Of Foxes and Fanatics

Now that the hoopla around the SRK Vs. Sena is subsiding, let me share my 2 cents.

Lets go a bit backwards in time, the IPL 3 auctions are over, and there is a controversy about the Pakistani players not being favoured by any teams. The official statement from the GOI is that they didn’t interfere, but the low down from teams’ strategy rooms is that they were discouraged from bidding for Pakistani players. Lalit Modi defends the IPL by saying that it was left to the teams to decide who they wanted. Preity Zinta defended the auction process by saying that a lot of Australians were not picked either, and thereby begging the media to be more responsible while reporting news. Shilpa Shetty raised the security issue to defend her selections.

At the auction, KKR (SRK’s team) bagged NZ pacer Shane Bond in a silent bid at an undisclosed  amount. They emptied their available funds on a single player.

SRK then came into the picture and made a statement. This statement ruffled the feathers of the Maharashtrian regional parties and Shiv Sena became active in condemning him and all hell broke loose.

Now that we’ve collected the data points, let’s try to analyze.

1. The Shiv Sena is seen by many to be a party past it’s prime. I watched a live interview of Uddhav Thackrey on Saturday the 6th and somehow I got the feeling that there is an ace up his sleeve. He was very cool and surefooted the way he responded to the comments and criticisms targeted at him over the last fornight. But I fear I’m digressing. Anyway…

2. Anyone who thinks that this issue will help Shiv Sena recover lost ground is a bit naive. The next elections are 5 years away (if the Congress – NCP) coalition holds, and the public memory falls WAY short of that timespan ( I mean agree or not, we’ve even managed to move on from 26/11, even if the intellectuals like Des and Bedis would love to shout otherwise). So my point is that the Shiv Sena won’t count of this issue alone to try to gun for power and prominence.

3. The Shiv Sena is also smart enough to know that all this ruckus notwithstanding, the awareness, education and exposure of the population of Maharashtra and the permanent negative sentiments of the media and the intellectually elite ( again read as De, Bedi and co, self proclaimed, really!!!) means that people are moving away from divisive politics and want accountability from the political leaders towards the real development issues. So no matter how much the Shiv Sena shouts, it’s voice is still fading.

Lets look at the SRK camp now.

1. SRK doesn’t need a hit at the box office to establish himself. He’s already done that, again and again. His PR and promotion skills can be the subject of discussions and workshops in the best of B Schools. But looking at last year’s records, his competitors’ movies have had more limelight ( Wanted, Ghajini, 3 Idiots).

2. His movie ‘My Name is Khan’ is just round the corner. Remember his US visit when he was questioned for about 2 hours at a US airport?

3. There was no real need for SRK to make that statement about the auction in the first place. No one had forced him to empty his pockets on a single player. He could have gone ahead and bought whoever he wanted. Like others, he too perceived an underlying issue about certain players and choose to play safe. He says he believes in the Constitution of India and in India’s inclusivity, then why didn’t he defy the other team owners and go ahead and do what he thought was right? having a herd mentality and then talking about fairness and honesty is not my idea of being righteous.

If you think the points I’ve written about the Shiv Sena and SRK above are rational and objective, just try and find the answer to the one question that’s disturbing me.

In this whole issue, WHO BENEFITS?

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P.L.A.N.E.T. M.U.M.B.A.I.

1. The city of  jumbo vada paavs and insanely big Ganesh idols.

2. The city of Haaji Ali, Siddhivinayak, Mumba Devi.

3. The city of buses with a seating capacity of 55 and standing capacity of 23 passengers, carrying 150+ people.

4. The city of the legendary dabbawalas, who laugh in the face of billion dollar companies like GM, Toyota who were crying tears of blood in this past recession.

5. The city where people become efficient and precise not because it’s planned that way, but because it’s needed that way – and because no other way could work. Ever.

