A S H I F I C A T I O N

A Hiatus Is In Order

In cricket there is a saying. You should leave when people ask why, not when people ask why not. I have noticed and many of you who visit this page regularly have also noticed that my penchant for blogging has been on a continuous and noticeable decline. The zest I had for active maintenance for this cyberhome of mine no longer exists.

There are always priorities in life. Some pressing, some passing. I have mine too. Some of them don't fit into the blogging scheme of things. I have a life, a routine, not all of which is for this world to have a peek into. There is a difference between private thoughts and public expression. Right now, I have enough on my hands, none of which I think needs public expression. It's not that I have fallen into a spiral of existential thought processes. But right now I can't come to terms with updating these pages often enough.

I also didn't want this page to be a semi-serious effort. I mean I have spent quality time on it in the past and if I can't sustain that, it would lead to an inconsistent picture. Inconsistency is one characteristic I have never been fond off.

Hence I have decided to take a break. I can't say how long it would be. I can be back in a month's time or in a few month's time or never. I am not taking the blog down completely just in case I return. I would probably still continue to write on the Living In India pages, to which this blog has been a contributor, assuming there is a way to do that without updating the blog.

For those of you who have been dropping here, thank you for all the visits, comments, emails and support. If I am back here, I hope the patronage continues. Else I am always available on the email.

Good Bye for now and God Bless.

Hoist By Its Own Petard?

In the age of Googlemania, I accidentally stumbled upon this. I am sure I am not the first one to check this, however the tech wiz kids from Google surely haven't caught up themselves.

Try searching for search engines (without quotes) and see where Google is listed on the results.

Now try searching for web search (again without quotes) and see again where Goole is listed on the results.

Things don't really change much if you search for the words above as a phrase (ie with quotes).

Interesting?

Spare Inzy

It is almost always very easy to get carried away. Especially when the context is an India - Pakistan cricket match. After the great cricketing treat in Karachi and a loss for home team, Pakistani media has got carried away.

Be it the hoi polloi or the know alls, everyone has been blaming the skipper Inzy for the decision to send in India first on what turned out to be a peach of a wicket. Let's not forget that despite allowing India to pile up a seemingly mammoth total, Pakistan fought tooth and nail courtsey Inzy. You might see many more great one day innings, and this one was right up there played under trumendous pressure.

When Inzy burst on to the International scene in 1992 World Cup, Imran Khan had said that he was the best player in the world ahead of Sachin, Lara and Mark Waugh. It was rubbished off as a characteristically arrogant and baseless Imran statement. Time has proved Imran wrong anyway. However, there is no doubt that Inzy has been a force to reckon with. His 37 ball 60 odd in the 1992 World Cup semifinal which rocked the unassailable Kiwi boat, announced his arrival on the big stage. Since then he has been a consistent performer for Pakistan. Most importantly he has won them matches (the 314 chase against Australia in the Salim Malik tainted series at home) and by Pakistani standards has remained uncontroversial. Both those are big achievements in Pakistan cricket.

Now Inzy the captain had won 14 out of 19 matches before Karachi (though critics would say 7 were against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe). That's not too bad a record. However after Karachi loss, Ramiz Raja the CEO of PCB made a public statement saying Inzy is not a good tactician "unlike Ganguly" and is a poor captain. Why would you want to do that when such a crucial series has just started?! Almost every ex-player and reporter criticized Inzy's decision to bowl first. But then weren't Shoaib and Sami touted as the "difference between India and Pakistan" before the series?

I have never really been a Inzy fan. However, to his credit, he has been in the Pakistani team for 12 years almost continuously and in general kept the momentum in Pakistani batting going across both forms of cricket for all those years.

It is very easy to guess what would be written in the Indian press if something like Karachi happens to India in the forthcoming matches. How thick should be the captain's skin in the subcontinent. Oh, but if we were to believe a certain cricket fan from Toronto, Inzy doesn't really have a thick skin, does he? We would soon know, the fun has just begun.

Just Doesn't Get Bigger Than This

No, just doesn't. When India chased 325 in NatWest final against England and won, I was grooved to the television. When India chased 360 in Joburg in the World Cup final agaisnt Australia and lost, I was grooved to the television. When India defeated Australia in Adelaide, I spent five sleepless nights in UK to follow the score on Teletext.

But 30,000 fans in National Stadium Karachi, quite a few of them Indian, 693 runs in a single ODI and an Indian victory. Just a game? Whoever said that must be kidding big time.

Sachin standing tall and driving Shoiab to the long off for four. Sehwag smashing every bowler to every corner of the ground. Ganguly's flat six in front of the wicket off a pull. Sublime Rahul Dravid, as always. Confident return to International cricket for Kaif. Silken smooth? No, it wasn't over. Imran Farhat's short but promising knock. Yohanna's brute power. Inzi's glorius knock, one of the best ever ODI innings, Younis Khan and Abdul Razaaq's determination. Kaif's catch - this is what makes cricket the greatest game of them all.

