Looking Back

I had an amazing opportunity this week to catch up with my friends; it gets more and more amazing as the clock ticks on. I attended the Pan-IIT to engage myself in a few lectures given by some eminent speakers but honestly speaking , in a situation which gave me a chance to catch up with my friends , Pan-IIT was naturally demoted to the backdrop and became an excuse to be there with due course of time.
We did everything that we would have done if we still were living a hostel life. The night outs , late night movies , LAN gaming, playing cards , playing football and getting drunk a little , all these found a place in our busy schedule.
But something which had never struck me before, which perhaps has occurred to others earlier, was that the reunion was so much more enjoyable because we were due for one. One really begins to miss something when one is not there is an age old cliché and one enjoys something when that something has been grabbed away is something I’m beginning to experience. The reunions would not make a difference to us if they occur with a considerable regularity. Though sporadic reunions might make one poignant after they end, the joy they provide is unparalleled.
So is it time, I quit Mexican food for some time or stop watching football for a few months so that I enjoy them with boundless joy the next time I catch up with them?

A humbling experience

 

Me and a couple of my friends set out to Sukhwar, a village which is around 15 km from Virar on the other side of the center of the city. We chalked out a detailed plan to start by 6 am the day before the expedition. As usual none of the plans got realized and we set out on our journey at around 8.45, a full two and half hours late. We reached the Shri Ramakrishna meditation center, in Khar, to talk to a certain Maharaj who promised to arrange a vehicle for us which would take us to the village. But thanks to the inherent virtue and sin as some might say, sloth, the bus left before we even reached the place. What followed was a very tiring yet very satisfying journey.We took an auto to the nearest station, i.e. Khar and waited there for half an hour only to be put off by the mad crowd in the station. The trains, on a Sunday morning, were filled with like insects and we couldn’t even get our hand in. So we had to change our plans and had to take a train to Andheri from which we boarded another train to Virar. This consumed one and half hours of time we had for the rest of the day. We, quite inevitably, messed it up once again after we reached Virar. We always chose the wrong path at every bifurcated junction. We had to keep ourselves up and walking in that scorching heat by taking a lot of fluids. We finally found an auto driver, a totally dishonest one though, who was ready to drop us near a national highway which would lead us to our destination. We took a lift from a tempo driver and just when we thought we overcame all the hurdles, we were asked us to stand in a plaster filled space at the rear of the vehicle.

 

We reached Sukhwar at around 13.30 hours, a well 3 hours behind the schedule. There we got the opportunity to meet the head of the Ramakrishna Mission Center who was very kind to us for the rest of our stay there. We then briefed him about the purpose of our visit and how we wish to contribute in our own way for the upliftment of the tribal in and around that place. He provided us with quite a few invaluable inputs and repeatedly emphasized on the need for having a clear goal. We had the opportunity to interact with a few students there who are getting trained for various vocations. I must admit that that one was one of the most humbling experiences for each one of us. We were taken aback by the practical knowledge in motor engineering that some of the students possessed and for once the fact that we are IITians did not matter to us.

I would continue writing about the implications of the visit and how we had to rephrase and rethink our vision as a part two of this exercise.  

Updates

It has exactly been a week since we launched our football blog, EarlyKickoff. I must admit the initial response has been very encouraging and very heart warming. It is going strong and we hope it can only be on the upward curve from now. We still have a few problems regarding the regularity of the posts and the number of visitors but the signs have been encouraging , we are slowly picking up. Well moderating the blog has certainly made me a lot nicer to people and has certainly taken a lot out of me.I need to put an extra effort to sound as nice as possible everytime I address a visitor on the blog. 

We have registered 16 posts so far in 6 days and that definitely is promising. 

Coming on to this blog , I have been very inactive on this blog. The last one i wrote, Contradictions,was on Sept 10 and decided to post only a few days back. But i would be back with a bang in a few days with my new series called 'The Bi Chronicles'. I can promise you that it would be one hell of a read 

Early Kick Off

There has been some kind of inactivity of late in this blog because of the launching of our (me and my IIT friends) very own football blog. We called it Earlykickoff.

