So Bermuda didn’t beat Bangladesh and therefore even the most optimistic of cricket fans in India are now resigned to the fact that Dravid & Co. would be returning home rather than chasing the World Cup glory in Caribbean.

Though I didn’t spend sleepless night following Bermuda-Bangladesh game but trust me am a staunch cricket fan, can’t stand any criticism of Sachin Tendulkar and I did stay awake till 5 a.m. this Saturday morning watching Indian cricket team’s surrender against Sri Lanka although I was dead tired and on any other day would have traded gold to sleep (ok I admit this was a slight exaggeration)

I got initiated into watching cricket when I was 7. It was the year India hosted Reliance World Cup and I remember how I first got attracted to cricket - it was courtesy a colourful weekly magazine saaptahik Hindustan. It was a world cup special edition of the mag with Kapil Dev, Imran Khan and few others on the cover. That mag was full of pictures of all teams, records and lot of other info. That fascinated me and it was going through those pages and reading all the trivia that I first got interested in cricket.

First match of that world cup was India Vs. Australia and those were the days of day cricket in white cloth and long power cuts. And I clearly remember that there was no power that afternoon and finally when power came and I ran to switch on the TV, they were showing replay of Roger Binny getting run out and India losing the game by one run. So I started my journey of following Indian cricket team’s results with a loss.

By the time we reached semi-finals of that world cup I was not just another new found follower of cricket but an obsessive fan. My relatives can still recount the tale of me crying after India lost to England in the semi-final that year (Oh yeah, and am not exaggerating this time).

And what was to follow was my childhood romance with cricket. There was a time when I used to record scores of every cricket match India used to play in my diary and for tournament finals I used to have elaborate score card as well. I think I must have maintained those records very faithfully till I was in class 8. Well, by then my obsession with cricket had started to give way to a more sane form of following the game. As I grew, obsession got replaced by passion and in few more years passion gave way to passing admiration.

And I thank God for the transformation.

These days when I read news clips about burning of effigies of cricketers and stoning of their houses after their early exit, I seriously wonder do cricket fans caught young grow into such uncivilized hooligans? Is cricket so important? Are we as a country so devoid of achievements that failure of a cricket team is being viewed as a national tragedy?

So we lost ? What big deal ? In a game one of the two teams lose and there ain’t any shame in your team having 2 such days in a week. But that doesn’t mean you would burn their effigies and blacken their posters. It’s such a strange and deplorable way of reacting by Indians that it put me to shame sometimes.

I think it’s not our passion for the game but an inherent fear of being nobody that results in such reactions. A country as big as ours is inarguably greatest sporting debacle on face of earth. Forget cricket and our current list of sporting heroes may not go beyond Leander Paes, Mahesh Bhupathi, Vishwanathan Anand and Rajyawardhan Rathore. May be this is the reason why Sania Mirza who’s only claim to fame is winning few matches in grand slam tournaments is being touted as bets thing to have happened to Indian Sports. And cricket which till now was practically played by mere 8 countries out of 200+ on the globe became our national passion, coz even by law of averages when only 8 countries will play you would win sufficient times to keep up the façade of being a powerhouse. Being somebody.

I think lot of people in India had strangely chosen cricket as a way to forget their miserable existence and when they come out in streets and vent their anger, it should not be seen as a reaction to defeat in cricket but a reflection of a life they would rather live differently. Their failure to chase their dreams has restricted their dreams to victories in game of cricket. I think they just release their frustration by getting together and bringing down brick walls of dhoni’s house but genesis of that frustration is not in cricket.

I don’t think cricket is a passion in our country, cricket is there because of lack of passions in our country.

-sid

He read the mail again on his blackberry, eleventh time since morning as he settled into the cab that he had just flagged. He had an urgent meeting in another 20 minutes, his first instinct after settling into the cab was to look at the documents for his meeting but then he picked up the phone and scrolled to that e-mail again.

He saw the mail for the first time when he got up in the morning. It was worse than what he had feared. He read it once then got off the bed and read it again to confirm that he is not dreaming and all this is for real. It indeed was real.