6. The city which has something for everyone.

7. The city which never alienates people, no matter how hard some people try to make it do.

8. The city which never keeps its children hungry.

9. The city of struggle, survival, practicality, glamour, dreams, benchmarks, and thresholds.

10. The city that is not run my government, politicians, film stars or NGOs, but by the mumbaikar who is a rock solid support to the person next to him in any calamity.

The city who has a remarkable energy running through its veins. An energy that comes from the purest and most powerful source. Human Willpower. The city where people count the number of seconds they have, and live their life accordingly.

Mumbai.

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Shamelessness.

Dear Sachin,

We hereby solemnly apologise for our performance in the 5th ODI at Hyderabad. We really have no excuse to give, but the fact that we are not worthy as you to play at this level. You see, we find it hard to focus on the game and develop our skills and mental strength with all these things going around us. I mean we have the IPL, the Champions League T20, all the endorsements to look up to. And you’ll agree it’s understandable that all this is very important for a player to succeed in his career.

We really appreciate your innings yesterday. It was undoubtedly the best ODI innings anyone has played, maybe in a decade. Too bad you ended up on the losing side. But you see, winning and losing are a part of life and cricket, so please don’t feel disappointed. As Dhoni said, our bowlers could have done something more to restrict the Aussies to a lesser total. So what if Ravinder didn’t have the IQ of a rock to notice that the ball was already in the fielder’s hand (who, by the way, was standing a whisper away from the wicket) when he ran like his ass was on fire? and Praveen Kumar, you know him, he’s washed clothes all his life, and so decided he won’t soil them by diving unnecessarily to cover that 1 last inch. He didn’t know he had a chance of getting out!!! And you know Yuvraj keeps telling through his adverts that even if he doesn’t play, he’s got ample insurance cover to live his life-like a true ‘Yuvraj’

Well anyway, you know how we are, always snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It has happened so many times before, and it happened one more time yesterday. So what?

So to cut things short, we are sorry for our performance (?) yesterday and we’ll like to make it up to you. We’ll be signing some new endorsement deals and we’ll ensure that you get a part in them.

Ok, gotta run, the shot’s being called and we’re already out of time and patience.

Your’s Shamelessly,

Rest of the Indian team.

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Of Gods and Mortals

God –

Playing one of the greatest innings ever seen in the One Day game, after a career of 20 years.

Still keeping a cool head in a nerve wrecking situation, and never letting the others crumble.

To keep going even after scoring half of the 350 runs single handedly, showing no signs of fatigue or aging.

Summoning the strength that was a characteristic a decade ago.

Playing such a balanced innings that no critic can ever point out a weakness.

Standing tall in a team of mortals.

Mortal –

To take one man’s lone heroic efforts in an otherwise ordinary display of talent and total lack of a cricketing brain, and flush them down the drain. Shamelessly.

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Austerely Stupid

I admire Rahul Gandhi. I really do. He’s a true Congress worker. And he’s so humble!!! Imagine! Just because his mother, the great Smt. Sonia Gandhi decided to travel by economy class from Delhi to Mumbai to Mysore, he decided to go by AC Chair Car!!! His mom saved 7000 bucks, he saved 445!!! Now’s that’s a mama’s boy!

We Indians really overdo it when we overdo it. Of course, the Great Indian Media has to play its part here as well. Or how else will the people know about all the hype? Our leaders are splendidly exemplary. The moment our FM made an appeal for our ministers and MPs to be austere, everyone got busy telling the media how austere they are by telling their travel plans and their overseas appointment cancellations and their refusals to use private jets (which they are entitled to) to visit foreign countries. But Rahul Gandhi truly overdid it! For me it’s just an example of how blind our leaders can get. To save a mere Rs. 445, he travelled by train with all his security guards and his followers (read as suckers), causing great inconvenience to the ordinary citizens, who by the way, are the real users of our trains. So if you look at the economic value of this whole exercise, I must say it would be in the negative.

The media, as always, is doing its bit to contribute to all this bullshit. And they too overdid it when a channel went on to show what Rahul ate at 8.15 am or what he drank at 8.45 am. I bet the reporter also knew when Rahul went to use the rest room, how long he was in there, and the exact nature of his stay inside (judging by the atmospheric smells afterwards). I mean, come on! This is expected from the Indian Media but the question remains that how much low are they gonna go???

