Jogi

Mahendra Singh Dhoni at Adelaide Oval (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"[Insert swear word], isko kyun bowling de diyaa?"

-

It was year 2007, a bad year for Indian cricket fans already. A first round exit from the World Cup in the West Indies, to be followed by a poor decision. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was a weird choice for captain of this new cricket variant called the T20. The senior pros Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly had decided to sit out and let the kids play this kids' World Cup. Why not Yuvraj Singh, I had asked?

-

Then came the final over of the final with Pakistan a boundary away from victory. Dhoni turned to a terrified looking Joginder Sharma. That was it. I was convinced. What a disaster this new captain was!

-

As it turned out, Misbah-ul-Haq committed hara-kiri. Sreesanth was waiting to pick up the death certificate. Of course, we were overjoyed in that moment, the trio of old school friends who danced the Russian Cossack dance out of sheer relief in front of the TV. How lucky was MSD to get away with that! Winning helped temper down too much criticism. It always does.

-

Soon we were to learn that our new captain embodied Kipling's

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same" advice to the E.

-

And he kept getting away with a lot more. The most stressful job in all of India did lead to the greying of his now trimmed hair but as far external signs were concerned, that was all. Because nothing it seemed could shake MS Dhoni. Victory did not make him exult, defeat did not make him whinge and anger could not escape whatever dark prison it finds itself imprisoned within Dhoni's inscrutable face.

-

We the Indian cricket fans, the loudest, the most rabid, most passionate sports fans in all of the world are a better nation because of it. Dhoni is the kind of captain that India needed but did not know it did.

-

The IPL investigation has opened up a can of worms destroying permanently that image of Dhoni's perfectness. I would still like to believe that it was solely because of the corruption indulged in by his boss, Srini that Dhoni finds himself in the mess that he is in. I also understand that facts are not always in sync with what I would 'like' to believe.

-

What cannot be doubted that Dhoni is a player with only specific and limited cricketing talent. What also cannot be doubted is that what he had achieved with that talent is extraordinary, an inspiration for everyone from the Joginder Sharmas to the Virat Kohlis. Effort and hard work, he just cannot be faulted on.

-

7 years later, another T20 World Cup final is at hand but the world has changed a lot since. On current form, India is almost expected to win and with that will grow the whispers of how India's victories tie in closely with Srini's toughest phases of legal trouble (Pssstttt... fixing).

-

Dhoni is a hero in my book, Srini is the criminal. Justice is blind to past achievements so sad as it makes me to say it, in case of any wrongdoing, Dhoni must pay his dues. The Indian cricket team is my team because it is India's team, not Srini's no matter how much he tries to bathe himself in reflected glory. The team of 11 players is still going to put themselves on the line hoping to bring temporary joy to those insatiable fans of theirs.

-

Victory today should not drive the issues of the rot within the BCCI to the background but unfortunately it will. Defeat will most likely result in people gleefully cheering for Dhoni's downfall and clubbing him with miserable lowlifes like Srini. Neither outcome is to be celebrated too enthusiastically in my opinion.

-

Despite the efforts at finding a balanced approach, I find myself wearing my "lucky" Indian team jersey from the 2011 World Cup final today. Despite knowing the darker side of politics in cricket, I want to focus solely on the next 40 overs as we take on an able & oft-seen rival in the field. Despite all my rationalizing and eulogizing, this is still my team and this is still my country.

-

"Jeeteygaa bhai jeeteygaa, India jeeteygaa [Repeat]"

-

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2014/04/jogi.html]

It wasn't even April

David Attenborough 1 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The scene was, as the cliche goes, idyllic. Rolling meadows of green blending into the even more picturesque White Mountains. Stunningly beautiful horses- jet black, chestnut brown, almost silver - roamed the hillside, surely aware of how lucky they were to live on a farm like this, especially on a perfect day like this.

-

Said Byron , "Do ya notice something odd about these horses?"

-

Not being an expert on the subject, I could only shake my head. My interest was piqued. Animal facts are usually awesome.

-

He continued "Notice how the right side legs, front and rear, of the horses are significantly shorter than the left side legs. This is so that they can easily graze on the steep hillsides of New Hampshire."

-

My mind was *blown away*! Hurray for evolution! What an awesome fact!