Today, Ganguly threw himself on the field over. Inzi converted ones to twos and ran like his life depended on every of them. Shoaib said Well Played to Dravid as he walked past after a disappointed dismissal but characteristically great innings. Indians were applauded by the crowd for every good performance. Hardly any sledging took place. The tiranga flew side by side the Pakistani flag in the City of Dawood, the nemesis of subcontinent peace. Indians applauded the crowd after the match. Families - children and ladies - filled the stands. And most importantly India finally struggled, bumped and finally snatched a victory from the jaws of, well, victory!

Spare a thought for Ashish Nehra. He has since already said that it was the biggest over of his life. He was right, for had he put one ball in wrong spot, Irfan Patel would have been playing the rest of the four games. 49.5 overs bowled, 6 runs to score. 1 ball, 6 runs. It HAS happened before. The person who did it was vehemently waving from the pavillion asking Moin Khan to make room and hit over extra cover.

1 ball, 6 runs... Circa 1986. Sharjah. Chetan Sharma ran in to Javed Miandad. 1 ball, 4 to win for Pakistan. A low full toss by Chetan Sharma. Miandad got under it perfectly, ball hit the sweet spot of his bat and went out of long on boundary. Mianded ran to his teammates, having played the shot of his life. And Indian cricket ran into a shell at twice the speed. For amost a decade and half, that one shot sent Indian cricket into a negative spiral of underachievement and we became the biggest chokers on the international stage. We conceded all psychological advantage to Pakistan after that match year after year, match after match. After that shot was played I remember I had run out of the house in disgust and anger and a neighbour had asked me what happened. Would I feel like running off from the game again today?

Back to 2004. Ashish Nehra comes in to ball to Moin Khan. 1 ball, 6 runs. Butterflies, nerves, trembling hands, sweat, hope and disappointment separated by a whisker - enough triggers to fall into a long silent depression or launch into a an ecstatic shout on one cue. Nehra delivers, oh no, a low full toss yet again. Moin looked determined but as he went through with the shot, one hand comes off the bat. Phew... a one handed swing isn't good enough to send the ball outside the ropes. Not if you aren't Viv Richard or Javed Mianded. 1-0.

Chewing your nails, shouting for each Indian boundary and fall of each Pakistani wicket, the tension, the urge to see India victorious, the undivided attention, the dismay when the phone rings with Pakistan needing 17 off 12 balls, and the contentment on an Indian victory.

Each match a cliffhanger, each moment a humdinger. Just doesn't get bigger than this.

Let Blue Prevail, Politics Asisde

Indian cricket team is finally in Pakistan. After arranging for the 1977-78 tour after two decades of abstinence, this is the second time, Vajpayee, then the Foreign Minister, has used the cricket diplomacy to improve relations with Pakistan.

Recently I came across a nice article in some Pakistani newspaper, which suggested that India should lose the series in Pakistan. This would make the Pakis feel like having an upper hand in the most important front of Indo-Pak bilateral ties, and then it would be easier for the political establishment to backtrack on Kashmir. In other words, create a cricketing equivalent of feel-good and extrapolate that for normalizing diplomatic relations. Extreme thought? Well, Pakistanis were always obsessed with India.

What surprises me though is that we are equally obsessed with Pakistan, in many ways irrationally. Look at the television and almost everywhere there is a story on how the commoners have treated the visitors with respect and dignity. Pick up any magazine, specially the sports ones, and you would have someone going down memory lane recounting the homely experienes they had across the border. Won't you ask yourself - "Isn't that normal?".

If a reporter or a writer visits Lahore and finds the chaat delicious or the people helpful, is it unusual? Or if a shopkeeper treats a visitor with usual deference, is that strange? I would assume that every society has a mix of people and Pakistani society would be no different. In general, we are also brought up on the premise of hating Pakistanis and things won't be different across the border. However as you read about the past and interpret them, you would tend to form educated opinions. And educated opinions are very likely to be moderate here or there. Every time we say, ok Karachi is like Mumbai, or Lahore is like Delhi, we are only stating the obvious. The two countries share a common past, and we just need to accept it at face value and shift focus to continuous peace initiatives.

If the ties between India and Pakistan are to be normalized, things have to go beyond the fluff of bonhomie and get more concrete. Free movement of people is a good start, but let's not get carried away if a delegation of visiting Indians is offered free kulfi in Lahore. Magnanimity is in no short supply in our country, and I see no reason why that shouldn't be the case in Pakistan. However free kulfis don't establish effective deterrents against terrorist threats and military u-turns.

