The Incorrigible Boys

There are times when one gets bored to death. To imagine one getting bored when India  is playing a game of cricket is fiction. The very aspect of preparing oneself for a period of agony and tension itself should drive away boredom, i reflected.

What is boredom? It is afterall  a state of mind that is beaten to numbness for want of excitement or misery. And how could one be deprived of misery when India plays cricket. We would any day pull defeat from the jaws of victory (cliche??!!). 

That was a prelude for the Sunday that went by. I started off quite disinterested on a cool and rainy Sunday morning and the only thing i dreaded was a call from any acquaintance for either a lunch or a drink or a stroll somewhere aimlessly.

Then came the afternoon when India was playing England.  I was already depressed by Srilanka's loss the other day (nothing to do with who they lost to - just that gnawing thought that they tried to emulate India by fighting till the last ball, determined to lose) and therefore silently hoped that it should be a keen tussle. 

Rather than analysing what went wrong and how little went right, i will sum up with my view that it required special skills to tie a match that could have been won. The boys didnt do their job (i got this baptism into calling everyone a boy after watching Yuvi and Co.) and it again got reduced to a Tendulkar's match. The senior boys (i mean the selectors) didnt do a good job either by playing a wrist spinner who would have announced his retirement if he was ingored for a few more matches. My brother asked me 'What does it take to play an Ashwin?". I said wisdom (benefit of hindsight could be most intimidating if one is a born sarcastic).

 India could be one of the few cricket playing nations that can win on any day inasmuch as it can lose on any day to any team. I hate the thought that someone called cricket a game of glorious uncertainities. It must have been an Indian saying that after watching  India playing.

Whatever, i was made to sit through a hundred overs (not a ball less) of cricket with a string of beads on hands and prayer on lips, rather than enjoy the niceties of the game.

Looking forward to an Oz-Lanka or Lanka-SA or SA-Oz match to get value for time.

A Nameless Nemesis

Either he/she/or they were irked or enthused - i wouldn't know.

But i have received a load of unprintables in response to my clarifications. I have started falling in love with this business of writing and getting nasty responses. It throws open a new perspective and stimulates me to have an alternate outlook in life. It is said everyone likes flattery but only hates the manner in which it is done. Possibly i go a little beyond here. I love silent, written criticisms. It gives me a karmic pleasure to realise that the one who is hurt by my actions (or inactions) has found his opportunity to avenge his or her pain and therefore i am liberated from that particular sin (how profound i am getting!!!). And that also paves way to move over to the next sin...

Afterall no one is perfect. The subtle difference betweent the victor and the vanquished lies in the process of realisation. One who realises he is imperfect and fallible stands more chance of a success than the enlightened fool who considers himself a reincarnation of Alexander the Great. (what's happening to me - i am now like a seasoned willow)

All this apart, remember the item on astrology a few weeks back?    I had seen prospects of tension to the north- east of  where i stay. I was too enthusisatic to consider Egypt as a possible target. While the prediction is more than true (what with violence and carnage and rebellion everywhere), the place of occurence is not. Apologies. Proves my fundamental belief - that i have a long way to go.

Steve Jobs

I haven't had any role model in life. I don't actually believe in one.

And blessed with abundant ignorance, it is easier for me to worship the image i see in the mirror. But i have fallen in admiration for this man Steve Jobs. 

I was interviewing a group of manag-grads and i was awe-struck to see many of them having Steve as a role model. After Adam and Eve if there was anyone who 'halo'ed the word 'Apple', it is Steve Jobs.

