Dear Rahul Dravid...

Yesterday at RBs hopelessly expensive birthday party someone said this to me:


" Teri haalat waisi hai jaise Rahul Dravid ki Indian Premier League mein!" -


"You're as out of place as Rahul Dravid in the Indian Premier League"

(Very loose translation and loses all punch that the hindi version has. To fully appreciate this, go to school and learn hindi. Come back here and enjoy the line. Ok?)

When people start using your name while making such comparisons, its high time you get some advice about what you should do. And who could Rahul turn to if not the most awesome brain this side of the Indian ocean (er..that would be me)

So responding to his anguished plea I wrote him a letter. And I wouldn't be too much an object of your adoration if I did not put up my correspondence with the rich and famous here (I've done it before: http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2007/04/letter-to-katrina.html )



Dear Rahul (Jammy),

Thank you for your letter. I am doing quite well but will obviously refrain from asking you the corresponding question. Your condition is quite palpable here.

You've certainly managed to get yourself in quite a jam in this Twenty twenty format of cricket. And this is not the kind of jam that gets you endorsement dollars. This is the one that pretty much hits at the base of a decade long reputation earned through blood and sweat and mindnumbingly boring hours spent tapping the ball back to the bowler.

You're obviously quite out of your depth in this format where strike rate is the paramount statistic and average is laughed at. Add to that the love you've shown to all your fellow 20-20 (and even one day) rejects by taking them in your team. I mean seriously, what were you thinking? Any team which opens their batting with Wasim Jaffer and you in a short slam-bang format is pretty much doomed from the very onset. Add to that jaded players, weak fielders and slow fast bowlers (!) and you have the perfect recipe for being at the sheer bottom of the table where you find yourself right now.

I'll be frank with you here Rahul, your captaincy itself has been so lacking that I am forced to show you Shane Warne's captaincy in this tournament as an example. He started the tournament as a rank outsider with no big names (at that time) in his team. But he's never showed a sag in his shoulders. In impossible situations he looks like he hasn't even considered that his side may lose. To think so is blasphemous to him while you seem to be looking over your shoulder for upcoming and imaginary disaster all the time even when your team has its nose ahead.

Rahul, do us all a favour. Do yourself a favour and get out of this format. Some players are good for tests and some for short games. Please don't leave it for so long that the 'Wall's' fans remember not the gritty innings and the classic cover drives and picturesque flicks but the jaded and struggling slogger holding back tears in presentation ceremony after presentation ceremony while making piteous excuses.

Rahul, please step back graciously.

Regards,

Swapnil

What Happens in Goa, Stays in Goa :) ...

hic

So I just got back from a vacation in Goa on Sunday night. So why am I writing this on Tuesday? I got back from GOA! You've got to give me some time to recover!

So first things first, with the sun shining bright and that beautiful red coloured number signifying 1st of May approaching on the calendar we decided that it had been way too long since the last road trip (that would be Yercaud, when Snehashish got voted out on Roadies. [ Yes, we're still obsessed with Roadies. What a show! I tell you, what brilliant twists and turns. Did you see last Saturday's show, the one where Ankita won the bike? - well actually even I didn't see it on Saturday on account of being flat on my back trying to do a fully-clothed Vitruvian man http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_man on Arambol beach in Goa. But I fear I'm getting ahead of my story...])

So RB,PS and another chap called CI (alias Armani, Indo etc.) found themselves with me in RBs car hurtling on the road to Tumkur on Wednesday evening enroute to the land of sun, sand, cheap liquor and pretty foreigners.

After a stopover at a dinghy with a capital 'D' lodge at Tumkur we continued along the route through Shimoga, Honnaver, Karwar till we finally reached Goa. It was a good drive, nearly 700 km, which RB did in pretty good time. The only issue was that the nice rock anthems cd I had specifically bought for the trip was left behind in my car. So it was back to the same cds that we've been playing through most of my trips in RBs car.

For a change, in fact for the first time on any of our road trips, we had bookings in a resort there. It had a very inviting swimming pool and I decided to give up my aversion to water and enter in. Through cajoling and threats I finally managed to float for the first time in my life. And it was FUN!! We spent a long time in the pool getting rid of the fatigue of a long drive before we became our rakish selves to burn the dancefloors at the nightclubs.

Somehow this plan got shelved (work with me here please. Vast tracts of memory are just empty when I look back and try to recollect. But then again, this is Goa i'm talking about so its understandable) and we found ourselves sitting under the beautiful night sky in a beach shack on Baga beach. We tried some exotic foods but these were generally quite bad. Of course as Chet said - they just don't have food here like in his UK! Of course we made a lot of fun of this coming from someone who's stayed in UK for just 2 years. But he took it in good spirits - but come to think of it anyone buying and then actually wearing an electric blue hawaian shirt like he did would, by definition, have a high threshold for being the butt of jokes (snigger). To compensate for the food debacle we embarked with gusto upon the liquid nourishment available at the shack. Of course these canned elixirs are never bad and we chugged back a few just to get the foul food taste out of our mouths. And of course after that the momentum just built up!