As always, economics can prove to be a good counter to politics. As can international cooperation on common issues. Pure emotional issues would not guide Vajpayee and Musharraf one day to accept the LoC as International border. Or to Pakistan backtracking on Kashmiri militancy and withdrawing all support, political, moral and logistical. It has to be something more involved, something where the two countries stand to lose substantially if Kashmir is not reprioritized.

Cricket is big, very big, but it is not capable of being that conquer-all factor. To that extent I would want Men in Blue to win and would consider it highly unnatural if anyone in India wants anything else. Sports is only a means, not an end in itself. The journey of the subcontinent limping to prolonged normalcy has just begun. And let's hope it starts on a positive note - test series victory in Pakistan first time ever. Let's also hope that bloated egos as a result of a cricketing victory, to whichever side it goes, don't influence or sabotage the subcontinental peace process.

National Integration?

With Elections nearing, it is also the time for manifestoes, which all make great reading. Some of them can be fairly parochial (or so it might sound to the non-conformists).

For example, AIADMK has vowed to oppose Hindi - again. DMK of course does that always without an U-turn so they would probably not put that in their manifesto. Laloo is going to vow to have Bihar as the preferred investment destination. Naidu I am sure would want to say something on non-formation of Telangana and try to establish Hyderabad fair and square as number 2 IT destination behind Bangalore and ahead of Chennai.

Lot of these political promises are complimentary if they were to happen - something on the cost of others. One area belies this acceptability problem. Interestingly, its movies!

Take a note on the biggest Bollywood heroines. Many successful of them, problem of diction not withstanding, came from Hyderabad and Tamilnadu. Waheeda Rehman, Rekha, Sridevi, Jayaprada, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Tabu, its a long list. Now look at the current crop of successful Kollywood and Telugu (Does Tollywood belong to Hyderabad or Tollygunge in Kolkata?!) heroines. Some of the outright Bollywood rejects are not only big stars here, they even have temples made in their names. Naghma, Simran and Khushbu are the obvious ones that come to mind. Even some of the newer (and famous) ones like Aarti Agrawal and bhumika Chawla don't really belong to these areas. And finally the two biggest demigods of Tamil and indeed Indian cinema came from outside Tamilnadu - MGR (Kerala) and Rajnikant (aka Shivajirao Gaekwad, Maharashtrian with presumbly roots in Gujarat as the surname would suggest, who was a bus conductor in Bangalore).

With so many stars joining the politics this year, it was only a matter of time, before the broadminded movie stars said or did something that would come as a complete contrast to our narrow politics. Here's that statement! It comes from Jayaprada, the ex-Telugu Desham MP. She has just joined surprise surprise, Samajwadi Party!

Quoting from a Rediff article: "I want to contribute in the progress of Uttar Pradesh selflessly as I find that the nation cannot develop without the progress of the state." To me this would remain the quote of Elections 2004! Unless of course Mayawati gets a lead role opposite Pawan Kalyan in a family drama or Maniratnam casts Jayalalitha in a multilingual movie made on Bharat Shah's finances.

Holi Thi

Holi - another event that reminds you you are far away from home. In Chennai Holi has as much importance as Thanksgiving has in Patna (I can't say Chennai again, for so many BPO units actually close down for Thanksgiving!). No crowds on streets, no colors splurged. In fact no traces that Sunday was a different day.

The only proof that things were not the same everywhere was the 24-hour tele, which has started re-defining our interests in news. Almost every channel covered the Holi at Bachhhans, the PM Residence, Sonia Gandhi's residence and Rajeev Shukla's residence. Star News even took the viewers to the sets of couple of their serials and proudly annouced that Page 3 Holi was here to stay!

Actually I haven't celebrated the festival for some reason or the other for 5 years now. Last time I played Holi was when I was in the Hostel during MBA days and somehow the day on which Holi fell ensured that there was a large crowd around from both the batches on campus. Among other things, a huge hole was dug up in the hostel lawn and watered for couple of days. Everyone except a few who chose to lock themselves in their rooms or were considered very fussy was thrown in that ditch. It was much better than using the usual colors!

Hopefully I would celebrate next year as I always used to.

Kal Ho Hi Gaya

After a 3 week wait since the release of the DVD, I finally watched Kal Ho Na Ho. Just as I thought. A perfect mush slush. Colorful but not gawdy. Thematic but very individual. Music which looks better than it sounds. Dialogues that don't long resonate but which keep you pegged. A movie made frame by frame, not as a continuous story. And each frame with a big HIT written all over it. Nikhil Advani makes a great debut.

The only which now Aditya Chopra, Karan Johan and their cohorts need to think is whether they have enough stories that can have King Khan in the lead. And if not, who else in place of Shahrukh? While Rani has eased into Kajol's shoes in the Chopra-Johar camp with Preity close at her heels, Shahrukh is virtually irreplacable. Who would be next?