-

There are no nature documentaries on the Granite State that I can think of. Yet in my head I heard David Attenborough's British voice say "Deep in the mountains of New Hampshire, horses have developed a special adaptation..."

-

The look of wonder on my face must have been pretty evident. Because Byron started shaking, slightly at first, before spilling out into all out laughter like a madman.

-

It wasn't even April but boy, was I fooled!

-

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2014/04/it-wasnt-even-april.html]

Wenga Boys in Blue

ARSENAL!!! (Photo credit: rohan-04)

Two teams disturbingly similar. Two teams that you cheer for and fear for. At exactly the same time. Sometimes I wonder what life is like for fans of 'winningest' teams like the Australian cricket team or Manchester United. I pity those fools.

-

Being a sports fan is all about being completely emotionally invested in the fortunes of a team or player, yet having absolutely zero control over it. Ups and downs, high-fives and stabbings which one needs to put up with for no reason at all. Emotionally investing in Australia or Manchester United is as exciting as watching paint peel. Yes, every 10 years, a flake or two will fall off but do you really want to keep your life so short of drama?

-

For drama, triumph and tragedy, we must turn to Messrs. Indian cricket team and a little football club in North London called the Arsenal Football Club. A common criticism amongst their detractors of whom there are many is that they lack 'guts' (in foreign conditions/in high stakes matches). For them, sports is all about the numbers, wins v/s losses; a cold, dry mathematical anything-goes-to-get-a-win way of life. For the second time within the same blog post, I pity them.

-

Sport is more than just mathematics. Mathematics tells us what happened in the end, not how we got there. It's like watching only the final scene of "The Matrix" where Neo flies off into the sky and claiming that was the only part worth watching. There is beauty in the passes, there is magic in the flowing drives, there is sweet redemption for the mercurially talented - all lost to the numbers obsessed "Winning is all we care for" mafia.

-

India, as always, steps into a World Cup tentatively, its fans unsure of what to expect, if anything at all. Arsenal play Chelsea tomorrow with the Stamford Bridge boys likely to put their all behind staying on top for the final few games. 

-

In India's case, my favourite Indian captain of all time has a lot of pressure piling onto his overworked back both on field and off. Despite everything MSD has done for India, to his less-than-sharp critics, he will always be 'lucky'. I only wish him more 'luck'.

-

In Arsenal's case, the future of a brilliant man hangs in balance, a man committed to the strangely idealistic notion of nurturing his own talent. Arsene Wenger is the reason behind Arsenal's 'beautiful' football, not gutsy enough for some, not realistic enough for others. But his brand of football is what makes Arsenal Arsenal as we have known for the past 20 years.

-

Will it be glory? Or will it be gory? I should have been used to this feeling of hopeful despair by now. But I guess I never will be. It's not like I haven't been here before.

-

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2014/03/wenga-boys-in-blue.html]

Illusion

Quiet Please - Sheepcote Street - sign (Photo credit: ell brown)

Silence is an illusion. No matter how quiet it gets, it is never perfectly quiet. Complete silence may be a possibility in the depths of outer space but since I have never been there, I cannot confirm.

-

Waking up in the dead of the deadest night, I can still hear the tick-tock of the wall clock as it goes about its dreary duty, the rubbery sound of car tires returning home after a long night out or a train's distant whistle. In remote corners away from civilization, there is still no escape from the world of sound, the crack of a distant twig, the burble of a flowing stream or even the sound of my own breathing inside the sleeping bag always punctuating the wild domains of the moon and starlight. The camper may be in search of peace but there is always sound surrounding his world, albeit of the more pleasant kind.

-

Silence is a deep tide continuously flowing in, seeking to cover in all its wake yet allowing the smallest of objects to bob up. At times, the flotilla overwhelms the surface making us forget the power underneath. As the world goes to sleep, one bedroom light at a time, it becomes the primal force roaming our deserted streets and parks leaving us, the nervous sound-makers strictly in the minority.

-

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2014/02/illusion.html]

#ThankYouSachin yaa #EmotionalQtiyapaa?