 We wish to present the analysis of the matches, the club news etc from a perspective different from the stereotypical analysis that we get to hear nowadays from the pundits in various T.V channels. We wish to keep it as different as possible from the innumerous football blogs that already exist. We wish to make our blog popular not through advertising but through the quality of the posts. Though it appears I’m publicizing my football blog , I just wanted you all to know that there is a new blog in the town which am sure would not disappoint you in any way.

 So hope the readers enjoy the new football blog and as always suggestions are delightfully welcomed.

 http://www.earlykickoff.blogspot.com/

Contradictions

Ratan Tata said he was not happy with the never ending Singur issue when Mamata Banerjee caved in and vice versa, John McCain appoints the inexperienced Sarah Palin as his running mate when he himself is guilty of accusing Barack Obama of being inexperienced, Liverpool FC had to defeat Manchester United , their fiercest rivals, in their own backyard after seven years when two of their best players in the last decade did not start,  the tiles of the floors in most of the HP petrol bunks resemble Shell’s logo, Tendulkar, arguably the best Indian cricketer ever was absent when the Indian team won a World Cup, the federal bank decided no to save Lehman brothers from bankruptcy even though its chairman , Richard Fuld, serves on the board of Federal bank, Heath Ledger was sadly robbed of  the opportunity to see the response  to his best performance ever, Kurt Cobain, the most celebrated guitarist and rock star, was never long enough to woo his fans with his music. 

 

What’s the connect to all these? All these highlight the contradictions which rule our lives. These highlight the spice that unpredictable turn of events such as these add to our lives. What is the thrill in driving a car on a lonely highway day after day? What is the point in running a lonely never ending race where you don’t face a single hurdle?

 

Imagine a world without the contradictions, where one would lead such a mechanical life that one would have to be oiled for every ten days for proper functioning. In reality, in this world we might be rusty, we might not be the smoothly functioning machines but we do give strange outputs that have kept even the best of psychologists thinking. Imagine a world without any sort of contradictions and Sigmund Freud would have been jobless. 

 

Though we hate the unexpected turn of events which keep happening in our lives, we wish we would never be deprived of such contradictions.

C(rock)ed....

 

 

Amidst the Singur ‘land wars’, Tata has promised to give the people of this country a car worth just one lakh.Manmohan Singh promises us that the Nuclear deal would be beneficial to the country and would not make India America’s slave. John McCain hails himself as the ideal candidate to actually force a change in the working system of America. Many of these promises might be fulfilled, many not, but there is one promise which failed to fulfill. Indian movie buffs have been promised to be shown India’s first rock movie. ‘Rock On’ has been widely advertised as India’s first rock movie. The movie disappointed me in that aspect. The movie had everything that a movie buff would enjoy- a crisp screenplay, good performances, neat and unassuming direction. There were a few moments in the movie which particularly second my point. The movie couldn’t have ended in a better way. The decision to actually end the movie without showing the fate of the band in their last performance, in particular, would have been well welcomed by the movie buffs. Turn back the clock to the 90’s and one would have had to go through the tedious melodrama towards the end. Rob would fall down while playing the Casio and would still insist that the show must go on and the others in the ensemble would finish the performance with a tear or two in their eyes. Instead the film makers decided to show the joy that a band gets out of presenting their pieces to the audiences. They did not make it unrealistic by showing the band as the undisputed no.1 in the country. They, quite gladly, refrained from showing us the result of the competition.

 

Did they (filmmakers) satisfy even the average rock fan? This would definitely be the next point to be debated upon. Over the years we have come to associate rock and its stars with a certain kind of attitude, an attitude that some would love to posses. The rebellious nature of the rock stars is well known. The real rock stars are those who don’t conform or have never conformed to the norms of the society. They have always expressed what they felt about a particular situation either through their controversial lyrics or through their forthright interviews. The rock stars have expressed their views about politics, nature, history, love and many more. While some songs question their sanctity the others urge us to completely break away from the chains of the society. Rock stars are not just about strumming their guitars and making a heavy metal song, they are about their persona and they are about their attitude. In short rock stars don’t compromise and this where the story of Rock On differs from a rock movie. The characters in the movie make compromises and defend those. They finally fall in the booby trap of the society. They never let their desires take a form which would be controlled only by them.   I had my friend translate the lyrics for me and they rather don’t fall in the bracket of rock songs barring ‘Sinbad the sailor’. They neither create an aura nor do they stir you up.