We need him. I sincerely wish the story in the link below is not true at all.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1357743/Cancer-stricken-Apple-boss-Steve-Jobs-just-weeks-live.html?ITO=1490

I owe these clarifications

• No, i don't copy. Either it is a straight lift or it's mine
• Yes i try to be humorous - but i am as serious as a stone in real life
• No, i don't read much. Belong to that elite group of semi-literate masquaraders with a smattering of knowledge about many things without any real depth or mastery
• Yes i know a bit of astrology and i have played decent cricket at some stage of my life
• I make both ends meet by buying and selling things - the professional world calls me a Trader
• That is my daughter - and i recently changed the name of the blog to express my love for her
• No, i am not young
• Yes, i know a bit of music - all forms of organised noise you can call.
• Yes i was confused in life sometime back (i thought confusion was my birth-right and i was exercising it with aplomb at all times)
• No, that's not graphics. That's a real cricket action - The bowler is Dennis Lillee, bowling to a field of 7 slips and two gullys.
• Yes i know a few languages (i know the unparliamentary ones in 7 languages).
• Thank you for those kind words
• Please don't use such language.

No, this one is not from any asylum.  I have been getting lots of mails carrying comments, encomiums and unprintable abuses for whatever i have written in the last 6 months. I exercise my right as owner of this blog and ruthlessly filter them and publish only that i like (hahahahahh) with terrific consistency.  But i always was gnawed by this thought of being unfair to my reader. So you find those one liners. And i am sure it will reach the intended lady and gentleman without any difficulty.  Thanks friends.

Thus Spake

Quoting media headlines:

INDIA PM: WONT SAY HAS NEVER MADE ANY MISTAKES, BUT NOT AS MUCH A CULPRIT AS MADE OUT TO BE

INDIA PM: WAS NOT ABLE TO MAKE UP HIS MIND WHETHER ANYTHING WAS WRONG WITH ACTIONS OF TELECOMS MINISTER DESPITE 2G COMPLAINTS IN 2009

INDA PM: “NOT VERY HAPPY ABOUT” IRREGULARITIES THAT HAVE TAKEN PLACE UNDER HIS WATCH

INDIA PM: SAYS AGREES NEEDS TO IMPROVE QUALITY OF GOVERNANCE

INDIA PM: NOT THINKING OF RESIGNING BECAUSE HAS JOB TO DO, A LOT OF UNFINISHED BUSINESS

My heart bleeds for this man - such a conscientious brilliant central banker / statesman, now forced to hold the apologetic brief.

World Cup Cricket - 2011 Edition

We may have had an overdose of cricket in recent times. Form may have gotten mistaken for class and some minnows may have even defeated a world eleven somewhere but cricket’s best known extravaganza would soon get underway in India, Ceylon and Bangladesh. We have had such a surfeit of cricket that it hardly matters who plays whom.

This tournament is important for me because we may not get to see the likes of Tendulkar, Ponting and Muralitharan playing a world cup again. Happy to be wrong on this. They have been my favorites in any form of cricket and I have had the privilege of watching some great cricket from these legends, sitting in the gallery. I know I invite scorn by admiring Ponting – but who can pull a good length ball over midwicket with such felicity (Viv Richards excepted)

Looking back, we have come a very long way. What started as a Prudential Cup in 1975, the initial three tournaments go down as nostalgic as a black and white movie of yester years – a time when players appeared in white flannels, when there were 60 overs a side, when there were no flood-lit matches, it was the red cherry instead of this white leather, boundaries appeared larger and distant, Walsh would smile even if the batsman was plumb in front as opposed to a Sreeshanth or a Lee today who would stare and deride a batsman to death for missing a nearly wide ball. Bedi would bowl his entire 12 overs non-stop and India almost played three spinners, Mike Brearley and Geoff Boycott played a full tournament. Tony Greig and Mohinder Amarnath have been key bowlers in their games, Gavaskar would take his own time to middle the ball, while Asif Iqbal had more value as a fast runner between wickets than as an all-rounder. There was hardly a difference between test cricket and a limited over international then. Not anymore. Today, one has to deliver even before the game starts.

The game has changed significantly – not just in the areas of rules, dresses and spirit – it has been a thorough overhaul. And the metamorphosis is as palpable as between a go-carting and formula 1 racing. Innovation has been total. It’s just not cricket anymore, it’s more a mental warfare. And an exhibition of high class athleticism and sharp thinking.