Sudhir Kumar Chaudhary, an ardent fan of Tendulkar who earned the privilege of tickets to all of India's home games (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Weren't most Indians being too sentimental about Sachin's retirement? Well... we once made a super-hit movie out of a plot which involves a rockstar's mom sacrificing/electrocuting herself on a rigged electric guitar to save her son, who will then avenge her death by winning a disco dancing championship (Mithun's "Disco Dancer" is the movie... before you lose my respect forever by asking). Yes, the bar for sentimentality is set kinda high for us Indians. So... no, we are like this only!
-
Why did he think himself to be bigger than the team, bigger than cricket, bigger than his country? After close to 25 years on the international stage under the full glare of media hawks, spent with generations of team-mates and opponents on and off the field, let's total the number of complaints that players or ex-players have made about Sachin Tendulkar's unbearable ego-mania. Zero. Sorry, but votes from armchair based mind readers don't count. 
-
What kind of a legend is he, failing like he did in the World Cup finals of 2003 or 2011? Isn't the greatness of a player defined by his performances on the greatest of stages? Let's start by completely ignoring the fact that India was in those two finals only because of his performances in the preceding matches. That would require just too much logic. His centuries against Australia, England, Pakistan, West Indies and South Africa don't count for anything because *derisive chuckle* he scored centuries against Bangladesh, Kenya and Zimbabwe too. Apparently the 'true' greats have a golden "Don't score centuries against minnows" rule which was violated by our ordinary Sachin.
-
Still, isn't the non-stop hero worship and the tiring over-use of God in every fan quote about him nausea inducing? Consider this... Sachin did not bribe the fans who first carried the famous "Cricket is my religion, Sachin is my God" banner to do so. Here was a batsman who really meant that much to his fans - from the neighbourhood panwallah to Virat Kohli. Yes, it is somewhat unfortunate that the majority of his fan base has struggled to come up with any original compliment since but hey, that's not Sachin's fault. He has never run around demanding to be called God. If anything, it's the opposite. If anyone has anything to learn about respect for the game and fellow players, it's from Sachin.
-
All well and good but any Ram, Deepak and Hari would agree that he had lost his touch. Why the struggle to play on? Wasn't this all about him being record-hungry trying to play his 200th test somehow, just like the sorry drama around his 100th hundred? India lost *so many* matches because of his *greed* for hundreds. Why yes, it's obvious that having 100 runs less on the board would have helped India win the match! *Sarcasm*
-
Quitting the only life he has known, adored by hundreds of millions and playing a game he loves, should be the easiest thing. The extraordinary self-belief that he has used to keep out the madness of expectations and design the monument that is his cricketing career can be turned off like a power switch. Easy peasy. Wonder why he seemed to find it so difficult? Must be because he is self-obsessed. Can't be because he is only human. No. Just can't be. 
-
I must at this point confess to being a very rabid Sachin fan though I may have dropped some hints in the paragraphs above. My first clear memory of Sachin is of seeing him walk back forlorn to the pavilion after one of his brave but futile efforts as part of the reliably unreliable early 90s Indian cricket team on a television set which was about 10 years older than me at that point of time. My mom was talking to him through the television, consoling him "Shonaar cheley! Shonaar cheley!" ("Golden boy! Golden boy!" A Bengali mom's way of telling her son to keep up the good work)
-
From that day on, Sachin, about the same age as my elder brother became part of my family. As I am sure, he was adopted by millions of Indians as their son, grandson, brother or friend in similar circumstances through the decades. In our country which had just opened its doors to the wild and somewhat scary international market, Sachin was our world class export.  In his niceness and humility, we saw our perceived Indian character retained and in his unquestionable talent, we found confidence that we had more than enough skill to stand strong in the big boys league.
-
More than 3 months have passed since Sachin retired and I have spent all this time trying to zero in on the perfect words to describe what his presence on a cricket pitch meant. I had wanted this piece of writing to bring unfiltered feelings of joy to Sachin fans and reduce his critics to crying crumpled balls of shame. In the end, I have realized that for better or for worse, most people who know about Sachin have already formed their opinions about him and there is not too much I can do to change them. I can only speak for myself.
-
I will miss the unmistakable roar of the crowds no matter which Indian stadium he walked out into bat. I will miss the compact distinctive guard he took at the crease indicative of the perfection to come. I will miss the solid crack of the bat as the perfect straight drive, flick or cover drive was executed, never to be seen in a competitive cricket match again. I will miss the look to the heavens as yet another milestone is reached and the joy that his time at the crease brought his fans, a heady dose of artistry in otherwise ordinary lives. 
-
I did not watch his farewell speech live. Being an old school guy, that stinging feeling behind the eyes would have been mightily embarrassing. I did watch him make his last walk to the Wankhede pavilion after his dismissal for 74, on a television set in a far off country whose unpardonable crime is that it does not understand or appreciate cricket and therefore the true beauty of life. After due diligence and intensive racking of me brains, I have decided to plagiarize Sunil Gavaskar's words on commentary.
-
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