 

The movie is a wonderful watch without a shadow of doubt but whether it is actually India’s first rock movie ever is hugely contentious. I guess the ardent fans of the rock would actually agree with my ‘average rock fan’ views. 

All not quiet on the Western Front

 

 

Chapter 1: I have a dream 

Finally the day had arrived where I could be myself.  I could do all that I ever wished to do, realize a dream which if unrealized would long haunt me to death. I had everything in place and I just had to pull the trigger. I knew my desires would be oppressed as they have been ever since I smelt the soil of this land, redolent of an Eden. But that day I had pulled myself up , pulled  my socks up, pulled up everything that could be pulled, pushed down everything that could be pushed except for my dream and undying spirit. I, with great courage and utmost determination which has always been the hallmark of great revolutionary leaders, pulled out my cell phone from my pocket, dialed my friend’s number and asked him to accompany me to a pub. That was a point of no return, he couldn’t tolerant my perseverance and finally my friend, who stands on the opposite side of the spectrum as I do when it comes to drinking, had to cower accepting my demands.

 

That was how we landed in the Café Mondegar (hope I spelt it right). We got ourselves what I always wanted to; drinking Cobra, Budweiser and Tiger on the same day. We took the day slowly; we took the drinks slowly until we realized that there were three girls sitting right next to us and who seemed interesting. Of course we concluded that they were interesting because they were matching us in every step, every drink that we ordered. We were three, they were three single ladies and we decided to dive ourselves into something that eventually turned out to be a mess up.

 

Chapter 2: My friends said

 

My friends said I had to give the ‘freedom speech’ yet again and it was time for me to pull my weight. But I insisted it was time for someone to take over the responsibility and how glad was I when I saw my friend putting his hand up. My friend then went through a myriad of options, he came up with countless pick up lines, I for one had never seen him thinking so brilliantly under pressure. He even came up with the idea of writing his lines on a tissue rather than blurting them out. Though I failed to understand the logic behind such a pick up I excused him for that day as he was half way through the stairway to heaven by then. Finally my friend gathered the courage to ask them about a disc, they were more than willing to give away all the information about the discs in that area but had not shown an iota of interest in accompanying us. So we let them go, rather they sped away from there. This was my freedom day, how could I end it so badly, I suggested that we should hunt for a disc which would allow stags.

 

Chapter 3: So then we began

 

So then we began our earnest search to find a disc which would give us an entry. All our efforts were in vain as all the bouncers at the discs would brush away with their little fingers. We waited at one particular disc hoping that a few girls would lose their minds to come to the disc all by themselves without a huge guy taking care of them. We had fun time just gawking at some of them, but we had the hollowness in us just like a hunter would have when all he can do is just admire his prey from a distance. 

 

Chapter 4: Unbreakable 

 

Unbreakable was the word which could have perhaps best described our optimism that day.  “We need to do better than this” said my friend. The rest nodded, fearing to go against that opinion for one might have been tagged as a spoilsport if the opinion differed. So I called up my friend to see if we could after all get to see light at the end of the tunnel. My friend dropped in the name of a disc which showed some mercy on stags.

Red Light that was the name. That day it appeared to us that the name could be associated only with the disc that we were in search for. We went about the final phase of our ‘glorious day’ asking the taxi drivers for the address. We never, for once, mentioned to the taxi drivers that we were looking for a disc by that name. Hence what ensued should be quite predictable. We were led into dark streets which had the foulest smell one would want to avoid. Our optimism was never shattered until we came across huge walls which read ‘prohibited area’. We suddenly became sober; we realized where we ended up and took the first taxi back home.

Ewew

It has exactly been a month since I set out to travel across the horizon, to the west from the east, from the ‘city of joy’ to the ‘city of undying spirit’. People in Mumbai and Kolkata are so apart from each other as is the west from the east.

In Kolkata I have witnessed the laid back attitude of the people and in Mumbai the dynamic lifestyle. Do people ever sleep in this city?