I’m sure a day will come, and soon, when our austere leaders will resort to wearing the same clothes thrice before washing and using half flush when peeing so that they can give the water thus saved to the flood affected people on the lower banks of Yamuna, and begin using Tata Docomo’s pre-paid plans to save the precious paise on every call and out do each other to convince people that they care for the tax payer’s money.

Come to think of it, we have leaders who build a city full of elephant statues and parks by demolishing residential quarters and buildings, and ask for a draught relief fund of 80k crore to the centre. Sigh!

Austerely yours,

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Of Ends and Beginnings

After 16 months of some great work, a lot of idling around, living through the biggest scam in Indian corporate history day by day, loving idly wada dosa sambhar and tamarind rice, saying ‘Tamil teriyaad’ countless times…here I am, bags packed and ready to put Chennai behind me. There are mixed emotions as I write my last post from Chennai. Happy that I’m going home, scared a bit now that I don’t have a job anymore, sad because I’ll be away from some amazing friends and food , relieved that the turmoil of an uncertainty is behind me, anxious to find a footing again soon, panicky because I’m staring at another uncertainty in its face.

It’s way too cliched to say that Time passes away too quickly for us to stop and think about everything. But it does, and leaves us the choice of running along with it or getting dragged all the way. To be honest, neither of these is a choice anyone of us would prefer, and therefore, ironically we’re left with no choice but to choose.

I for one always believed in procastinating. I gladly let time decide for me, and most of the times, it worked. Time kept eliminating options for me, and all I had to do was go with what remained. It’s easy to live in denial that way, and be ignorant of the possibilities that could have been mine, had I decidec to choose for myself. But this is something I can live with, so be it. Maybe I’m on of those who let Time drag them along.

So the fact remains that the time has come to make a few choices, start something new (don’t think of any products people, not my intention here! ), leave the end behind, begin again.

Perhaps Robert Frost’s lines will make all the difference.

‘Two roads diverged in the woods…‘

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The Forsaken

Sunshine left me the other day,

in the wake of a cold, dark night,

I made a roof of glass to see, if

It comes back. But it never did.

 

Warmth crept away from inside the blanket,

and left me freezing on a summer’s day,

The blanket is folded neatly now, waiting

for warmth to cling to it. But it never did.

 

Happiness was not too different,

and took away my smile too.

I laugh a hollow laugh now, just

to check if it reconsiders. But it never did.

 

I know the reason was that you left,

And promised to come back soon again,

I ask my mind to listen and keep busy, and

not think about you too much. But it never did.

 

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Religion. Maggi.

Disclaimer: This post is not for those who are “calorie conscious”, or hate cheese, butter and other such foods. To be worthy of reading this post, you must swear by that glorious fast, and I mean lightning fast, food – Maggi noodles.

I swear by Maggi. Almost no other snack has given me so much pleasure as a hot, steaming bowl of Maggi on a rainy day. It was a daily ritual for me once. I’d come home from college, drenched to the bone. Aaji (grandma) would kick into action. She’d give me a dry towel and start chopping veggies for my special Maggi recipe, which I’m gonna share with you now (yeah! Like it or not! ).

For best results and utmost satisfaction, follow the instructions to the letter.

Ingredients: Chopped Onion, tomato, capsicum and green chilies are a must. Apart from these, you can have cabbage, carrots, green peas, and whatever else you may like, 1 packet Maggi Aata noodles, 2 cubes cheese, 2 tablespoons butter.

So here we go. First, take a suitable utensil and put the butter in it and keep it on medium flame. As the butter gets hot, put the green chilies and onion and sauté nicely, till the onion turns a shade golden. Then you can just put the rest of the veggies you’ve chopped. Sauté them till they are a bit soft, and then pour in the required amount of water (I mean, you know how to make a simple bowl of Maggi, don’t you????). So as the water begins to boil, you can put the masala and noodles. The rest is simple. You stir it occasionally and when around 60% of the water is gone, grate a cube of cheese into the pan so that it melts. You know when to turn off the flame, don’t you???