With almost 6 weeks of high voltage drama in offing, its time to start looking around to buy colored acrylic wares to match the team of the day. Srilanka should be favorites. There aren’t many Mahelas and Sangakkaras around.

PS: With this fanatic rage for improvisation and innovation, will we end up having a scenario where cricket is played like this: It starts like a test match where the two sides play the first innings. Then instead of the second innings, there is a 50 overs-a-side match. And a 20-20 in the last few hours of the fifth day. If still some time left, a 30 minute hockey match between the two sides. All within the allotted 5 days.

What a Goal

Haven't seen something like this in all my years of soccer watching. Long lilve Wayne Rooney.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq2_4F7BBOU&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sROO1PJQw9g

Doctor, Musicologist and a fan

That was an unforgettable Sunday afternoon.

 

A professional Doctor, a Musicologist (also a music director in some ways) and Yours Truly – all three of us huddled in a small room with nothing but pure music for company. And to keep us steady and sensible, there was this copious flow of ‘fermented liquid extract of barley malt and hops’, supplemented with unlimited supply of hot short-eats. The downpour outside was hardly anything when compared to the one inside.

 

It began with the 1970s AIR releases of Dr Balamurali Krishna’s concerts. Soon we moved to Hisham Abbas and not happy there, we tried the fusion by Sikkil Gurucharan and Anil. It was good but we were in search of ecstasy. I played some of Abida Parveen’s haunting Sufis. The director then explained some of Swathi Thirunal Maharaja’s great compositions. My doctor friend went nostalgic and started crooning the 1980s IR numbers and explained soulfully how he missed singing that great hit of the 1990s – from the movie Criminal. It seems he was to have sung the song but it ended up in SPB in Telugu and Udit (or Kumar Sanu) in Hindi (even if it was just track singing, its an honor boss, I thought)

We discussed what was creativity. We understood how VishalShekar’s nearly national-anthemic ‘My Name is Shiela” had its sheer-coincidental roots in Tommy Roe’s ‘Sweet Little Shiela ‘ or they mentioned something else also which I don’t remember. And how ‘Munni Badnaam’ had many previous versions in our own folk music. I wanted to listen to that “Launda Badnaam..” but could not lay my mouse on. When I mentioned my favorite Pritam’s name, the three of us fought fiercely to reel out songs that have already appeared in history in a different geography. What hurt me most was that the songs of Metro have already been copied by famous singers many years ago (hahahahah). For every hit number I mentioned, the two had one original composition to back up. It looked they had come prepared to counter me everywhere but it was worth learning. Imitation after all is the best form of appreciation I explained.

To prove that my knowledge of music was not less, I started strutting out songs in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and some Malayalam. They corrected me every now and then (hmmmm). Either my lyrics was totally wrong or the tune, messy.  I have started believing that doctors and engineers and chartered accountants make brilliant musicians than the ‘Arts’ guys like me (well, I should actually not be an example for any activity – the other will always look great).

We wound up when we realized what was cooked for lunch was soon running the risk of becoming our following day’s breakfast.

Ps: missed my alter-ego GK on this day. We have done such excursions a number of times in early 2000!!

To hedge $500 a barrel

The cassandras are back with a vengeance it appears.

Someone already asking if oil is headed towards $500. I was laughing with derision when oil was at $85 and my somewhat namesake said it would hit $150.  It did and i ended up eating barrels of humble pie.

Well the issue is not about whether we will go to $500. This piece is about a nice article that has a back-tested proof of a 1:1 correlation between a basket of equally weighted currencies (long) against the dollar(short).   I am not able to lay hands on the original article. And even this chart is not mine. I saved the chart but lost the original article. Visually atleast the correlation looks great...

Chal Diyay

Surfing sometimes helps. Came across this collection of fusion and i would say with humility this particular number in Yaman (yamuna kalyani) did my Bose proud.

Javed Bashir - what a voice. A must for all music lovers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY_LzIAG4gc&feature=player_embedded

Rains are most beautiful here

That sounds more parochial, right?

