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.

The turn around the corner I missed

A lot of things have been left unsaid,
A lot of questions still need to be answered,
And a lot of answers still need to find their meanings.
There is doubt, but hope too,
There is fear, but faith too,
The heart feels unsure looking ahead,
The mind wants to.
Maybe you wouldn't understand what i'm talking about,
Maybe you missed the turn around,
Maybe i should not be looking back,
Maybe ahead is the way to go...
But an old chapter needs to be closed,
A forgotten story needs to be told,
And then a new one can begin....

Lets Divide India

What does freedom mean to us? Isn’t this question becoming as daunting as ever?

Close to 61 years after independence, my country is falling apart, well not actually, just showing cracks, which seem to be a gloomy sign of the things to come. One may ask, “what this time?” because there too many issues, what’s got my heart bleeding is Indians getting beaten up trying to make a living in their own country, Indians being discriminated for the crime of trying to live in India.

Is the state I’m born in, the only part of my country that I have a right to?

Is the city I’m born in the only one I can call my own?

If I live elsewhere in my own country, should I be subjected to discrimination, abuse and alienation?

Its happening in Mumbai today, where Indians from the northern part of the country, especially from Bihar are facing the mob madness of the local crowd, being driven out if the city fearing violence, getting beaten up for the crime of not being born in that city, crime of not being a Marathi. And one of the best cities in India, the city where dreams are dreamt and lived in, is dying.

For more than 60 years now, India has struggled to make a mark in this world, for the last 60 years, India has tried again and again to develop, to rise and shine, finally when we have come to the brink of achieving world recognition, we take a step backwards, in fact we take many steps backwards, instead of realizing that our great strength lies in unity, our people our out to divide and discriminate.

And, does it end here? Does it end in Mumbai, Maharashtra? Of course it doesn’t, this madness spreads, and there are more states where this is already happening, people take so much pride of being from their state that they are forgetting about a much greater pride, of being Indians, and what next, what do they want? Maybe divide India into separate countries; do they want a separate country for Maharashtra, a separate country or two to divide the south of India, another one for Bengal maybe? Two or three more to divide the north of India, and then maybe we may be able to live in peace, and Mr. Thackeray can please himself all he wants by secluding his state from the rest. You can keep people from coming to your state to search for a better life. Is this where this road will end?

Maybe one day our great country will realize where our strengths lie, and unite in taking India forward ,right now all I can say is –
“My heart is in the coffin there with India
And I must pause till it comes back to me”

AND THEN THERE WAS PERTH

While the entire country was hooked to their TV screens for ten days waiting to see if the Indian Cricket team is going to return from down under bringing a pre-mature end to the scheduled 3 months tour, amongst all controversies and accusations and fingers pointing to one man and then another, in the midst’s of Harbajan Singh’s trial and Brad Hogg being accused, very quietly, unobserved by the public, a script was being written in the Indian dressing room, probably the hands writing the story dreams and fairytales are made of had no idea then but in the 2 months to come, the world would view the Indian Cricketing spirit in a different light.

In the events to follow, we look back as men often do and realize that the Sydney test defeat was a point reached and from there on, there could be no turning back, the only way for our bays was meeting fire with fire and a fairly good way to put what happened would be to say that the “Indian Team looked the Australians in the eye, and did not blink.”

The much awed and feared pitch of Perth was ready for battle and the stage was well set for Irfan Pathan and Virender Sehwag to make a comeback after being out of the test team for about an year each, though our much loved young sardar had to sit out this time, as it turned out, he would get ample amount of opportunity to answer everyone with the ball later.

The Wicket, about which a lot had been written and re-written, had somehow failed to work for the Australians who had gone ahead with an extra pace bowler, in form of Shaun Tait, a 25 year old speedster who looked more like a 40 year old man, lacking skill, while bowling to the likes of Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman, these masterful stroke players looked at the top of their game against an Australian attack which seemed to lack inspiration, the papers reported it as a “dead WACA wicket”, and that was where our young bowlers, with swing in their arsenal came into picture, a top order collapse for the Ausies saw the return of a hero, as Pathan got rid of both the openers in both the innings, and the birth of a another, in form of Ishant Sharma, a tall, lanky boy from Delhi, who at the young age of 19, managed to send chills down the spine of the “worlds best batsmen”.

If you had sat through his 9 over spell in the second innings at the end of which he got the wicket of Ricky Ponting, if you had followed every ball fired down at the batsmen, who seemed to have no idea of the line, length or the movement of the ball, waiting for him to finally get out, you have to agree with me, when I say that that was some of the best pace bowling I have seen in life.