Cab suddenly braked on the traffic light, he looked out - it was getting a little cloudy, there are days when weather mirrors your mood and there are other days when the weather mirrors in your mood. But his day has not been gloomy at all. He didn’t forget to pick his breakfast at subway, he breezed through his meetings and telecons with the usual gaiety, had a hearty lunch and heartier laughs over the lunch with his colleagues. It was like any other day, just that every time he had a moment with himself all alone, he couldn’t stop himself from getting back to that mail.

He reached his destination five minutes before the appointment; his meeting lasted 40 minutes and was a productive one. As that was the last thing on his agenda for the day so he took up the offer from his host to go for few drinks. No, he was not trying to get drunk and forget what was happening miles away. He was just spending a Friday evening the way it ought to be spent. He went to his favourite Chinese restaurant for dinner and it was only at midnight when he took a cab back to the hotel that he looked at that mail for the twelfth time.

“She has gone in a coma”. That’s not how the mail had begun, neither were these the last words, but these were the words that shook him when he first read the mail. He stayed at these words. He was still trying to comprehend the magnitude of those words. He didn’t believe it when he read it in the morning. He didn’t believe it when he kept calling her number for last 2 days at hospital and got no response. He didn’t believe it when he had talked to her 3 days back before leaving for London and she had said, “I think, I’m dying.” And he was not ready to believe it still.

Shock manifests itself in various ways, sometimes it takes form of tears, sometimes it evokes anger, very often it brings anxiety and tension and there are also times when it numbs you but he was showing symptoms of none of that. His shock has obliterated every symptom of shock. It was not that he was hiding the pain, he had just driven the pain away because he had refused to believe anything that could hurt him has happened. He was aware of reality but he has refused to live it. He didn’t try call her number, he didn’t even try and call her friend, he didn’t worry about what would happen to her because he has stopped acknowledging that something has happened to her.

He has reached London just a day before; he has to stay here for at least a week. And till he flies back, there’s nothing he can do. He agreed to come to London only when doctors told him she is out of danger, he was postponing this trip for almost a fortnight now and finally he decided to steal a week. After all, it was just a week, he thought he would be back by the time she is ready to be discharged. He talked to her before leaving for London. They talked for a long time, she was scared and it showed. He attributed that to all the medical setup she was seeing around her. But he was more scared than her and she knew how much he wanted her to get all right. Every time he used to tell her “it’s gonna be fine”, she understood that he was telling it to himself rather than her. And she knew that she needed to make him believe that she would be fine because in that moment he needed that belief more than her. So as they kept talking she hid her fears, made him believe that his words has calmed her nerves and when finally when he left he was sure she would be fine and she was sure that he is sure of that.

He reached his hotel a little after midnight, he was a bit sleepy but he didn’t want to sleep yet. He surfed channels for a bit and settled on re-run of a soccer game he had missed last week. Two of them used to talk at this hour usually but today he didn’t look at his phone even once. He was not expecting any call and neither had he got any call to make because he knew it won’t be answered because it can’t be answered. It’s scary when you live through something like this without being scared and he was doing exactly that. You get anxious when you expect that something worse can happen to you, but what about those moments when you know worst has already happened. Do you get scared or do you get fearless? For him this was the worst that could have happened. You and I may say that this could still get worse but for him that was an impossibility. For him low has already been reached, his frame of reason and faith has genuinely excluded any possibility of anything worse.

Had someone followed him since morning, knowing what had befallen him. They would have had no difficulties reaching to a conclusion that he is a heartless cruel piece of rock. After all, but for his repeated effort to find in that mail some hope to cling to, there was nothing that may suggest that he has been saddened by the news that the morning sun brought. Had there been a device that could have figured what’s going in someone’s mind, still he stood no chance as there were little if any threads of anxiety or pain running in his mind. He has not reacted to the news at all, not when he read it first, and not on any of the countless occasions during the day when that crossed his mind.

This was his act of defiance, his challenge to providence. He stood there alone in large battlefield called life and called out the fate to throw at him all it can. It was like that torture-room situations, where the victim when tortured doesn’t writhe in pain but laugh at the face of perpetrator. And he was doing exactly that. He lived his day just like any other day because he wanted to mock the fate. He didn’t pray to God to make her right because he wanted to shame the God to have put her in that state. He just switched off the night lamp and closed his eyes, he was tired, it takes a lot of effort to take the world and his battle had just begun.