Rains are beautiful, wherever you are. Having moved to Mauritius recently, i asked my colleagues when was the Summer here - they said i am well here in the peak of summer. I couldn't believe.

Rather than struggling to explain why i was adumbrated on a summer day, i attach a snap of the road i take to reach my office. Its breathtaking - the sight of literally wading through a sea-surrounded land and driving between mountains... God's own second country!!???

Astrology Again

Rahu and Ketu start their movment after a prolonged period of stationary or less-mobile phase between November 2010 and Mid February. This should relieve the pressure for a lot many of us especially for those whose ascendant is around that mystic 8 degree (and an orbit of 1 degree). These have been tense and testing times for some.

Concern is Egypt. This country will be passing through a phase of greater uncertainity and strife beginning this week and well into early  March.  12th Lord Mars is combust and conjunct Sun in 9th.  Shudder to think any further!!

Another Tower of Justice

A friend forwarded a link that had this small story (reproduced below).

  

For hardcore geeks, the WikiLeaks saga should serve as a stimulant to a new wave of innovation which will lead to a new generation of distributed secure technologies (like the TOR networking system used by WikiLeaks) which will enable people to support movements and campaigns that are deemed subversive by authoritarian powers. A really good example of this kind of technological innovation was provided last week by Google engineers, who in a few days built a system that enabled protesters in Egypt to send tweets even though the internet in their country had been shut down. “Like many people”, they blogged, “we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we can do to help people on the ground. Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service – the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.”

 

They worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter and SayNow (a company Google recently acquired) to build the system. It provides three international phone numbers and anyone can tweet by leaving a voicemail. The tweets appear on twitter.com/speak2tweet. 

 

What’s exciting about this kind of development is that it harnesses the same kind of irrepressible, irreverent, geeky originality that characterised the early years of the internet, before the web arrived and big corporations started to get a grip on it. Events in Egypt make one realise how badly this kind of innovation is needed. 

I liked the concept very much. While we do not live in a repressed society, we sure come across day-to-day petty instances of oppression of the weak and fallen or violation of rules and laws or similar such instances when the heart silently bleeds for justice and we get into a mode ‘I know what is right but I cannot help in any way’. It is still worse if we are ourselves victims and do not have the courage to raise a voice, fearing tyranny of the ruler. I have often vicariously lived the thought of going to the huge entrance of a mighty king's palace and pulling the chains tethered to a huge bell that symbolizes ‘The Justice Dispenser’, raising the noise and running away without a trace

Some of my all-time favorites – Part 1

I once had a driver. He always gave me the impression of a frustrated Formula-1 driver – someone who never had the right mix of crew, car, sponsor, luck and above all flexible rules to help him make it to the top. His passion for treating my car as a toy was an understatement. He believed God gave him the right leg only to push the accelerator out of the car. He equally believed that the brake was a redundant spare-part in a car. He would horn anyone to death if he or she came in his way. He would hardly talk, once behind the steering wheel. He never brooked the moving presence of any object ahead of him. He was endowed with the eyes of a hawk, reflexes of a cheetah and the impatience of an African leopard. It is sheer coincidence these comparisions are with the Animal kingdom - the emphasis is on his superior faculties. All these characteristics paled to insignificance in front of his humility and sincerity. He would crush his watch to dust if it showed him he was late to an appointment. And would want to abolish the currency system if anyone tipped him. I dreaded the prospect of seeing the first of any month fall on a Sunday or Public holiday - for i would not know if he would drive me to the cliff of a hill for delayed payment of salary. The risk was equal if i paid him a day earlier - his principles of life would not want him to accept any favor.

One fine day he decided to quit – preferring to work on his farm fulltime. I couldn’t buy a farm for him so let him go. Where will i find another one like him.

[This is the first in the series of my experiences with certain ‘different’ people. Will keep introducing them with a tinge of humor, whenever i find time]

Your's Frugally

In one of its recent articles, EWI talks about ‘frugality fatigue’. I liked the phrase. I like Socionomics and some of the recent research articles in this area are quite fascinating.