When the sun streamed in through the window in our suite next morning we realised that the first evening in Goa was over. This was also the time when AB, old batchmate from DCE was arriving in Goa from Mumbai. We went to pick him up from the bus stop and it was really great to see him after so many years. Lemme see, i last bumped into him in NITIE when I was staying there for my summer internship project in 2004.

After that an extended pool session was followed by another long beach shack session though we went easy on the liquids. Came to the hotel and just crashed. AB wasn't feeling too well (He'd come all the way to Goa from Mumbai) and all of us just slept.

Saturday is a bit hazy :)

I know we went to Aguada Jail, Fort Aguada and ended up in Arambol beach which was touted to be the only white sand beach in all of Goa.I wouldn't call it white sand but atleast there were no throngs and throngs of people as in Calangute or Baga beach. A nice and enjoyable afternoon. The evening was a whole different ball game. This is where I ended up playing the clothed Vitruvian man that I referred to earlier. I'm not saying anything more here. For those who want details, call me and beg. Maybe I'll tell you all :)

Sunday was the long drive back with the only really notable thing happening that after struggling with a few CDs we finally managed to get a cd which had songs from Tashan which, for some inexplicable reason, I really REALLY wanted to listen to on the drive back. So I was happy :)


A good trip, and probably one of the last ones I go on with RB because he may be moving out of Bangalore soon :(

But maybe we'll go on more trips with our base being closer home. Not in the near future, but maybe in some time :). Hope floats!

Of Letters and Games...

Have you ever gone back and re-read your emails?

This morning I was checking emails on a yahoo account that I've had since 2004 and started going through the initial emails on an impulse. It was quite an interesting experience as you can relive important occasions in your life with a detached outlook.

So I re-read emails related to my summer internship at KSA Technopak, the squabbles that used to happen in IIFT, test announcements and the collective groans of the batch in response, emails from people who were important to you at that time but have no bearing at all on your current life, silly jokes that you laughed over,the brandwagon emails, vacations and trips we went on, the parting emails when the batch was dispersing to go home once before embarking on work life...in short a lot of stuff that I'd completely forgotten.

Reading these emails have made me slightly wistful. So I will drop this topic. Just one last thing - try it. Reading ancient emails is interesting sometimes.


On a totally unrelated note I suddenly rememebered that I've been unfair to the legions of my blog's fans. I haven't told you about last weekend. I know, I know, all of you just hang on to every word I write about my weekends to somehow bring some colour to your dreary existence. And I have failed you by not providing the update consistently. Woe betides me...

But I shall compensate for this oversight on my part. You can look forward to a complete, no holds barred account of last weekend. Including the opening ceremony and match of the Indian Premier League that I went and saw last Friday, the awesomely exhilerating doubles tennis match on Sunday evening, and myriad awe-inspiring things I did on Saturday and have forgotten already.

So starting with the Indian Premier League.

I hadn't ever seen a cricket match in a stadium ever before in my life. The first reaction to seeing the ground was "Poof, thats it? Is THAT the whole field? seriously? Hell, i've played on larger grounds and cleared the boundary." But after that it was an awesome experience.

The extravaganza before the match, the opening ceremony that is,was brilliant with performers in colourful attire prancing around on stilts. Of course it probably would've been better if we hadn't taken the cheapest seats in the stadium (Well, it did say "best view seats" on the tickets. And we believed them)and were actually in the stand before which they were doing the prancing. The redskin cheerleaders were another added attraction and they played to the crowd, even the cheap ticket part, by performing all around the ground. The best part for me were the people sliding down wires from the top of the stadium to the middle of the field. In the night they literally looked like four people flying into the stadium unaided by any human contraption. Really cool.

The match sadly was rather one sided. Also we weren't able to see the screen from where we were sitting so we had no idea about the score or who was batting or fielding (most bowlers you can make out by their bowling action). Thus is so happened that Brendan McCullum made a fiery 160 right before our eyes but we had no clue that only one batsman had been hitting. We saw players raising their bats thrice and assumed that three separate individuals had scored 50s. (Quick tip to the organisers : ANNOUNCE the score and the batsmen for heavens sake! ANNOUNCE!)

All in all, and inspite of my cribbing it was a really good experience that i'd recommend to anyone. These matches are of the perfect duration, three hours you can easily stay in a stadium and enjoy the match but not beyond that. The next stage matches should be even tighter and maybe i'll go to see them whenever they happen in Bangalore.

Where's my phone?...

Yesterday I forgot my cell phone at home when I went to work. It was quite an interesting experience to not have constant rings and messages all through the day. In fact I quite liked not having a phone around. I was able to focus on my work and did not feel the constant urge to sms or generally talk to people.

It also reminded me of the time when cell phones were not present, but the concept of a cell phone was known. (Yes, I’m ancient. I’ve actually seen days when you had to go all the way to a phone booth [shudder] when you had to call someone.) When they first came in, cell phones were exorbitantly priced, talktime was way WAY expensive. And you had to pay for incoming calls.