Subrata Sengupta and Sumantra Ghosal

Its always sepcial learning a subject from those who are doyens in that area. Most of my batchmates during MBA days agreed that Prof Subrata Sengupta was the best in the Institute. He taught us Advertising Management. When corporate personalities teach, it often turns out that while there is lot to draw upon based on personal experiences, academic rigour takes a backseat. But in case of Prof Sengupta's that didn't hold true. There were practical examples, videos, his famous book "Brand Management", but enough seriousness and framework to the course. I remember that more people had applied for his course than he wanted to initially take. However, he didn't want to disappoint the few who would be left out and agreed to adjust everybody. One of the most admired Professors across the cross-section.

Sumantra Ghosal was the chief guest at our convocation function. One of the characteristics of the annual convocation ceremony on campus is presence of large number of parents who come to soak in the hype and aura of Brand IIM. In a good economic year, convocation day can be a persnickety occasion. In most cases, rightly so. The atmosphere on the campus is eudaemonic. And when after the distribution of certificates, someone like Sumantra Ghosal addresses the gathering, it really is the proverbial icing on the cake. Our convocation day was no different. And Ghosal made it a different day. His speech was positively arrogant in some ways, pedantic in others. It was commandingly confident and fluent - a close glimpse at why Indian cerebral power has achieved what it has world over. And at the end of the evening, the parents who attended were more then convinced, their children did something worthwhile in those two years of MBA.

We lost Prof Subrata Sengupta and Prof Sumantra Ghosal of the London Business School in a span of few hours. Two individuls I knew nothing about as individuals. Two individuals who left a lasting impression.

The Fragility Of Human Body

Specially my hands, legs and rib cage. It was another tough afternoon at Loyola College's cricket ground for my team and for me. Another hot Chennai day, another cricket match and a sudden collapse after a good start made the feeling of losing even worse.

This time IIMC Alumni won the toss against XLRI alumni and elected to bat. Some of us didn't think it was wise - we would have to field between 11.30 and 2 o'clock. We are about to be proved right. And wrong.

We were cruising at 87/2 in 13 overs and then 115/2 in 17, when suddenly the set batsmen had a rush of blood. A collapse very similar to what India had against SL in the semis of the 1996 WC at Eden Gardens followed. We were soon down to 147 for 8 in 22 overs. That brought a slightly boged down confused batsman to the crease, looking unsure of how to play the remaining 3 overs. Me.

First ball from a frontline XLRI bowler. Fast, just outside the off stump and rising. I got into position, for some still incomprehensible reason, actually getting in line of the ball and unleashed a crisp square cut. The ball travelled to about 5 feet to the right of the fielder at deepish point. 5 feet to the right or left of anyone is a sure single in corporate cricket. I just ran without looking at the fielder and more importantly the napping and tired non-striker and ended my run at the pavilion. Duck off first ball. God knows it, it was the best cricketing shot I have ever played in my entire corporate cricket career. So it was a huge disappointment getting out like that also because I was promoted from number 11 to number 10 in the batting order. Not because I scored 4 runs in the last match last weekend, but because the unsuspecting number 11 in a blue jeans was drafted in the side seconds before the match began as one of the regulars didn't turn up.

Anyway we were all out on 151 off 23 overs leaving 6 an over for XLRI Alumni to score.

When we went in at 11 am to field, sun had just climbed up a few notches more. Our bowling was competitive and hence we were always with a sniffing chance of victory. When I got the ball after drinks, I was already feeling the heat having done quite a bit on the square leg and mid wicket boundaries, constantly peppered by the slogging batsmen. My first ball thankfully got out of my fingers at just the right moment. Pitched good length, turned a bit and was slow enough to get an upper edge from an attempted pull shot. Caught by the wicket keeper, a dream start to my spell. That really was it, for I ended my spell with figures of 3-0-18-1, pretty much par for the course on the day.

XLRI Alumni scored the winning runs in 22 odd overs, thus ensuring that we don't have to field beyond 12.30.

Like last week, I am now left with paining limbs and a rib cage tested by constantly bending and getting up to collect the balls in the deep. I suspect I also have a muscle pull in my right leg, for I am walking with a bit of a limp. My efforts in the field were deglamorized by someone in office today who remarked that I should first check out if my rotator cuff was intact after bowling 3 overs!

And I have decided to stay away from the rest of the cricket season and catch up again towards the later months of this year. Not that I have announced my retirement - spinners are always in with a chance to tour around what with Bhajji and Kumble both injured. But I have categorically proved to myself that I am more comfortable staring at a small laptop screen in an airconditioned room than slogging it out in the Chennai sun.