I grew up learning Kolkata as the city of garbage unlike the epithet given by Dominique Lapierre. To my surprise I found the part of Kolkata where I was residing to be pretty neat!! . Then came my curious mind into functioning or rather it started malfunctioning , I came with a theory which explained why the Bengalis take so much delight in using the word ‘crap’. That has been imbibed into their system, I reckon after seeing the streets of the city. The reason being the average number of dustbins per street in the city is way less than half my CGPA. There is a friend of mine who takes great delight in collecting others’ litter and throwing it into the dustbin himself. The dustbins were so few in the city that he would end up walking miles with bulging pockets!! My company , which likes to believe that it is one of the world’s top companies, doesn’t have a dustbin on the entire ground floor.

The laidback attitude of the people there is pretty damn infectious, you virtually end up having a ball of a time when in fact the script suggests otherwise. I was there when there was a bomb scare in the city and the people were so nonchalant about it and played the threat down with ease, some were even anticipating it to happen like my cook in the guest house where I was staying. You just end up appreciating that kind of an attitude.

 

When I just started to enjoy the city courtesy to the new friends I made over there, I was handed a ticket to Mumbai by my employers. The transition from the slow paced life of Kolkata to the ever running life of Mumbai was quite an ordeal for the first few days. But this city has that buzzing enthu about it that you start to love the place. Of course I have been helped all the way by a few incidents.

Vignettes from the West:

 

In Mumbai, so far I have been like a two faced guy, much like Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight. I have a ball of a time after my office hours but when in office I’m as bored as a child in the 2^nd grade who is being told about Einstein’s relativity as part of his story telling class. I had to break away from the shackles of ennui and hence I decided to take a few days off, in other words decided to bunk. So firstly I zeroed in on the ‘bunk days’ quite prudently considering my ‘Nirvana sessions’. I call my sessions of watching Manchester United play during the weekends as the ‘Nirvana sessions’ for the joy that they bestow upon me. Then I decided to not wear a tie until I’m up and running and handling a project all by my self.

1.Then quite smartly I decided to do something which gave me great joy for the first few days though I regret it now. I started to come to the company when the sun is in the overhead position. That meant I could sleep for an extra couple of hours and I had my room mates green eyed. After all the boredom in the office I would leave the premises even before the sun thinks about setting. This joy of making my selves more useless to the company went on for over a week and then a sharp thought struck me. I realized then that I was actually living a life of a homemaker for all that week, a house wife who would first send away her husband and kids and then get herself ready for the gruesome day that’s in store for her, a house wife who would go to the market to get some vegetables, a house wife who would find her maid as the only person whom she can talk to. Now I have to unlock my self from this situation and then go through my post house wife rehabilitation programme.

 

Red Devil Zone

Disclaimer: The following post is strictly restricted to the section of people who practice MUFC as their religion and consider Old Trafford as their Mecca. People from other religions go ahead at your own risk.

“The champions of Europe, the champions of England, they have reached the promised land”, how sweet were those words !!. It certainly gives me Goosebumps hearing those words time and again. As Sir Alex Fergusson always put it the fans of this great club, Manchester United, should have heard, should be hearing those sweet words more often.
Now that the new season has begun by now most of us must have gotten over the euphoria of ‘the double’ partly thanks to the transfer saga of the one and only Ronaldo.
Without much ado, here is what I expect from each of the squad members this season and their average ratings:

Goalkeepers

EVDS: One more year left in the contract, still going strong. There are absolutely no signs which suggest that he will be turning 40 next year. One of the very few players to reach their peaks twice in their glittering careers. Usually fades out as the season goes, but it should be different this time around thanks to the younger talented lot. 7/10
FOSTER: Will not start when fully fit , but having EVDS as a mentor will do him a world of good. Touted as England no.1 for years to come and I don’t expect him to disappoint. Will become a regular towards the end of the season. 7/10
Kuszczak: Foster will limit his chances this season, but will get cup games hopefully. Will compete with Foster. 6/10

