve caught myself typing the Cognizant password while logging into my gmail. And there are a few other websites for which I have to click on the “forgot password” link every time I login to them.Not to suggest I keep forgetting and mixing up every single password, but how many can one remember without getting confused?This one’s a filler before I come up with a better rant. I know I can do better. [:D]</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">3.Rahul does a Rakhi. I heard they’re planning to do one more of those sick reality shows this time with the quintessential psycho Rahul Mahajan. The great man wants to get married again now, so who better to emulate than Rakhi Sawant.Wonder who the participants are going to be, but if you are competing to marry him, I’m sorry, you’re just not in sound mental condition. Not trying to imply Mr. Rahul “Most-eligible-married-man-turned-bachelor-trying-to-find-a-bride” Mahajan doesn’t deserve anyone. Who better than Rakhi Sawant? May be he should’ve participated in Rakhi ka Swayamvar.That way he would have done great public service by not imposing one more reality show on us.Who knows, he would have impressed the folks at Stockholm and got himself a Nobel!</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">4.Reality bites,Reality TV sucks. The seemingly perpetual reality shows are now taking up different forms .After looking west for some inspiration(Indian idol, India’s got talent etc etc..),we now have some ‘original’ reality shows with a strong desi feel, like Rakhi ka swayamvar and whats the other one where couples get to take care of infants with cameras staring from everywhere?And another one just started season-3. To think that Amitabh Bachchan, of all the people is playing host is really disgusting.</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">5.T20: The game killer? Looking at the lukewarm response the recently concluded champions trophy got(both in terms of stadium attendance and TV viewership), it goes without saying- the 50 over version is dying a slow, cancerous death. The cancer here is T20.And did anybody notice they’re playing the champions league T20 right now?</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">6. Sometimes,it pays to be lazy :D My mobile phone charger went missing a few days back.In fact, I had lost two before. After searching almost every nook and corner , I just resigned to fate and decided to buy one more during the weekend.Thanks to my lazy ways ,I just kept procrastinating until my brother found it out of nowhere and saved me some money and more importantly, the effort involved in getting up and going out to buy it. Yeah, I can be that lazy on weekends. :P</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">7. Making a billion people proud? Not really.This one’s to do with the nobel prize.No, its not about Obama deserving it or not. I really don’t care. But when the media starts going gaga over some scientist-of-Indian-origin who is an American citizen now and starts labeling it as a proud moment for Indians, I get pissed off. It keeps happening every now and then-with Sunita Williams,Indra nooyi and so many others.No offense meant here,what they have done is phenomenal, but lets not start calling them Indian-I don’t think they really want to be called so.</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" /><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So with that I end my 1st official no-holds-barred-all-rants-blog.Looking forward to write something more meaningful very soon. :)</span><br style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;" />ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-44244856331710808032009-10-18T20:01:00.001+05:302009-10-18T23:17:11.482+05:30Midnight musings<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What happened a few months back is that the poet lurking somewhere within me unraveled himself. The result of that was the poem I have below. This was posted in my company's internal blogging site,known as Channel-one (Ch-1 in short). I've been struggling with new ideas to revive this blog,so here goes the poem , just for the heck of it,for the sake of an update.</span><br />
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<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>A poem is what I want to write,<br />
For the words and thoughts, within myself I fight….<br />
Wondering when the time will be right,<br />
for the poem, which I want to write!</i><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Am not short on inspiration,<br />
Which is a poem’s basis of construction….<br />
Putting this together, is a lot of contemplation,<br />
A fact it is, and no fiction…</i><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Wanted to get back to ch-one,<br />
Ideas and intent were plenty,but the determination,was none<br />
Reading blogs is always fun,<br />
But writing them is, the feeling number-one!</i><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Is it getting silly, or long, myself I ask,<br />
Never mind the meaning or length-as in the sunlight of satisfaction, I bask….<br />
Looking back, writing this wasn’t really a task,<br />
Just a means to cover my feelings with a mask…</i><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Is this a flash in the pan, I wonder,<br />
No, not at all, to myself I mutter…<br />
As in being regular,<br />