She was still asleep.

He got up from his chair and looked out of window; it was a dark night and all was so still outside, not a single indication that any life exist in the dark outside. There were still few hours to go before dawn would break. He turned back to look at her and then decided to wait at the window for a bit longer. While there was no moon outside and there was a dim table lamp glowing inside the room but still room seemed darker to him than pitch black night.

When they had just met, they used to talk well into late in the night. He remembers this time of the day from those times. With his phone on the ear and night made darker by the shadow of big neem tree right outside balcony of his room, he had seen lot of these nights grow old and weak till they give way to a fresh dawn. He wanted to go out and sit in the garden outside with her, but she was asleep.

He took his chair again ad closed his eyes; he had not slept properly for last few days. Last seven days to be precise. It was last Monday when she got admitted in the hospital, doctors told him it’s a simple surgery and she could be back home by in a day or two. He believed them; he convinced her that it would all be fine. After all these doctors spend their lives learning how to get these surgeries right. He was sure, she was not. But she went along because he wanted her to. He wished he had listened to her. She was still in the same position as she was when they brought her back from the operation theatre. Doctors say she has not responded well to the treatment, she is unconscious for six days now.

He took a deep sigh and opened his eyes to look at her. He has tried it so many times in last few days, hoping every time that as he would open his eyes he might see her looking at him. That’s how it used to be when he used to lie down on her lap and close his eyes, she would keep talking and he would keep listening, and every time he opened his eyes, she was looking at him with her deep black eyes. He longed to see those eyes looking at him again.

For first two days, he believed when doctors told him that she would be conscious soon. They appeared confident and he drew his confidence from theirs. It was on Wednesday night when he started to get jittery, he started questioning them, he stopped believing what they said by Friday. He had it figured that it’s beyond doctors now. He has now started hoping for a miracle, he always believed in miracles. But as he sat in dim light of the table lamp his faith had begun to give way to fear. For the first time in his life, he has begin to fear that he might lose her, such a thought that had never entered his mind from the time they had first met. At first when they met, he didn’t mind letting her go but slowly she became so integral to his life that he just never thought of a life without her. And now suddenly he has realized that this could be a possibility. He shuddered by the whole thought, he wanted to shake off all these negative thoughts. He wanted to believe that she is just taking a bit long to get fine, that’s all. He needed someone to tell him, it’s all gonna be fine.

He got up and looked out of window once more, night was still dark. But suddenly he realized something had changed. He could hear the breeze knocking against the window, dead of night was finally being challenged. He stood there listening to sound of wind hitting against the glass window. No one could tell what that sound was trying to tell him, but he stood there listening for hours and had it not been for first signs of dawn break he wouldn’t have noticed that it must have been hours.

And then he turned and looked at her. She was still asleep in the same position, but he was not worried, it seems he knew she would get up today.

And she did.

-siddhartha

He’s always there (almost always). At the end of every day as dark of the night try to hide the world, he slips in and stay up ….standing guard till dawn breaks. Every poet looks up to him for inspiration. Beauties around the world often get jealous of him and night wears him as her most cherished jewel. On nights, when you can’t sleep he’s always there to keep you company, all you wish more is that moon could talk.

In the age of neon and almost uninterrupted power supply, the joy of a walk in moon-lit night is fast becoming a thing of past. But I have been lucky, for once those power cuts in dead of the night and those street lamps gone bad while I was growing up do give me a reason to be thankful, for they gave me a chance to experience the night as God wanted it to be, quiet and pure, dark but not blind and hidden but still seen. It’s tough these days to find a place where you could just be left alone with the dark of the night and light of the moon, nights these days are better lit than the days.

But for me, charm of the moon has not dwindled a bit. Right now, from my bed as I glance out of window up in the sky - the pure white moon against a pitch black sky presents me such a fascinating view. Sometimes it becomes difficult to decide that did God create night first and then created moon to make night look prettier or did He create moon first and then as an afterthought made night so that humanity could see the moon everyday (almost).

Here I'm!!

