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.

DELTA1 

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.

DELTA1

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,

DELTA1

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…‘

DELTA1 

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.

 

DELTA1

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.

DELTA1

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.

DELTA1

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.’

DELTA1

Tears of Shame

It’s more than 2 months now since terror found a new form in India. We were still ignorant of that form in other nations, and we (as always) chose to rest assured that terror will always strike in the  ”conventional” ways of bomb blasts and attacks on Indian Armed Forces in the valley.

So when the terrorists struck, we were royally unprepared for their welcome. And what followed is etched in everyone’s mind with innocent blood lost in those 60 hours. The repercussions in the Indian corridors of power and their echoes from across the border are just coded messages that keep telling each other to continue fooling the people and carry on the blame game.

I feel ashamed when I realise that the Mumbai Police, the first forces to respond, were armed with rifles from the second world war era. I feel ashamed when Arnab Goswami failed to realise the big picture behind the media black-out, and instead of co-operating with the authorities, began shouting on his news channel ‘Times Now’. I feel more ashamed when I saw all the news channels were more prompt and eager to flash the words ‘EXCLUSIVE’ and ‘BREAKING NEWS’, than finding ways of helping the forces. I feel ashamed when Arnab Goswami kept repeating the words ‘Times Now’ at the end of every 2nd sentence. I feel ashamed that Chief Ministers “visited” the Oberoi and the Taj and pompously announced money for the martyr’s families, under heavy security cover, thinking that the people really cared if someone killed them. But most of all, I really feel ashamed of my government’s inability to take any concrete steps, while Pakistan Air Force did sorties over their cities as a threat to us.

There was a terrific sms doing the rounds, stating that the commandos who protected the people and killed the terrorists were non-marathis, as were the two martyred commandos, Major Unnikrishnan and Hawaldar Gajendra Singh.

Uhh… just wanted to make a small point in that reference…

The remaining 12 were marathis, and one of them took a spray of bullets from an AK-56 rifle in the chest while fighting armed with the ancient 303s and simple lathis, but held on to it so that his partner on the scene could nab Ajmal Amir Kasab.

I believe we would have done better without that sms, because, by sending out this sms we ultimately fell to the level of the politicians.

DELTA1

Cool Breezes, Sunny Mornings

It’s December 21st. Last day of school before we break for Christmas and new year. We have an inter-house dramatics competition. Our play is a ghost thriller and the best part is, it is slated to be the last of the four. It revolves around a woman who suddenly appears at the home of a colonel who is having a quiet drink with his friend, and it later turns out that she was murdered an hour ago and is actually a ghost. The audience gets the chills after our play, and we end up on top of the podium. It’s time to celebrate.

I wake up early next morning, but Aai (mom) pats my cheek and ruffles my already messed up hair. ” Go to sleep bachchu (kiddo). It’s holiday time remember?”. I sleepily smile and cuddle up in the blanket again. Aai tucks me in and starts getting ready for office. After a while Baba (dad) wakes me up, and while I’m still rubbing my eyes, picks me up and takes me to the bathroom. I brush, clean-up and have my breakfast and Baba drops me off to my grand parents’ place on his way to the office.

As their house comes into view, I can see Aajoba (grandpa) sitting in the warm morning sun bathing the courtyard, soaking up the warmth in his bones. It’s still just 9.30 am, and there is a chill in the air, so this sunbath is all the more welcome for his health. Aaji (grandma) is slowly getting about her daily chores. I yell and wave at Aajoba as soon as he’s within earshot, and Baba really has to balance the scooter due to all my frantic moving. I jump down and race to hug Aajoba. Baba flashes his big smile, greets Aaji and Aajoba, warns me to behave myself, and drives away to the office. I just lie down on Aajoba’s lap and take in the warm sunlight.

Mercury rises and we move to the cooler shade of a mango tree in our courtyard. Aajoba enchants me with his childhood stories, how he wrestled a local goon, how his father was the head of his village and how people feared and respected him, and how he has seen the world transform around him. Aaji calls us inside for lunch, and keeps aside my favourite godhadi (home made blanket). After she tucks me in, it’s time for her to take me to her childhood days, when her cow called Kapila would wreak havoc and could be controlled only by her father, and how they taught the peanut seller a lesson when he charged them way too much for a cone full of roasted peanuts. I doze off to a warm and dreamy nap.

It’s 4 pm, and Aaji wakes me up. My friends have been calling, and she has kept tea ready. I quickly get ready, find the bat and ball, and rush off to play. We play frenetically, as if there is no tomorrow and today is the last holiday we’ll ever get. Piling on runs and taking wickets is the order of the hour, and we are oblivous to everything. The cows return home from the pasture, people come back from work, the street lights light up and Aai and Baba come back from office to pick me up. My friends and I decide on the match format and teams for the next day, and I hop onto Baba’s scooter.

Night falls and Aai makes a delicious dinner, followed by a hot cup of masala milk. Baba builds up a small fire in a big pan like container used for gardening, and we all gather around it. Taai (elder sister) tells everyone her day at school, and we play antakshari for a while. The fire is gone but has left glowing embers. Baba takes the pan to a corner of the bedroom and keeps it safely, out of reach of everyone. I’m half asleep by the time he tucks me in and kisses me on the forehead.

All I know is someone ruffling my hair as Aaji and Aajoba hold my hands and take me to a land where holidays are full of cool breezes and warm sunny mornings.