Its only a game

It was the January of 1999, the Pakistan team had come to tour India for the first time in 12 years, and what a series it was, I distinctly remember the 10 wickets by Kumble, but there is one more thing that would never leave me.
The Pakistani squad taking a victory lap of the Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai and the crowd giving them a standing ovation.
It sure was a magical site. I could point out that series as the one in which I fell in love with test cricket, with Anil Kumble, and with Sachin Tendulkar.

I have watched Sachin play almost all throughout his career, I remember going to Kotla as a kid to watch him score 137 against Sri lanka in the 96 world cup, I remember staying up late to watch him destroy Austrailia in Sharjah, twice.
I remember the 2003 world cup math against Pakistan, the Sydney Test double centuary, a spectacular test century against South Africa. The CB series final.
I remember his thrashing of Shane Warne, loved what he did to Sohaib, have tremendously enjoyed his straight and cover drives. Just watching him bat has been a treat.

Even today Sachin Tendulkar played a great knock. Delightful 175 runs scored to chase Australia's 350. India fell 3 runs short, I was really disappointed. It reminded me of the Chennai test where a defiant and determined century from Sachin took India close to victory, but after his wicket, the team just collapsed.
Not unlike today, more than ten years later. We couldn't make it to the end.

As disappointed as I am, I know its only a game, and have said so to 4 people since. But hurt I am as I was when we lost that test, or the world cup final or 2007's Sydney test.
I wanted to write this just to say that there is only so much a man can do, there is only so much a man can do for 20 years, it a team effort which has to take the team through.

But I will not go down that lane.

All I want to do is to thank Sachin Tendulkar with all my heart. Thank him for the numerous matches that he has won for my country, and for trying his best in the others, I wanted to thank him for him centuries and his fifties.
Just to thank him for all joy he has given me and all the cricket lovers.

The Eternal Quest

I recently came upon these wise words by Rilke and have since been thinking about them:

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart.
Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language.
Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them.
It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question.
Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.

And how true he was, You can only understand the answers when you fully understand the question itself and why was it asked, the reason it was in your heart.
You will find yourself pulling your hair in frustration, because you feel the answer is so close that you can almost grab it the very next second. You wait for that second to come, it slowly turns into long minutes and painful hours.
You spend sleepless nights wondering why is this happening to you, thinking that you were not the one meant to suffer, that you should be the one living the dream.

But that's not the plan life had, and one needs to understand that, ask more questions if one has to. Ask about what you want from life and from those around you.
Ask about whats been troubling you, what makes you happy and what doesn't.
Again you may not get the answers, maybe that's alright, maybe what is more important that we have asked ourselves the right questions, set ourselves on the right path, only then can we start walking on it.

And like we often see, when we stop worrying about the questions, when we stop looking for the destination and just live the journey, we find the answers.
And then you realize, like you do when the first ray of sunshine hits a blooming flower, life indeed is beautiful.

Random thoughts blowing in the wind

This may just turn out to be my 10^th failed attempt at writing something decent enough to publish, I may just succeed today; there is no end to hope.

There is no end to motivation either, loads of things happening around me, in the world, in the country, in the city. I will start with something I did, I went to the Mumbai Taj with my family and we had some coffee/ice tea there. I had wanted to go there since last November, I had wanted the place to return to its old aura, its old charm, but then my mom kept asking the driver about the attacks and the bullet marks and the sixth floor and all that; at least the incident is not dead from the public memory. It’s almost nine months now, and still the finger pointing and blame aversion with our neighbors continue. New Delhi can keep coming up with a hundred dossiers and Islamabad will keep finding a thousand faults and loopholes in it. People are tiered of empty words from Uncle Sam and false assurance from Pakistan of co-operation.

Somehow I have drifted to a topic that I did not want to write about, I guess I do not even want to vent out my frustration on how little has been done about the attacks and how the one captured terrorists is still going to court and ordering mutton from jail. So I will try to change the topic.

I am writing this on my flight back to Bangalore from Mumbai. Surprisingly I do manage to get a break from regular life when I need one, A good trip, nice time spent with my family first and then with my best friend. Met her after a long time, didn’t seem like it though.

Every time I go to Mumbai, I can’t help loving the place more. A city has a life of its own, and when you visit it, you can feel its pulse, the surprisingly polite auto and cab drivers, the nightlife and the places, the queen’s necklace and a lot more. If given a choice of picking two cities I would like to settle in, It’s got to be Delhi or Mumbai. One with all the memories and the people I love, and one with no attachments, but just an awesome city, with an awesome pulse. But then time has always been a great mystery, and I am pretty satisfied with Bangalore at the moment. Maybe someday I’ll sit and plan my big career move, till then I’ll let things plan themselves out on their own.

I have started going in a random direction again, this may just turn out to another random piece that I might discard, but one of my cousins whom I do listen to says maybe I should just publish random stuff sometime, it’s not gonna kill anyone. So let me steer myself into something which makes more sense, I saw Anil Kumble at the Bangalore airport the other day and he looked as grounded as ever, He has been the perfect example of how a sportsman should lead his life on and off the field (are you listening Yuvraj Singh?). He always has let his bowling do the talking rather than his mouth.

They said that he couldn’t spin, that he could hardly be classified as a spinner, had no loop or turn, but Kumble knew that he didn’t have to turn the ball a mile to get the results, only that couple of inches either way would do, his bowling has been more about guile, deception and sheer determination, and when combined with a worn out pitch, he sure was deadly, ask the entire Pakistan batting line-up of 1999.

I was reading Srinath’s recollection of the 10 wickets and hoe Kumble went up him when he was on his 9^th wicket and told him not to worry about the record and just try finishing the match off.

His commitment to team India could never be questioned but was given the ultimate testament when he came out with fractured jaw wrapped in bandages to bowl those 14 overs, he also managed to get Brain Lara out with a broken jaw, where a hundred bowlers would not have come out, he only said that now he can go back home knowing that he had given his hundred percent. Truly a gentleman playing what used to be a gentleman’s game. I would always remember his last match, At 38, his soul was still willing, he still wanted another 10 wicket haul, another Indian victory, but the body was tiered, and it is only fitting that he retired at Kotla, where he once cleaned up Pakistan with 10 wickets in a single innings, that he bowled his last spell with a heavily bandaged finger of his left hand also seemed like a part of the script.

We are about to land, so I gotta shutdown my laptop. I hope this time there are more posts to follow this one.