After a 15 day break, actually it’s a longer break. Coz I just blogged thrice in entire Feb so to write only thrice in 5 weeks is more or less one single long break :-)

For last day or two as I got slightly free to blog, I was toying with the idea of revamping the look of my blog. I thought let me get back from my hiatus by giving this blog a new look. You know kind of making up for not writing. So I checked templates, tried them and ended up realizing how new blogger keeps popping up XML errors with most of the template codes.

And then finally it dawned on me that what on earth am I doing? Why can't i just go back and put my fingers to keyboard (that expression has been invented to replace to put pen to paper).

Sometimes, in our effort to make up, we end up preparing too long. How often you just want to do things perfectly, say the perfect line, buy the perfect gift, wait for the perfect moment, when all that’s needed is just another line, a smile and need to do it now. We want to make up for things we didn’t do by trying to do something special and then delaying the whole thing coz you are busy wondering what could be special enough, when in reality all that is needed is to get back to old ways of doing things without trying to pull off a rabbit from the hat.

So I would keep my hat on the head and will spend time writing rather than looking for new templates.

-sid

What is it that separate men from boys (or for that matter women from girls).
Is it the knack to spot an opportunity and capitalizing on it?
Is it the perseverance to cling to a chance with all one has got?
Is it stamina to run the course?

To me I think it's none of them ....all this could make you a prodigy but test of character is how you react to failures. It’s how do you gather yourself after a fall and how do you spring back. It’s how you don't let anyone else influence yourself worth. It's not about not losing but it's about to lose but still not be lost and that’s what defines character.

And one man whom I can't I help admiring for all this is Sourav Ganguly - Prince of Kolkatta.

He indeed was a prince till his much hyped exit. He was someone who had all the power vesting in his hands. No one could have questioned him. And he had done enough to deserve that power. But as they power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I would admit that when he was finally consigned to ignominy I thought that was deserved too.

For someone who was a monarch - to work as a commoner and force his way in, knowing pretty well that he could never be the king again is very difficult. When you know that lost glory can never be regained, it's difficult to find a motivation. Many would have given up in a situation where they know that they are not just fighting enemies within but even enemies outside. But for a guy to battle to all that and come out trumps as he has is fantastic. I don’t know whether it was hurt pride, passion for game or hard commercial sense that drove him to work his way back. But instead of lying on his back and crying hoarse about being wronged, he bent his back and proved what he is made up of.

I won’t exaggerate and call him a modern hero or something of that sort but yeah I would admit that there are things or two that all of us could do well to learn from his example.

-sid

Music has immense power.

It’s your companion irrespective of whether you want to party or if you just want to be alone. It’s a great buddy to have when you are happy and wanna dance or if you are sad and just wanna hide. Sometimes it fills an empty day and on other times it provides a soothing relaxation during a hectic day. It gives voice to unsaid and pull out smiles out of nowhere.

Together with poetry, the two weaves a magic as no other known to mankind. At times, I think words were not invented for communication but for poetry coz nowhere else do they seem so comfortable and so apt. A beautiful song is like words dancing gracefully on the tune of music. So sometime you look at the dancer and get wowed by her elegance and grace and on other times you just let music sweep you off your feet.

Poetry is like a sea, majestic when you look at it from a distance, comforting when you let waves come and meet you, deep and magical when you dive in and every time you dive deep inside you find something beautiful to bring out with you. It has got something for everybody…beautiful corals, lively fishes, precious pearls, dangerous sharks ……....That’s poetry.
It doesn’t matter who you like, Shakespeare or Ghalib, Frost or Nirala, Floyd or Gulzar, who creates the magic is not important as long as you can feel the magic, sense its existence and turn to it when you need it.

-siddhartha

Song recommendation of the day:
Am listening to this beautiful song from Parineeta and as is my habit with any song that I like, this song is running in continuous loop…again and again and again.