Defenders

RIO: Arguably the best centre half in the world at the moment. Expecting him to have another great season. Mostly would be handed the captain’s armband by the end of the season. After Ronnie he was the best player last season, he shouldn’t be too far from the best this season either. 8/10
VIDIC: ‘Nemenja, he’ll fucking murder ya’. That’s said and done about him. 8/10
EVRA: Becoming a fan favorite with his runs up and down the left flank. He is expected to become a better defender this year as he sometimes gets caught out of position. Would add another dimension to United’s attack if he can improve his crossing. Expecting him to have another cracker. 8/10
BROWN: The return of Red Nev will limit his chances as a right back but is an excellent deputy to the back line. Will not feature as prominently as last season but will give solid performances when ever needed as he always has. 6/10
Red Nev: The captain returns, so will the attack from the right side of the pitch. Great to have him back. 6/10
O’SHEA: John-any position-O’shea will get another winner at Anfield. Nothing more is expected from him. He would continue his old Trafford career as long as he scores against the scousers. 5/10
EVANS: With the departure of Pique, he’ll definitely get his chances to show his mettle. I expect him to be ready to push Rio and Vida next season. 6/10
The TWINS: Rafael to get a few chances, Fabio in the reserves. I expect one of them to be converted as a winger come the end of season. 6/10

Midfielders

SCHOLES: A little old to be as influential as the old Scholes but will add to the creativity as usual. With the all the first choice mids out injured Scholes will have to guide the team in the first half of the season and I expect him to do that with ease. 7/10
CARRICK: Injured for the first two weeks. Will become the man to pull the strings in the middle this season. He has improved over the last 2 yrs and this should be his season and would eventually fill the gap that would be created when Scholes leaves. Expecting a more consistent season from him. 8/10
HARGREAVES: With a summer off to rest his crocked knee, this should be the season where he shows his worth and the reason why SAF pursued over him for a year. 7/10
ANDERSON: He would arrive this season. He just exploded last season and I expect nothing different from him this season. I believe the first goal for him would open the floodgates. Would be missed for the first 2 matches but after that, with carrick and hargo injured, mid field should be his. 9/10
FLETCHER: Will feature prominently for the first few months and will once again up his game for the big matches. Going by the charity shield and the game against the barcodes, there is a new added composure to his game. 6/10
POSSEBON: Looks like class act, a young Carrick. Should become a better player by the start of the next season. 6/10
RONALDO: Almost the Judas , he would be dearly missed for the first two months and even more so if SAF fails to sign a striker.Some question his commitment to the team but I don’t expect anything short of 100 % as he is too proud a man to be second best. If Manutd stay in the title race until October, Ronnie’s return will take them to the promised land once again. I just hope he doesn’t swap his red jersey for the white one by the end of the season. 8/10
NANI: Big things expected. Would become the mainstay of the team this season. Should give some width and attacking flair. I expect him to have a good season. 8/10
GIGGS: Probably his last. Should be around to guide the young ones and lend his experience to the team. It would be a great gift to the younger players if he can transfer some of his first touch skills, as they are still amongst the best in the business. 6/10
PARK: Once fit should help the team. I expect nothing from him, but would be a big bonus if he can get us some goals. 6/10

Attack

ROONEY: If SAF signs a striker who can play up on his own, then I expect this season to be Rooney’s. He was phenomenal in the 05/06 season playing behind Van the Man .Once he gets back his best position, operating just behind another striker; we’ll get to see the devastating Wazza once again. 8/10
TEVEZ: Looked devastating in the pre season and in the shield match. If he stays fit for the entire season, he should have a cracker of a season. 9/10
CAMPBELL: Will the get the cup games, looked lively in the game against the Magpies . Not yet the United material who can lead the line, but at 20 he is good enough to be the 4th choice striker. 6/10
SAHA: Only if we can trade him for glass. 4/10.
MYSTERY STRIKER: 10/10

U for ......

After having stayed for more than a week in Mumbai, I realized that the two most quintessential things needed to survive, in this part of the fast-paced India, are: a house and an umbrella. I’ll give you the reason I wanted to rant a bit about an umbrella.
I was hugely convinced by the incessant rains of Mumbai and as well as by my friend to get an umbrella for myself. What I didn’t realize before stepping my foot out in the pursuit of one was that to buy an umbrella in that kind of weather, I had to possess one. Surely one of the many paradoxes of this world. To buy an umbrella, you first need to have something to protect you from the rain in this kind of weather.

And then I began to wonder about an umbrella which otherwise I wouldn’t have.