I got my first cell phone in…hmm…I don’t really remember but I think it was towards the end of second year when we were organizing Technodrome in DCE. That puts it at 2000. But it wasn’t my cellphone. It was my sister’s and she lent it to me for the duration of the event when we really needed a tool for prompt communications (“Speaker has cancelled at the last minute!”, “Princi refused money for the event!”, “Bhookh lag rahi hai (I’m hungry :))”). (Also, those were the days when you could lend your phone to your kid brother for a few days without feeling lost or suffering from withdrawal symptoms - According to ABC News, "A recent study showed that 40 percent of people surveyed can't cope without a cell phone, 35 percent of people used cell phones to escape their problems and 7 percent blamed the cell phone for a lost relationship or job. (http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/90093/cell_phone_addiction.html ))

I finally got my own cell phone after an year or so. I’d got this pretty cool GD 40 Panasonic cellphone. It had a joystick. It was the absolute epitomy of cool at that point in time. Touch screens? Stylus? I-think-about-it-and-it-dials? Bah, nothing in comparison to a joystick feature. A speck really, really!

Anyway, after that cellphones became quite natural and lost their exclusivity. My Panasonic phone stayed with me for nearly 4 years. I got an O2 when I started earning but it never gave me the kick that my GD 40 gave me. And after a couple of unfortunate incidents which led to the said O2 disappearing from my hands (http://swappinglives.blogspot.com/2007/05/bangalore-rains.html ) I bought a safe and sleek Motorola L6i. Cheap, easy to manage, all features but not interesting enough to want to use them, most importantly slim enough to slide in your pocket (yes, try carrying a bricklike O2 in your pocket for a few months before raising a finger against me!)

And now I saw the iphone. Sigh its just so sexy.

But no, I do not want to buy another expensive phone again. Especially not a chunky one.

So there!


But I wouldn’t mind being gifted one (looking around with an expectant twinkle in my eyes.)

The Shaurya Conundrum...

I want to write about two things today. So I’ll take up the shorter one first.

Why is that most of the blogs I read are stuck on the same post whenever I go there? I’m not talking about blogs that are linked through my blog but also a number of other blogs I read. And I cannot imagine that there is a Writer’s Block epidemic sweeping across the earth. So come on people, get your act together. When we click on your link we expect, nay demand, fresh content. (Yes, mine hasn’t been updated for a long time because I’ve been a bit busy. Ok fine, the writer’s block disease hit me too)

Right, so with that out of the way we can get on to the meat of the post.

RB and I had gone to see Shaurya (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaurya ) this Sunday.

[About the movie – Pretty good. Excellent work by Kay kay Menon. Worth a watch but the warning is that its heavily inspired by ‘A Few Good Men’ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_few_good_men#The_film ) (remember “I WANT THE TRUTH!!” – “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH” exchange between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson?). Still it is a very good movie and though the premise may be the same I think it is way more relevant here]

Anyway, RB was of the opinion that such movies should not be shown to the public because it takes potshots at the only bastion that people respect, the army.

Now I have two arguments against this, one is generic and one more specific.

Generic:
Any censorship, whatever may be the supposed reason, is wrong. It pre-supposes that the ‘authority’ is in any way smarter and wiser than the people. And that is against the basic tenets of democracy. Democratic charter is based on the fact that all people are equal and have a role to play and a stake in how they are governed. Any authority that goes against this premise is exposing itself to a grey area which can eventually lead to confused thinking which gives a foot in the door to dictatorship and autocracy. I know that this may sound a bit extreme but an avalanche has to start somewhere.
The trend of protesting against movies, books, plays for obscure reasons is very disquieting and may well be the harbinger of worse things to come. If this continues, who knows one day all dissenting and original thinking voices shall be smothered in the path of everyone being coerced into one way of thinking that the people in power feel is right (for them?).

Specific: I agree totally that the army is the last bastion of reverence and respect for the people of this country, especially with the way the politicians behave (Yes, all those who are absolutely apalled and disgusted by the current ridiculous linen washing going on in Uttar Pradesh raise your hands!) . Kids, who have not yet grown up to cynicism, still feel their hearts aflutter when the Republic Day parade goes by with battalions marching and majestic weapons of defence on display.

But is that a good enough reason to hide sordid and grisly aspects of it? Any position that gives power over others and a gun in your hand would automatically tend to bring out the worst in some weak people. Bullies are not just restricted to the school playground – some of them may also become sadists who enjoy giving pain. And with a gun, infront of people with non-existant legal recourse, with the backing of their seniors and prejudice in their heads, who knows what ghastly crimes they can do. (Have you read “Lord of the Flies” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Flies )? That’s a book that I still don’t understand whether I like or not. The premise of the author is that intrinsically all people are bad and it is only the veneer of civilization that prevents savagery from emerging. In the book a group of boys land up in a situation where man-made civilization doesn’t exist and the group starts spiraling down towards their so called base behavior.)

Anyway, I feel that banning a medium of expression is not correct even if its against a pillar of society. All pillars get termites with time and we can either ignore them and wait for the pillar to hollow out and collapse or accept the problem and try to solve it. Respect and faith are very important but it is essential to ensure that the basis of both is strong.


And now to counter balance the rather serious nature of this post:

Why did Ravan faint when he went to a pub?
.
.
.
.
‘coz it said Rs. 1500 per head

:)