Raat humaari to chand ki saheli hain
Kitne dino ke baad, aayi woh akeli hain
Sanjha ki baati bhi koi bujha de aaj
Andhere se jee bhar ke, karni hain baatein aaj

Andhera rootha hain,Andhera raitha hain
gumsum sa, kone me baitha hain

Andhera pagal hain, kitna ghanera hian
Chubhta hain, dasta hain….phir bhi who mera hain
Uski hi godi me ,sar rakh ke sona hain
Uski hi baahon me chupke se rona hain
Aankhon se kaajal ban , behta andhera

I like the word ‘inertia’. First I read about it was in class 11th in physics text book but as years passed by, I have grown to associate this word more with psychology than with physics. May be inertia was never a physics term, Newton must have read psychology and he just saw that physics can do well with this concept. It’s amazing how we let ourselves drift just because we are not ready to force ourselves to stop and turn or we just stay rooted even if we want to move ahead.

Force that is needed to change this state of inertia has its origins in our minds. And that force is generated by vector addition of two decisions – one, to act or not to act and two, when to act if one need to. Sometimes, we like to trick ourselves, we tell ourselves it’s not the right time to act when we actually are not even sure if want to act. It’s convenient and it keeps the difficult question away, rather it allows us to pretend that we have an answer when we don’t have one. I can confidently and with a voice of authority tell myself…it’s not the right time, as if I would know what the right time would be. This I guess is one reason why clairvoyance has enthused humanity for ages, because ‘when to act’ has been one of the key drivers of the force that move people.

But ‘to act or not to’ is definitely the complex of the two decisions. This decision is basically a function of our experiences, our perceptions, our apprehensions, our ambitions and our need to get it right. If life was a recipe book then recipe for making this decision would have read something like this - Take all these ingredients, put them in a bowl and stir well, then let it boil in your mind you might first see some indecision frothing at the top but soon it well get cleared and you will have your decision ready to be served hot. Those who might have tried cooking with the help of recipe books would know how it never works out the way it is written. The froth of indecision never goes, that mixture of experiences, apprehensions, perceptions etc. is always more fluid than how it was supposed to be and when you boil it, it always get overcooked. And maybe this is the reason why people prefer a home delivery for a decision like this rather than showing off their skills.

And this brings me back to what I have written once earlier that sometimes we like our decisions to be made for us if we are not sure that we can get them right. Come to think of it, this post was a prequel to that one. And people think only RGV can do that ;-)
Well given I have dabbled in this ‘decision theory’ of mine quite a few times in last 2 months, am sure a sequel to that post would come too……but for that to happen I guess I may just need to go and find me a bodhi tree ;-)

-siddhartha

Today is January 30th. Mahatma Gandhi was shot dead on this day 59 years back. They say these days that we have forgotten Gandhi's principles and only remember him on Gandhi Jayanti and his death anniversary, but I guess we don't even remember him on even those days. And had it not been for my growing up to doordarshan news and a 2 minute silence in school on this day, even I wouldn't have remembered because if one go to any of those leading Indian newspaper site they didn't even have a single word about Gandhi till late in the evening. (Though right now I can see a feature on Indian Express and a photograph on HT).

Mahatma Gandhi is someone I have grown to admire. And I really get irritated when people fail to see how remarkably he achieved what he did.

Part of blame lies in the way Gandhi is portrayed, while I agree he is a saint but our school-books, documentaries everything just show so much of gratitude and heap so much of praise without underlining his strategy and philosophy that people just get uncomfortable with the idea.

What doesn't help is that there are people who believe that wearing a torn jeans, doing drugs and bashing Gandhi is a sign of modernity but well damn with them !!!

Non-violence is a philosophy that was needed in a country like India. For a country as diverse as ours and a society which was not as aggressive as few others we know today, a country where Bhagat singh and Chandrasheakhar Azads were far and few, non-violence was the only way to broad base a freedom struggle.

Even during freedom struggle, people had their families to look after. Not everyone could have gone and become revolutionary. I don't even think everyone could have sacrificed not only their life but their families and all they had to the freedom struggle.

But that doesn't mean they didn't want to be part of the movement. What Gandhi did was to unite them. To provide them a platform where they can do their bit for the country and once you have a platform people can do impossible tasks and people did. They faced bullets, took blows of lathi charge ...they did all that they never thought they could. Gandhi made them discover their inner courage. Just step back in time. in those times...you should be sure of your courage to join a bhagat singh but you can discover courage by joining Gandhi. By making his movement non-violent, not only did Gandhi did away with need for people to put their life on the way but he also made it difficult for British to find excuses to shoot those bullets.

