Heroes

Imola '06 - MS in an inferior car blocks young Alonso for the whole damn race and proceeds to win it. 85th race win for the ace. I started following F1 when Ferrari was a lousy car and struggled to beat its rivals and was only competetive cause of Schumi's skills. It was fun watching him battle and it was the most logical conclusion for me to be a Schumi and Ferrari fan and will them to win all the time. They did. They won a lot. Till Last year. They lost. They lost a lot. Till 23rd April - Schumi won displaying the same fighting attitude that i loved, after what was a hopeless season last year. It lead people to comment that probably Schumi was over the hill and that maybe he should retire. Laughable. Imola was probably what they call "In ya face!"

24th April 1973 is part of history. It was almost poetic that one of my sporting heroes - one the critics thought was over the hill - fought back in the style of his greatest past races, on the eve of the God's bday. Its only foolish to write off Sachin Tendulkar. He was written off before WC 2003. He was the player of the tournament. Shoaib laughed him off before *that* match, he bowled only 1 over at the start of the inning before coming back much later ~ the match was over in 5 overs. You write off Sachin at your own peril. No doubt he aint the Sachin of 1998 - hell no, he will never be that again. No doubt he aint the best player in the team anymore - hell no, thats Dravid. But over the hill he isnt. He still is capable of playing supremely skillful innings and winning us matches (Pakistani series). Ofcourse his scores in tests arent great, but he isnt struggling to middle the ball - and it doesnt take long for a class act to start making it count.

Happy Birthday Sachin - get fit and blast the leather out of that ball again

Laziness...

...is a virtue. There cant be two ways about that! For starters, if you are vela at home for a long period of time, being lazy solves the perennial problem of "What to do all day". A lazy man will zimbly sleep through 12 or more hours of the day thereby reducing the what-to-do problem by half anyway. Add to that the general lethargy to do anything that can be remotely called as active, leads to taking pleasures in the small things of life - like stealing a 10 minute nap an hour after u woke up and 10 minutes before lunch, yawning without any hindrance and the general feeling of not having naything to do. Moral: Laziness enables enjoyed velapanti

Ofcourse the fact that all inventors were lazy people cant be argued! Who the hell do you think invented the remote control? An overactive person who wanted to do something new? or a lazy couch potato who needed a way out to avoid seeing those commercials and switch channels in the meantime without moving (please watch all HLL commercials please and oh ofcourse buy the products too :) )
Laziness and not necessity is the mother of all invention - i mean just look at it all, one doesnt want to walk - get a horse driven chariot; one doesnt want to ride - get a car; one doesnt want to drive - get a driver (ok thats not an invention but still!); dont want to change gears - get a car with auto transmission.
Elevators, Escalators, piped gas, washing machines, u name it and it is a lazy man's boon!
If it werent for our breed of lazy guys - this world would be without most of its conveniences. So the key to a more technologically advanced future is getting more lazy people - for in their creative laziness lies the future of the country (and the world)

Long live Garfield! May his tribe increase!


P.S:- this is my first full post without the mention of cricket!

Things i miss...

In no particular order:
Sarkari Chai at 2am, The pool table (what with bumps and slopes and obstacle courses), the h-mezz cricket especially with the tas ball, the staying awake till odd hours and it being normal, the long chats about nothing, the niteouts to finish projects, the aaloo paratha at the nc, sitting at L2 - mostly doing nothing, the birthday celebrations (of friends, your own bday is fairly painful), the pub team meetings, watchin cricket in mess, arbit debates on sports folder, the campus, the life, the freedom
Such is life.............

Of Underdogs

There is always a certain pleasure in seeing an underdog fight against the favourites (unless ofcourse the favourites are your home team or the underdog is an English team)

Its fun to see Australia struggle against Bangladesh - its almost romantic to see the impossible happen. It was an unbelievable match the other day when South Africa actually chased 435 in 50 overs - teams struggle to chase 300 odd in test matches.