Lies the answer!!! ;)</i><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">p.s. It is titled so because it was written at the stroke of midnight. The events leading up to this poetic outburst caused a lot of frustration and disgust within me, which in turn gave way to the 'poet' within me. Good or bad, I was able to divert my mind for a while and it definitely made me feel better. :)</span><i> <br />
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</div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-72367320825448223732008-10-25T19:13:00.001+05:302009-09-21T13:32:14.998+05:30The tale of two newspapers...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Its been just over 6 months now that The Times of India kicked off its operations in Chennai.As someone who's been an ardent reader of The Hindu, I was always sceptical about ToI coming to Chennai.If you've been following The Hindu quite seriously, the chances are that ToI will appear to be near blasphemous,with all its page-3 stuff,glitz,gossip and masala. I too had the same preconceived notions about it. It just happened that I got carried away by a 'founder-member' offer and got hold of a 6 month subscription at a throw away price. Actually they were offering a pretty good looking travel bag on the spot, and that tempted me to go for it.(After all, Indians do like freebies,ain't it?)I was pretty confident that I wouldn't be extending the subscription beyond those 6 months.Now, its been 7 months I guess, and I find myself having extended that subscription to,guess what, 1 more year!(This time there was an even better bag on offer,and a throwaway price too, but that's a different issue altogether.)</span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">So what made me extend that subscription?Has The Times succeeded in winning over a reader and make him switch loyalties?Naah,I wouldnt go as far as saying I have completely bowed to The Times,but sure, it has shattered more than a few myths that I had.One,it is not just about page-3,paparazzi and masala.Two, it isn't that bad after all.What I have liked about ToI is that its editorials are fairly balanced, and mostly appear devoid of any particular political bias.Having said that, the articles are moslty elitist at the same time. Now this objectivity is what has struck a chord with me. Ofcourse it still carries a lot of crap like petty crime news and other really trivial stuff. But at the heart of the newspaper are a set of pretty objective articles.The Sunday times is replete with columns from Shobha De,Jug Suraiya,Shashi Tharoor ,et al which makes for some pretty good reading.Having said that, it must be said that The Times still leaves a lot to be desired as far as the other pages are concerned. The sports news is not exactly what you'd call high standard.Its more of images,in-your-face graphics and screaming headlines than quality stuff.Overall, the standard of language is also not that great. That is where it disappoints me.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Now coming to The Hindu-a newspaper that I've been following since the days Sachin Tendulkar was only 19 years old,has been part of my life like any other daily chore that I take up-like I brush my teeth everyday, take bath, I read The Hindu.Until about a couple of years ago,I had a kind of an unquestionable loyalty and faith towards this paper.But it is no longer so. Thanks to a gentleman called N.Ram, who happens to be at the helm of affairs.He has made sure that the newspaper now seems like a mouthpiece of the commies. Having a slight bias is ok, but you dont go as far as beating china's drum in India saying that Tibet is best left to China's red devils.Pallavi Iyer,the correspondent in China infact seems more like she is working for the state controlled chinese news agency </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Xinhua. </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Prakash karat , the bete noire of Manmohan Singh and N.Ram were actually university buddies in Delhi's JNU, which is where the CPI and CPI(M) catch their soon-to-be comrades young.That explains why The Hindu's articles and editorials have more than a tinge-of- red all over.One editorial that saw a severe erosion of N.Ram's credibility is his dramatic u-turn on the nuke deal.After having given a thumbs up, Ram chose to speak the left's language.Might well be that dear pal prakash would've given him sound brainwash.And in case you thought I am from the right-wing school of thought and that is why I find this very irritating, you got it wrong. Infact I would like to be as far from the left as I would from the right.Suo motu bashing of the BJP is also becoming more and more frequent these days. There is one gentleman by the name of Harish Khare, who writes a column called 'statecraft', is actually a sycophant of the Congress and Sonia Gandhi, in particular. After the so called 'renunciation' of the PM's post, this man wrote an article in which he repeatedly referred to Mrs G as 'Madam Sonia'...which I thought was taking things a bit too further. In his subsequent articles he seems to have consciously shied away from such explicit sycophancy , but his pro congress bias is only too evident.