-
[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2014/02/thankyousachin-yaa-emotionalqtiyapaa.html]

In black and white

Angry Penguin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Don't sweat the small stuff. In the overall grand scheme of the eye-in-the-sky, most of our issues with it are small stuff indeed. Oft repeated advice but seldom applied especially in the professional sphere of life. 

-

It's only natural that when a group of dramatically varied humans get together (let's repeat the obvious, no two people are alike and even the minor differences between them total to the hundreds) to work on a common task linked to a deadline and to their month end compensations, there will be disagreement. The nature of that disagreement ranges from polite "It would be better if..." to the thermo-nuclear "I think you are wrong..." despite both arguments making the same points.

-

Presentation and tact matter but there are times when the pitchfork carrying guy with the horns and the tail gets his act together and drags the storms of confrontation along with him purely for his entertainment. Most office arguments may actually be fun to watch from an objective observer's perspective as they are about petty matters indeed.

-

Personally speaking, having been in some not-so-peace-love-and-flowers situations at the workplace over the years, I have always seen things settle down eventually. Much like a married couple who surf over the occasional tiff, the teams at almost every workplace have figured their own paths to return to the routine. I remember the incidents but more as a remote event that happened to someone else in some other life. In that I have been lucky, because both parties (I hope) share the mutual feeling of "Well, we disagreed... strongly, but we still need to get the job done."

-

In this quest to let bygones be bygones, I have recently discovered a major enemy. Archived e-mails. Yes, the angry words which flew through cyberspace to land in your colleague's inbox or vice versa. The other day I was digging through my virtual communications from the past for some project worked on back in the day and I chanced upon a few of these terse exchanges of words. Location vs location sometimes and team member versus team member at other times.

-

Reading them now that I chanced upon them made the situations come alive again. The brain is a softie applying the varnish of nostalgia to every memory but if for any strange God forsaken reason you feel the urge to relive the bitterness in real time, read them old e-mails. The content is all professional but of course, behind the precise choice of words, the true intent of the stressed out individual writing them gleams through.

-

Do I now want to take up cudgels against the same individuals or teams now that my mind has re-entered battle mode? Not really. It was nothing but foolishness on my behalf to read those old e-mails and much as I'd like to blame the others for what happened, I was as much to blame for the escalating argument as reading my end of the communications revealed. Let's just say I was lot less tactful and a lot more aggravated than the situation called for.

-

After a healthy bout of exercise using the Delete button on my keyboard, I did come away with an insight that my less-than-sharp nature had previously failed to note. Words matter, their timing matters and the method used to convey them matters. Speak or listen to a person face to face or even duke it out over the phone - it all disappears into the toy chest of stuff-that-happened-in-my-life fitting into little corners and spaces often obscured by other stuff that keeps piling on. 

-

Misunderstanding and frustration are occasional byproducts of our workdays but they are best resolved person to person if a resolution is to be found. There is really no sense in giving them an electronic afterlife. Those words on the screen with their perfectly formed fonts, they like to hang around and will always stare the recipient in the face in a cold, unemotional way like only a computer can while also transporting a wave of the sender's anger & splatting the recipient in the face.

-

No more anger, at least not on cyberspace. When angry, count to ten. If still angry, count to one hundred.

-

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2014/02/in-black-and-white.html]

Filmy chess

An example of early-style Staunton Chess Set (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Chess was invented in India. Study the characters involved on the 64 square battlefield, and it becomes even more clear that it could have only come from the land which gave us B. R. Chopra's "Mahabhaaaarat".