The write-up further analyses how the ‘Americans are spending again – whether they can afford or not’, how the common man is consumed by ‘The urge to splurge’ and how the current generation could be different from the one that lived through the Great Depression.

Am not too altruistically inclined to sit on a judgment as to which is most virtuous and why a rational person should be fatigued to save. We (the subcontinent) belong to that minority in the financial world that believes in saving for the generation-next. My dad struggled all his life to save for me (and he need not have done that by any stretch of imagination). My in-laws do that for their daughter. Collectively, me and my wife do it for our daughter. The saga continues. We specialize in inflicting on us maximum pain for minimum comfort. We would plan an extravagant tour of the world and convert all our savings into tour money and would all along be striving to bring back as much as possible, unspent!!! Well, that is frugality at its best (not worst).

If it is true that frugality is being given an unceremonious burial and the world is spending its way out of the current financial crisis, then let me look into the diary noting of my dad and grand-dad and great-grand-dad to find out which school of economics they all belonged to.  And write again about the virtues of being frugally wise.

Whither Lying

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I had my first taste of bringing up modern day children recently. We went to a zoo some weeks ago when Taarinie was not 5 yet. The zoo had free entry for kids under-5. So when I proffered the entry fee for three adults, leaving out our under-5, my little one couldn’t bear the insult (that’s how she must have thought) of free entry and shouted ‘I am 5 appa’. The counter clerk looked at me as if i had plundered a nation and people around me must have thought no less. I had to explain to the zoo authorities that she still had a week and half to go for the Fifth one and it was an accepted practice to round-off to the higher number of age once someone crossed 183 days after a birthday. It was thereafter resolved honorably

But a few questions remain to be answered. Do we parents unwittingly teach our children to tell lies? I remember having gone through such ‘honorable’ practice in my childhood without a protest. I rather inculcated that art of lying across places – cinemas. buses, trains, circuses, sports (entry barrier) – wherever it mattered. And it was an accepted form of smartness. There were friends whose great-grandfathers had once served the police, there were others who had a family member that was in the army during the Indo-Sino war – but they all clamored for some concession or the other. And these past soldiers came in handy to fetch that petty exemption. It was a veritable exercise in falsehood, beautifully cultivated under the garb of thrift. Yes, this was done to save a few pennies or thereabout for the family.

This possibly was the fountain-head for corruption in a way. I may not belong to that tribe of morally defunct characters but I know what my generation must have started off on. Over a period of time, this relaxation in moral standard morphs into moral abyss. And we are lost.

Not this generation. They appear to have started off on a much better footing. More virtuous mores.

The fall of a raja

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Ex-Telecom minister done in?

If one remembered the many reports that appeared in the press or carefully sauntered through various news items and interviews and tidbits and the investigative fare dished out by the fourth estate over the last 18 months, one is indeed disappointed. The most basic of the many questions is how come an individual – who also is a public servant of the highest order – could do it alone and be singularly responsible for a multi-billion dollar scam?

Without much ado, my simple conclusion is that the weakest in any link is always the victim. I don’t understand politics and therefore do not keep track of the strength of the voices that questioned many key decisions around -1G, 0G, 1G, 2G, 2(a)G, 3G…but there is a very rudimentary arithmetic here. The cash flows must surely have raised eyebrows long back. The delay therefore was in figuring out the most acceptable power equation before slamming out the weakest midget in the link!!

Taarinie turns Five

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Time Flies.

Even before we have gone tired of seeing her first birthday album, Taarinie comes over to cut her fifth birthday cake.  A week ago Taarinie turned 5.

Children are amazing. A girl child, all the more. I wouldn't know how terribly boring life would be if only there weren't anything called childhood.  One of the greatest gifts to mankind must be the joys of watching  children grow. And one should consider himself or herself lucky if he or she gets the blessings of God to be living with children and parents together.