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">These are certain things that irk me a lot when I read The Hindu. This is not to say that there's nothing else left to read.It has a kind of seriousness that is pretty much missing in the other newspapers,which make them seem like tabloids.In an age where the line between a newspaper and a tabloid is becoming increasingly blurred , The Hindu still stands by its core values of ethical journalism. Never does it compromise on quality in the name of selling a few more copies. The standard of language is absolutely top class.It is any GRE aspirant's pleasure. The sports and business news sections are also too good to be missed. Its sports section is populated with articles from some wondergul writers, including Nirmal Sekhar,Rohit Brijnath, Vijay Lokapally,Peter roebuck, etc, to name a few. The sunday magazine still remains a pleasure to read. So I have more reasons not to give up The Hindu . And it is very much here to stay. In my opinion, it still remains the best newspaper, if you take out the editorials.Just that I hope the editorials aren't coloured red....</span></div></div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-20458421735176784992008-01-27T19:11:00.001+05:302009-10-19T19:12:49.791+05:30A trend-setter walks into the sunset....<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUrVYmg9XlrUPyOJGySV0pO0B8_Dsi7Pmli0h-HqlE4BNXiQg86cCIavzEmdxtSLMKHo5UFktFXqF9Cro-DQZmAVok7vPMXSlFSXFgJ9hrAvidXyakj49sDX8E6yfreCXVNjklQroIh5gL/s1600-h/gilly.bmp"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5160157692585710338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUrVYmg9XlrUPyOJGySV0pO0B8_Dsi7Pmli0h-HqlE4BNXiQg86cCIavzEmdxtSLMKHo5UFktFXqF9Cro-DQZmAVok7vPMXSlFSXFgJ9hrAvidXyakj49sDX8E6yfreCXVNjklQroIh5gL/s320/gilly.bmp" style="float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a><br />
<div>As the 4th test between India and Australia enters the 5th day, one of the game's all time greats has decided its time for him to hang up his boots. Adam Gilchrist walked into the Adelaide Oval to a round of applause that is reserved only for the best of the best.When even your rivals on field join the ceremony of ovation, you know that the person at the receiving end is a legend.Gilly is not just any other cricketer to have donned the wicket keeping gloves.He has been a trend setter as far as defining the role of a keeper is concerned.Not only that, he redefined the meaning of an all rounder-hitherto,all rounders were men who could both bat and bowl, but now it also includes the rare tribe of men who are equally adept ,whether they are in front of the stumps,or behind.As someone who started his international career pretty late(guess he was in his late twenties then), he has an astonishing record,both as a keeper and as a batsman.Very few men have charted the territory that Gilly has,for it is not everyday that you see someone with 414 victims and 5,500 plus runs at an average of around 48 per innings in test cricket.That he scaled these heights in just 10 years,and 96 tests,makes it all the more impressive. His batting was one of those sights to behold, be it test cricket or the 50 over version.A dasher to the core, people would pay to watch him play.<br />
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<div>His oneday record is even more staggering.As an opener, he forged great partnerships with the likes of Mark Waugh and Matthew Hayden to become one of the most feared batsmen the game has ever known. Aggression was his middle name,and this is the only way he played.Never could you see him pushing or prodding around,trying to be defensive.<br />
</div><div>What makes him even more likeable is the spirit with which he played the game.The Australians are not really known for their on field behavior, but Adam Gilchrist stands out as a glaring exception in a bunch of ill mannered brats.Always the one to let his bat do the talking, very seldom would one notice him indulging in the kind of gamesmanship that the Aussies prefer to call 'mental disintegration'.Perhaps the sydney test against India was the only grey spot in an otherwise spotless career. But then to err is human. Gilly can be forgiven for that.<br />
</div><div></div><div>Bowlers and captains around the world will perhaps breathe easily when they play Australia, for they dont have to deal with this decimator.But then you wont get to see those exhilarating innings any more.Cricket stands poorer today. More than anyone else, it is the Aussie side that will miss him. Thank you, Adam Gilchrist,for all you have given us.<br />
</div><div></div><div></div>ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8179372287221822542.post-26644095472815367732006-12-17T17:42:00.000+05:302006-12-17T17:51:08.975+05:30Sunita williams:unnecessary hype?Over the past few days or weeks we've been fed with a regular diet of news about Sunita williams creating history.While i dont contest that,as going to space is no mean thing,I have my reservations on whether we as Indians should be rejoicing over this.<br /> All this hype in the Indian media is based on the fact that she's just the 2nd person of "Indian origin"....give me a break guys,but she's not Indian,and I dont think she too feels "Indian".She may be carrying samosas,and the Bhagwad gita and other stuff normally attributed to Indians,but hang on...how many times has she been to India?What does she know about us?Does she exactly feel even remotely Indian?Having "roots" is not enough,and I dont know when our TV channels will realise this....ravihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486777558249322295noreply@blogger.com0