What we would realize later is that what we had seen in those 4 days was not just another test win, but more, much more. It was an answer to the Sydney test controversy and all that which followed, it was a statement that the team will not take things lying down, and it was the awakening of the spirit of Indian cricket.

The tri series which followed was just an aftermath I think, yes MS Dhoni seems to be a perfectly calm captain, at ease with a job which none of us believed he would be doing at least for a couple of years more, if at all. And he did manage to raise more than just eyebrows when he insisted on a young team, sending tempers flying all across the nation when Dravid and Gangully were dropped, for the likes of young Rohit Sharma and Gautam Gambhir, but he got what he asked for, and did a fine job as well turning a bunch of youngsters into a fine team, and we don’t doubt him any longer when he comes on the stage and says that this will be the core of his team in the years to come.

The loss of Zaheer and RP Singh due to injury meant that Ishant, based on his performances in the test series, would have to lead the Indian pace attack, at the tender age of 19, and what a splendid job did the boy do, troubling both the Australians and the Sri Lankans (yes, the tri series did have another team, which came and went quite quietly), and so much did he grow with each and every match, that by the end of the tour, he did not look like a new comer any more, but a man who knew his place in the scheme of things.

But that’s not all that shone for India in the tri-series, with Gautam Gambhir ending up the highest run getter in the competition, another Delhi boy had decided that he would like to be a permanent addition to the side rather than an in and out batter, another young Sharma, shone for his batting in crucial times, showing great promise for the years to come, and a quiet, young, sly bowler, sat waiting for his chance for quite sometime, Praveen Kumar, who has a simple charm in his attitude and in his bowling, did not get a game till the must win match against Sri Lanka, just before the finals, and “he came, he saw, and he conquered,” a 4 wicket haul to open up his wicket taking account in international cricket, and the another 2 and 4 wicket in the finals, one wonders just why did he sat in the dressing room all this time, but more than that one wonders just what exactly, are Dhoni’s decisions made off?

Take, for example giving the last over of the T20 world cup final to Joginder Sharma, or more recently, saving Praveen Kumar for later, only to give him the new ball in the finals, or maybe taking a big chance with Piyush Chawla in the finals, for the leggie had had no game before them, or maybe the last over in this series? How about the courage to ask for weathered, bankable players like Dravid and Gangully to be dropped in view of a younger team? He says that he just gives them a chance and leaves it up to the individuals to perform, but there is much more to his captaincy, and we do not fail to notice how he has altered his “wham-bahm and thank you ma’am” ways of batting to get into a more responsible role of a captain building the innings, batting more like a man, who seems to be sure of the cards up his sleeve, neither do we fail to notice that whenever there is a tense situation on the field, he has his ways to calm things down, with a joke maybe, or just telling the bowler that he does trust him. Though it is often said that a true test of player is a test match, somehow we feel assured that when that opportunity presents it self in its due time, Dhoni will prove a fine leader in Test.

And lets not forget the ever mischievous Harbhajan Singh, who might have become the most hated player in Australia over this summer, its certainly not easy to go out and play, much less to do well, stop the runs, take those valuable wickets at the right time an to do it all with a smile on your face when half the crowd is booing you and cursing you with every move you make, but our man seems to be doing a fine job of it all even when all odds were against him. Really his valor seems to be inspiring.

And how about the great man who refuses to grow old, every ground Sachin Tendulkar went to, he was greeted by a standing ovation, the crowds not knowing weather he would play another match in Australia after this series or not. But the way things stand, we are not too worried that he’ll retire anytime soon, not the way he’s batting at the moment, not the way he almost repeated his performance of the Twin Centuries of Sharjah 1998, (wow, it really was ten years ago) with a spectacular century in the first final, and a breathtaking display of stroke play for 91, in the next one, he looks as good as new, and seems to have found his peace with a room full of players who were still toddlers when he started playing his cricket, he seems to be helping out with valuable coaching tips to the youngsters as well.

I would love to write on till the end of the day about this new phase of Indian Cricket but I’m afraid that’s not feasible, though I’m sure I will be following this team very closely in the next few years

To my friend

When at night, the world sleeps,
Thoughts of life, in my mind creep,
Maybe it would have been different without you around,
Who would have held my hand when i fell to the ground,
Who would have stood by my side even when i was wrong,
When I looked towards the skies and cried for help...
Giving me your hand, u told me i've still got you, my friend.
But is this the end?
Remembering all the times we've had,
all those seasons in the sun,
Can those good time really be undone?
Once more when you turn around,
I'll be there,
waiting in the sun