There are many words which start with the alphabet ‘u’ but easily the most famous word amongst them must be ‘umbrella’. It’s at least the first word that I learnt amongst the aforementioned lot. I gradually started to get the grip of the word with the correct pronunciation of it and also the use of it in this otherwise compact world. I started out pronouncing it as ‘ooh-m-bu-re-lla’ and then moved onto ‘ooh-m-bre-lla’ and then finally to ‘umbrella’. I admire the word umbrella for it is referred to as ‘an umbrella’. I have this grudging admiration for all the words which need to be addressed by a special article ‘an’. It kind of gives them the respect for being one of the few elite words to addressed so.
Think of the space an umbrella occupies when it is in its functioning mode. An umbrella reminds us of ourselves, the dull boring and constrained life when not in use, strapped and put in the corner of a room. Then suddenly springs open when asked to protect us. That is of course the job description of an umbrella. It takes great pleasure in basking in the rainy days, letting its wings caress each drop of the downpour. An umbrella actually reminds us of the Yin-yang of this world; it reminds us of the two sides of the spectrum. On one side it is the humans, not all though, who wouldn’t want to get wet and on the other side it is the species of umbrella who want to get wet to see the world.

.

Open Sandwich

I was fooling around in a coffee café just about to plunge into a much needed sleep and then I got distracted by a dish that my friend had ordered. For starters, yours truly and his friends have lunches and dinners too in the coffee shop!!!. I looked at the dish and it reminded of a colourful yet wasteful Karan johar song. I could have chosen to fall into a slumber then, but I, with my boundless curiosity, asked the name of the dish. In a jiffy, came the reply from my friend and it spoiled my entire sleep schedule for that day.

I, with my limited intelligence, questioned the name of the dish. It’s called ‘Open Sandwich’. I still fail to understand, how could it be called a sandwich when it is open?. How could a dish which is not being pressed against two bread slices be called a sandwich?. One thing for certain, I could realize then that it would continue to haunt me for the rest of the day. I wore the ‘open sandwich ‘ glasses for the rest of the day and tried to get a perspective of life around me from that angle.

I started to like the phrase ‘open sandwich’ . Isn’t life an open sandwich?. I could relate everything around me with the new found metaphor.Infact , now I begin to think that we were all programmed to work in an open sandwich atmosphere.

That made me look back at our placement interviews and one of the most frequently asked questions was about our strengths and weaknesses. I always felt that that’s the most stupid question that one can come up with . Take out the context of an interview from that question and it makes the interviewer seem much more idiotic than what the interviewee is supposed to. What does the question check by the way , ones bragging rights or honesty ? if the question is being asked to check ones honesty , then I haven’t heard a more stupid thing since George Bush claimed himself to be the ‘messiah’ of this world.

My friends were always at ease to answer this question , but I for one always struggled to come up with an answer for my strengths. I just could not talk about my strengths as I never pushed myself to the limits. I can never answer what my strengths are , I feel like am another average over confident guy who feels he can attain anything. I would be the first one to tell you what my weaknesses are as I know what I cant do , but am not sure as to what all I can do.

Probably there is a super hero in me, probably am Superman or Spiderman , probably I have the ability to fly , but I can never tell if that’s true unless I decide to abandon my parachute while jumping or cut the string off in a bungee jump.

So the ‘open sandwich’ theory tells us that we never know what our limits are , we don’t know where the boundary for infinity lies, but we know where the ‘zero’ horizon lies. We are programmed to be always in an open sandwich , we love to be in an open sandwich relationship. How many times haven’t guys prayed to just remove the upper slice of bread from their congested relationships with even more suffocating girl friends.

For all the rant that is there here for a simple dish named open sandwich , I’ll never again curse the guys who come up with such innovative names for their dishes .But unlike a Karan Johar movie, the open sandwich tastes as delicious as the look of it promises to be.

Golf on t.v , SOS

I ask people what is the most boring thing that can be telecasted on TV. Obviously you expect the guys to shoot off saying all the 5000 episode serials, never ending murder trials .You can in a way call it perdition to the guys watching along with their visceral mothers, sisters, grandmothers, great grandmothers. Well hell yes! even great -grandmothers, if they can survive in a 5000 episode serial surely they can do it outside the reel life!!!.