Voila! You have your bowl of Maggi ready!!! Now all you have to do is this. Make sure nothing remains in the pan. And I mean not a piece of veggie or an ounce of the gravy. I lick the spoon and the pan clean with my fingers . I know that is gross, but I don’t give a damn if I am. So once you have transferred the noodles from the pan to the bowl, grate the other cube of cheese and garnish the noodles with it. You can also add a bit of ketchup to make it tastier, but that is again, subjective.

The dish is ready, now just snuggle into a quilt on the sofa and turn on you favourite channel or open your favourite novel and enjoy the fruit of your labour. J

One last thing, don’t forget to lick the bowl clean after you’ve finished the noodles. You don’t want to waste anything now, do you?

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

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A Sunny Day’s Child

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon. The breeze is as free as it could be, and the Sun is going about its job as always. I’m sitting in front of the Idiot Box, sifting through channels in an effort not to sleep. The breeze is ruffling the curtains and every now and then, the chirp of a bird or a cuckoo’s sweet voice turns my neck for a glimpse of the Outside. Between this and trying to stay awake, my mind takes me back to my childhood summer days.

There is something about the human mind. We desperately hold on to what is good, what was in the past. Like a kid who clings on to his mother’s hand in a crowded market, fearing of losing her if he lets go. Little does he know that it’s his mother who’s holding him tight. It amuses me that as we grow up from an infant to a toddler to a kid to a teenager to an adolescent to a financially free person, we keep looking over our shoulders and sigh over what we’ve lost in the process. I bet Newton and Einstein never knew that human progress would come at a loss of the simplicity of life. At the end of the day, we come home from a decent paying job and wonder if we would be better off living in the Stone Age.

I continue looking outside. It reminds me more and more of my Aaji’s (grandma’s) home where I spent the ten most beautiful summers of my life. School used to break for summer and every day baba (dad) used to drop me off in the morning at her place. There were two big mango trees in her yard, just outside her door. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the mango flowers have a very mellow and subtly intoxicating smell that just makes you breathe it in as much as possible, as if that fragrance was going out of fashion. My friends answer my call and we all wreak havoc the entire day, disturbing Aajoba’s (grandpa’s) sleep and inviting his wrath. Our play always resumes at this time, when the breeze starts getting cooler and the Sun a bit friendly. We start our matches again and continue long into the twilight hours, till baba comes and takes me back home.

These were my summers. From ‘88 to ‘99, this was all I could think of doing every summer vacation. Time dragged me along and I played along, only to grow up into responsibilities and delivering to the expectations around me. Our only link to the past is our memories, triggered by rouge glimpses on such afternoons, opening floodgates of all that was good, and all that is gone.

What hurts most is that perhaps, somewhere down the way, I think we all lose that innocence of a sunny day’s child.

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Chaos

‘Something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can cause a hurricane halfway around the world.’ – Chaos Theory.

Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it? But what is serves to say is that an action which might be inconsequential if viewed in itself, might be the precursor of much bigger things to come. Isn’t it the same with all of us? Without exception, we all say and do things that we don’t imagine can float in the air for a lifetime. And one fine day, they just boomerang and hit us in the face, and it is only then that we realise the full impact of a simple sarcastic remark, a gesture, a small act of rebellion a decade ago.

If only we could see the big picture, if we could project the consequence of a single action in multiple ways and leading to multiple situations and then select the best possible action, I guess we’d have heaven on Earth. But we can’t do that, and hence the complication called Life. All of us, when looking back, always think that if given a chance, we’d do things differently, for better or for worse.

So? what is the point behind writing all this? Everyone knows this. The point is this… nothing. I just thought it would be better for all of us if we could just think about the consequences of our actions, perhaps the ‘I-wish-I-could-do-things-differently’ scenario would become a rarity. As Thomasina says in the play Arcadia -

‘ If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future.’

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