-

First there are the soldiers ('pawns' just doesn't have the right ring to it), the sipahis who will happily become sword fodder for the glory of their maharajah. "Jo hukum (As you wish), Maharaj!" is what would be expected of these little guys who move only one square at a time and make up half of the respective leader's troops, 8 each on the black and white sides.

-

Next in the line of "I can afford to let this piece get captured" is the Bishop, whose behaviour makes much more sense when called by his Indian name, the ooth (the camel). For anyone who's seen a camel in real life knows that they look like big sturdy beasts built to go for days without water with a load on their back. What the animals can't be accused of is looking too intelligent. Hence their crazy diagonal only moves on the chessboard do match up to their projected mental capabilities.

-

By this point in the write-up, it would be easy to guess that yours truly likes to call the Knight ghodaa (the horse) and the Rook haathi (the elephant) as they deserve to be called. Why go for boring things like humans and chariots when some really cool animal avatars are up for grabs?

-

The horse is a noble beast with or without a knight in charge of it. Powerful, athletic and quite able to jump over a scared sipahi or two. There we have the basis for the nothing's-gonna-stop-us-now moves of the horses, the only pieces on the chessboard capable of ignoring obstacles in their way.

-

According to this writer, elephants are quite possibly the most fascinating animals for a variety of reasons. They are intelligent, long lived and with great memories but again the one thing they can't be accused of is being steering friendly. Once they start moving, they keep charging and in that same direction. Thus the ninety degree or straight line moves that they bust out on the chess squares is quite realistic in my humble studied-no-biology-beyond-12th-grade opinion.

-

The royal couple are the final twist to this cast of characters begging to let free on the checkered board of life. A few thousand years old this game may be but the most powerful, vicious, kick-ass presence on the entire board is that of two women. The respective Queen is a terror in every sense of the word to the opposing side. She can attack in any direction she wants to and speed as far as there is a clear straight path. Diagonals don't hold her, she can be as crazy as a camel and she can be as angry as an elephant too. Though the primary objective of the game is to protect the lame duck King who moves only one square at a time, there is no doubt on who wears the pants at home.

-

Put all of those together and every game of chess is a epic war movie in the making. Heroic soldiers, little men put into history changing moments by planning and circumstances one measly step at a time. Horses guarding camels; camels guarding horses; horses and camels guarding soldiers; queens and elephants guarding those horses and camels - you get the idea. There is death (capture), there is sacrifice, there are traps and there's fighting like a cornered rat, there's great escapes and moments of mind numbing stupidity. All within the confines of a 8x8 universe.

-

Yours truly is always looking for excuses to justify his obvious lack of talent in chess playing. This is as close to the truth as excuses can get. Yours truly is a day dreamer. He dreams of one day beating his smartphone at level 12 and how gloriously his troops shall march before cornering that opposing king in a position of no escape. He hears the cheering of his kingdom's common folk as the match begins, meticulously plans for the lives of each of his team soldier level upward. Every soul is precious and every loss must be paid for in blood.

-

Then the opposition arrives on the battlefield, better planned and better prepared, trying to do the exact same thing. They almost always invariably win. Usually a soldier goes first... unavenged, as payback means the death of one of my horses. Soon things start to turn from bad to worse. My team is trapped, sometimes behind their own team-mates as the opposition master-plans kick into place. The real moment of heartbreak comes when one of my elephants is trapped. I see it in my mind, falling to a thousand pesky little arrows, trumpeting its defiance even as it bravely makes its final stand as moving means exposing his king to a fatal situation. 

-

The death of an elephant is something very difficult to overcome. If things were going downhill so far, they go absolutely haywire from here on in. Attack, attack, attack with flashes of red revenge and the clashing of justice delivering swords. Blind anger was never a friend of the successful army and so it comes to pass that soon my king is out there in the open with nowhere to hide. Bitter as it feels, surrender one must and promises to never put oneself through this trauma again are made.

-

Soon enough though, sometime in a day's time, sometime in a week's and sometimes even in a month depending on how bad the previous defeat was, the game is on again. There are plans renewed, mistakes recognized and dignity half restored. The kingdom must fight, the kingdom must live and the kingdom must win. Defeat is very likely to say hello again but even a tragedy makes for beautiful viewing if the story is grand and it plays in the mind's real 3D.

-

[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2014/02/filmy-chess.html]