And what do we expect the fairer sex to say? Sports, news, history channels and so on? Hell yeah right yes, only if they were so interested in topics other than the mascaras. I just hate girls who say they hate sports. On the contrary I just love anyone who says that he/she hates GOLF.

Ohh before you actually shut down your window and complain saying why in the name of lord am I reading about a sport called golf, here it is - you never complained to your teacher when you were in history classes, you never complained to professors when you were learning about probabilistic determination of active ions in a polymer oxide. Hence you should never crib reading about a sport called ‘golf’

Golf requires just a ball, a stick and a hole. Now that combination usually excites people (oops did I say ‘usually excites’? that combination gives us more than the odd thrill isn’t it?) but not so when they are being used in a sport called ‘golf’.

If some one is dead interested in swinging a stick and striking a dead ball, then why play golf, come to me , I’ll show you a hundred oddballs whom I want to get knocked down by a swing of the stick. If some one is so interested in striking something with a stick, come to me, I have a job for you. All you have to do is take a full swing of your stick and strike it on my professor’s skull.

Before I even continue ranting about this ‘sport’ I cant help but question why is it in the first place called a sport at all. I believe it is as much as a disgrace to sport as it is to those beautiful lawns.

Coming back to what I started off with, how can some one actually watch an event like golf on t.v ? . When ever it is telecasted, I just feel like going and grabbing the player on the circuit and question him as to why he chose this way to torture us, couldn’t he come up with a more peaceful idea? Well people who play golf told me to give the game a few chances, well I did. On a number of occasions I sat down with a spicy chips packet to watch the totally non-spicy golf. I finished packets of those chips before the player actually swung his stick even once!. And finally when he finishes doing that, he gets a round of applause! for what? Just swinging a stick?. Well is this the easiest way to fame?. I can’t believe that the players actually assume that the rounds of applause that they get are for appreciation. They just are ‘thank you applauses’. Else why do you think the players get applauded even after a bad shot?. One begins to wonder if the audiences in a golf game are the most boring people on earth. But soon the audience reminds us that they are only second to the players on that list and hence the thank-you applauses for topping the boring charts. Once a player finishes his stroke, he is cheered on thanking him for taking the burden of being the most boring.

Actually this leads me to another theory; I’ve actually become a fan of this sport now!!!!

Lets call this theory ‘golf save our soul’ and this is how it works:

Girl friend: Ohh, you are the most boring I know. Let’s end it.

Guy: please wait a few days, there is a golf tournament coming up in the town, I’ll take you there and you’ll realize that I’m not bad.

That is the reason people come to watch golf. If you observe the audience carefully in a golf game, you can see the transformation of grim faces into cherubic, full of life ones. That is why you barely see intimate scenes between the couples in the audience, but by the end of the day they are all over each other.

So though golf still remains the most boring to watch on T.V it can serve as an escape route for many of us.

P.S: Statutory warning: Take a girl to a golf game only if your relation with her hit rock bottom, else you’ll end up taking your relation to the abyss.

stay there ...

when people ask me to give my favourite one- liner this is what i tell them -
' wait in the shadows for your time'

i had always grown up listening one liners like 'never say die' or 'never give up' or other than these cliche one liners the most hackeneyed of them all is ' tough get going when the going gets tough' , but i have been largely influenced by a song from the 'rasmus' . a few lines in a song of thiers ( in the shadows) go this way ...

i have been working ,
i have been waiting in the shadows for my time
i have been searching,i have been living
for tomorrows all my life.

picking a few things from these lines my favourite one-liner goes this way
' wait in the shadows for your time and then strike hard'

In life whatever we deal with , we always care for what comes first and whats the best that can happen . thats how we human beings have been designed to think and function , get the best and think about the best possible thing . Well this kind of thinking isnt ad at all , the point that i want to drive home is that in a world where there are no points to second place , we have defined a word ' the underdogs' because we fear the worst from the underdogs, because we fear something extraordinary from them

some one whos tipped off to acheive something might actually do it in an ordinary and still might find his destiny whereas you get moments that take your breath away from the underdogs, something extraordinary , something inconceivable.

so better preffer the tag of an underdog and then deliver the killer blow.

wait in the shadows for your time , be an underdog , and then strike hard