People could take part in a satyagrah and go back home in the night. Their families could see them, they didn't have to remain in hiding ...and I am talking about common Gandhi follower. No one should doubt the police persecution, and cruelty that the Gandhians faced, no one should say that they offered even an inch less than the revolutionaries. But all I am trying to bring forth is that but for Gandhi our freedom movement could never have been as broad based as it turned out to be. Gandhi figured that independence can't just be get by few heroes, it requires involvment of a majority of people. He never asked people to do more than what they can, but once people joined him they did what earleir seem impossible.

Gandhi is indeed a saint. His views on trusth, ahimsa, bringing up the down trodden, his love for humanity all that he did in his entire life was just exemplary. When he made Sardar Patel release the Pakistan's share of Indian funds, he didn't do it for pakistan ...he did it for people of that country. For him boundaries meant nothing, he lived and thought of people. And today when people come up with all those accusations that he did this which is benefitted pakistan or he did that which didn't help India, they forget that for him people on both side of border were always Indians who had walked with him on the path to Independence.

But behind that saint was a master strategist, who saw what could unite India. Who figured the key to stimulate common indian to egt out of his and revolt against the British Raj. He did what no one else could do and he did it without a bullet. We somehow miss this man and so fail to find why should we admire him.

Einstein once said of Gandhi: "Generations to come, it may be, will scarce believe that such one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth". And that's exactly what's happening...people of our time can't believe that Gandhi achieved what he did and so they look for excuses , sometimes invent few and sometimes come up with stupid arguments to give justification to their disbelief.

But Gandhi did walk on the face of this earth and he did lay the foundation of a confident India. He showed that voice can be raised without crying hoarse. He showed that mountains can be moved without blasting your way through them.

And I bow to him for that !!!

-sid

Song recommendation of the day:

Mahatma Gandhi's one of the favourite Bhajans originally penned by gujrati poet Narsinh Mehta

Vaishnav jan to taine kahiye je peer parayi jaane re

par dukhhe upkaar kare toye, man abhimaan na aane re

Let's sample the headlines ( and I mean top of the page headline) of India's leading newspapers on their website this afternoon.

Times of India : After win, Shilpa in forgiving mood

Hindustan Times : Jade shouldn't be called racist: Shilpa

Indian Express: Shilpa Shetty's career gets 'real' boost

The Hindu: Shilpa looking forward to return home

I felt revolted by the way our media is blowing up the whole thing.

First of all, some bottom of pyramid celebrity ( if she can be called one) shows her crudeness and lack of civility by calling Shilpa names and here we go....that's an attack on nation's pride. Ministry got involved, I was wondering if GoI might just call back our troops from Siachen, so as to teach Jade a lesson. Is it some inferiority complex of our country that makes us respond to something so low and trivial with such ferocity ? For God's sake it's a TV show, the person who said what she said has no locus standi, she may not even represent the British population. What's the furore about ?

And that too when someone got Rs. 3.5 crore to be in the show. Why did media go berserk?

Is our country so devoid of printable news that we now have to resort to printing minute by minute commentary of what's happening in Big Brother's house?

It's amazingly stupid, news I thought was the only medium that brings us close to reality but somehow there is this new form of news which I would label as escapist news that's taking centre stage.

I have not seen Indian TV news for some time but the depths to which channels like Aaj Tak etc had fallen was for all to see or just take the case of Times of India, British tabloids may be shamed by kinda reporting ToI have started doing.

I almost decided never to buy that newspaper ever again by my own money till they become a newspaper once more. Indian Express that way at least till I was in India was still a newspaper and not a tabloid.

And what surprises me that Abhishek-Aishwarya's marriage or John-Bipasha's breakup or salary of IIM grads make up bigger news in the country than Noida killings, Orissa droughts and Assam massacre.

We as a society have become so immune to hard realities of life that only sensationalizing of trivia interests us...nothing else. Isn't it escapism ? We want our news to be served to us like a dessert, sweet and juicy. No bitter truths, no hard debates. Just a relaxing piece of stories sensationalized and put together for my after-office entertainment.

Indian media has finally arrived.................huh !!!!

-sid