What makes the underdog fight romantic is the fact that no one really expects it to happen. The war against the impossible is always fascinating.
It probably brings out hidden desires in everyone's mind. Almost everyone is an underdog in some way or the other, in something or the other. The head of a family watching a match might be an underdog at work, it would be his innermost desire to outshine his brilliant rival and then impress his boss to get that one promotion which hangs in balance. But reality probably dictates otherwise. For those brief moments when you see that underdog launch a fight that threatens to overturn reality, one starts believing - one imagines the what if scenario and for that one brief moment, one actually entertains the possibility of doing that impossible thing. "If they could do that, why cant i try to do this"

Thats why people watch films - to indulge in a fantasy, to see heros with qualities that they would want to possess, to live that dream for a fleeting few minutes

Quota System

It exists in loads of places. Even in cricket. Star players like Gagan Khoda( Khoda who u ask? a 'dashing' opener from Rajasthan who wouldnt have seen the doorsteps of the Indian team had it not been for one Kishen Rungta), Noel David (The then captain had asked "Noel Who?" - we then are only mere spectators) and hazaar other players who made it to the Indian team purely because a selector representing their zone wanted a player from his zone. They came, they shat, they went away. An Ashish Kapur would change sides every 2 years because thats when the selection panel would be filled with new/different faces. He would shift to the zone where a selector he knew was present and then nurture hopes of getting into the Indian team.

So where am i getting with this? Just a coupla days back respected mr. arjun singh decided that 22.5% seats being reserved was just too low and really disgraceful and promptly decided to increase it to a more respectable 49.5%, probably muttering a curse under his breath for the stupid Supreme Court of India which actually has the audacity to cap reservations at 50% (canys believe that? The Supreme court actually prevents our politicians from bringing in reservations for HALF of the total seats. As Obelix would put it *tap*tap*tap* These Supreme Courts are crazy!)

If it aint obvious, i belong to the underprivileged general merit category and that is probably what most middle class ppl like me are. We unfortunately go unrepresented by any politician/party to look after our needs. Was wondering why.....
As it turns out, there are probably only 2 ways to get politicians to guard your interests - either be a moneybank or be a votebank. Moneybanks contribute generous amounts to election funds and more and hence demand that their interests be safeguarded - a compelling argument that no politician can (more like doesnt want to) fight. The votebanks ofcourse get these buggers elected - yet again another compelling argument that wont see violent protests from the netas.
The vast majority of the population that does not vote is the middle class. How then do we expect our interests to be safeguarded? For we the middle class, Huge section of the population aint the ones with the votes nor the money to actually make us a segment worth noticing.

So how do we begin to solve the problem? Middle Class being the moneybank is just not on in the short term (there's a reason why we are the middle class right?)
So the only other way we can probably start to change things is to go out there and VOTE in large numbers such that our vote really starts to count - and it is this vote which will make or break (breaks in politics are only temporary but still....) a neta's career.

Lets see them ignoring us once they cant get elected without appeasing us..........

Getting off the mark

So there it is - another one succumbs to the charms of Blogville. In person you generally would find me in either of 2 modes - rambling (more often than not) or studied silence (read sleeping)
This blog is likely to end up in either of these two states. That i am lazy is an understatement - that i love to blabber is another. So this blog then is a match between laziness and the urge to put my thoughts down. Invariably laziness would come up winner (much like the 4-0 washout we gave England) but in some cases the scoreline might just read 6-1 (as Sri Lanka did)
This post and the start of the blog is then that one match which went the other way - How long will it last is anyone's guess. Infact i am willing to take bets on how many posts this blog will last for. (Cash wonly please)

What then would i blog about? Most likely cricket - infact i will probably talk about cricket even when its not the subject i am discussing. No surprise then that this post is titled "getting off the mark"

Standard Disclaimer:- This blog has high risk of being a boring and a sporadically updated blog. Thou shalt read at one's own risk - me shall not be held responsible for anything that can be deemed a waste of thy precious time